Kissinger’s Contradictions

How Strategic Insight and Moral Myopia Shaped America’s Greatest Statesman 


 Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Montreal, June 2008
Shaun Best / Reuters [image from article]

By Timothy Naftali, Foreign Affairs, December 1, 2023


Excerpt:

"For all his diplomatic genius, Kissinger had a huge moral blind spot. He could see the world only from 30,000 feet—or through the eyes of the powerful. ... 

In many ways, despite his experiences as a child immigrant in the 1930s and a U.S. soldier in World War II, he remained a cool, antiseptic technician of power. ...

Ironically, Kissinger’s positive legacy derives from those instances in which his genius for elite interactions, his ambition, and his exceptional stamina led to negotiated agreements that made the use of violence in defense of realpolitik more difficult."

  • TIMOTHY NAFTALI is a Faculty Scholar at the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He was the founding Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

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