Diplomacy

Henry Kissinger has been among the most important voices on national security and US foreign policy for well over a half century. Most famously, he served as National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon, forging a partnership so close they were jointly known as “Nixinger.” He later became secretary of state and stayed in that position for President Gerald Ford following Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Born Heinz Kissinger in 1923 in Germany, he and his Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1938 to evade Nazi persecution. He returned to Europe with the US Army in 1944, eventually taking control of a counterintelligence unit in the city of Hanover to track down Nazis in hiding. After the war, he received a PhD at Harvard University and joined the faculty, also serving as a consultant to the US government and think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations and the RAND Corporation. As a German Jewish immigrant at a time when the foreign policy establishment remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Kissinger found common cause with the Quaker Richard Nixon, joining his team in 1968.

Kissinger’s time in government is both celebrated and harshly criticized. Many praise his diplomacy during the 1973 Yom Kippur War as well as his work in establishing ties between the US and Communist China. In 1973 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the US exit from Vietnam. He is also accused of prolonging and escalating the Vietnam War, particularly during the US’ secret invasion of Cambodia in 1970. He also allegedly authorized the 1973 coup against democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende, ushering in a brutal dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. Despite these and other controversies, Kissinger has retained a significant role in US foreign policy, advising Republicans and Democrats alike. He has run a consulting group, Kissinger Associates, since 1982. In May of 2023, he celebrated his 100th birthday with a gala at the New York Public Library.

As an academic, Kissinger is famous for advancing the idea of “legitimacy,” and the concept appears many times throughout Diplomacy. By legitimacy, Kissinger does not mean a concept of justice. Rather, he’s referring to a concept agreed upon by all major powers. In this sense, the legitimacy of an international situation is determined only by the agreement of all major powers that the situation is acceptable and should not be intruded upon. If one or more major powers, conversely, does not accept a situation, then that situation is determined to be “revolutionary” and is therefore seen to be dangerous. This view of legitimacy explains Kissinger’s argument that legitimacy comes out of the logical order of events and is not something imposed by morality. It is only a historical agreement, in a sense.

Kissinger has become known for his academic work following his service in the US government, and he has written a number of well-respected, though sometimes controversial, books. Beyond Diplomacy, he has written on Chinese international relations in On China (2011). He has also written on what he sees as the various ideological determinisms in global politics in World Order (2014), which has been praised by such political figures as Hillary Clinton.