Count Gravlax's Reviews > Diplomacy

Pretty good with the exception of a few fawning and utterly boring chapters on Nixon and Reagan that add very little to the book.

Foreign policy is one of the state functions most open to populism from both sides of the political spectrum, mostly due to the fact that pundits rarely have to sow the consequences of their policies. Here Kissinger writes a treaty on the virtues of reality-based Foreign Policy, one that leaves open space for some idealism but focus on the balance of power.

He is utterly prescient about the developments of the immediate world after the crowning of the US as the greater global hegemon. Most of his predictions have become true - the UK has unmoored itself from continental Europe, Russia has returned to its expansionist impulses, Germany positioned itself firmly as the center of Europe, Japan has become more aggressive with its foreign policy and the post-communist world not immediately annexed by NATO and the EU became a no-man's land of constant Russian intervention. He only missed the mark on China - perhaps he thought that the country would be much less aggressive than it turned out to be. We'll see if that was a good idea or not. He is right when saying that the US now sees itself in a bizarre situation, where it is the undisputed military leader of the world (and it is fair to say, the economic as well, no matter how many smokes and mirrors China pulls) but is unable to project its power in the world, as the nations have been broken into a number of local powers that are in constant conflict between each other, and tend to mostly follow their own interests.

He is also surprisingly candid about the mistakes in Vietnam, considering the whole thing a disastrous adventure. There are, in fact, many words to say about a US foreign policy based on aimless trashing based on totalising and idealistic visions of democracy and Human Rights, and its dangers of over-extension. Consider, for example, the main conflicts the US has embroiled itself in the last 2 decades, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the US had both a strong moral and strategical reason for intervention and was mostly well-received by a population that detested both the soviets and the Taliban. Instead of concentrating on wiping out the remaining Taliban and rebuilding a war-torn country, the US government involved itself in a useless war with extremely obscure reasons, that diverted attention and logistics from the challenge of rebuilding Afghanistan. The consequence was not only the further destabilisation of the Middle East and a growing influence of Iran in the region but the abandoning of the Afghans, the resurgence of the Taliban and the growth of an exceptionally isolationistic public. In the end, nothing was accomplished - much like it happened in Vietnam.

Much of it, of course, is the work of hindsight. I am not knowledgable on Kissinger's roles as a policymaker himself, but I don't think they are relevant to the lessons presented in the book. If he went against most of his ideas - which he admits doing many times - worse for him, not for the ideas themselves.