Henry Kissinger, statesman, scholar, world-
class strategist
A foreign policy that changed the world
by Talmage Boston
In Psalms 90, Moses estimated most people’s lifespan as “three score and ten.” If life lasts longer than 70, he said it would bring “only labor and sorrow.” Given that view of the human condition, we should “number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Henry Kissinger died last week, outliving Moses’ estimate by 30 years. He “labored” till the end at his international consulting firm while in the last two years co-authoring the book The Age of AI and Our Human Future and writing the book Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. He had little “sorrow” though, since he never stopped pursuing knowledge, truth and new ideas, which allowed him to “number his days to gain a heart of wisdom.”
My fondness toward Kissinger springs from having interviewed him for the World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth in 2013 and 2022. My preparation for the programs far exceeded any of my other interviews. When my book of interviews was published in 2016, I wanted him on the cover.
His century of life was fascinating. Born a Jew, he spent his early years in Germany, then
escaped the Nazis with his family in 1938 and arrived in New York at age 15. He started higher education at City College of New York, then joined the U.S. Army in World War II, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, helped liberate a concentration camp, and pursued Nazi war criminals.
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Upon returning home, he attended Harvard and earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. He then taught “Principles of International Relations” at Harvard from 1954 to 1969, and his writings on nuclear warfare and foreign policy soon became noticed by President Dwight Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
Seeking more influence, he started his public career as Rockefeller’s foreign policy adviser during Rocky’s presidential campaigns in 1960, 1964, and 1968. After Nixon beat Rockefeller for the 1968 Republican nomination and was then elected president, he chose Kissinger as his national security adviser and later his secretary of state.
The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy partnership changed the world. Together they opened the door to China; negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty with the Soviets; engineered shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War; and brought an end to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
For his role in ending that war, Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. After Nixon resigned because of Watergate, Kissinger held the same two positions for President Gerald Ford that he had with Nixon.
Beginning with the Carter presidency, and continuing until his death during Biden’s term, Kissinger was called on by every American president except Obama to provide advice on foreign policy. Jimmy Carter was so admiring of Kissinger’s advice that he awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
After leaving the government, he gave counsel to the private sector for more than 40 years through his consulting firm, which attracted blue chip clientele. He also advised journalists on how best to understand geopolitics. At the end of its tribute to him last week, The Wall Street Journal said, “He informed many of the writers you read on these pages.”
How did he gain a “heart of wisdom” and global influence that lasted a century? In his book on leadership, Kissinger said he merely followed Churchill’s wisdom: “Study history. In history lie all secrets of statecraft.”
He didn’t just study history, he applied it. In his tribute for The National Interest last week, former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Graham Allison called Kissinger his greatest mentor because he was “the exemplary statesman as applied historian.”
How can yesterday’s history be “applied” to guide today’s policy decisions? Kissinger’s answer: “History is not a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not maxims. It illuminates the consequences of actions in comparable situations, though each generation must discover for itself what situations are comparable.”
He recognized from his thorough studies absorbed by his sponge-like brain that too many leaders make bad foreign policy decisions because they don’t know history and, thus, can’t apply it.
“Leadership is the art of bridging the gap between experience and vision,” he wrote. “This is why most great statesmen were less distinguished by their detailed knowledge than by their instinctive grasp of historical currents.”
Colin Powell recognized what gave Kissinger his edge over others: “Unlike the rest of us political appointees, before Henry was a statesman, he was a scholar.”
Even with a thorough knowledge of history and how to apply it, providing advice and directing foreign policy is often about making tough choices between bad options. For example, Kissinger got plenty of grief for opposing Salvador Allende’s communist reign in Chile after he became president there by winning a democratic election in 1970. Kissinger shocked American sensibilities by saying, “I don’t see why we have to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”
In his book Kissinger, Walter Isaacson recognized that his subject’s statements in his biography of Otto von Bismarck had application to the way Kissinger himself went about attempting to improve world order: “The new order was tailored to a genius who proposed to constrain contending forces, both domestic and foreign, by manipulating their antagonisms.”
Because of the challenge in engaging in confidential diplomatic communications while at the same time being questioned as a public figure by the media, Kissinger had lots of critics. Another biographer, Niall Ferguson, noted in his WSJ tribute last week that we can look to how Kissinger wrote of another historic figure, Klemens von Metternich, to understand how he grasped his own conflicted situation during the Nixon/Ford years: “Statesmen tend to have a ‘tragic quality’ because it is in the nature of successful policies that posterity forgets how easily things might have been otherwise. … The statesman is therefore like one of the heroes in classical drama who has had a vision of the future but cannot transmit it directly to his fellow men.”
Kissinger was unpopular to some because he viewed the world as a realist, not an idealist. In my first interview with him, Kissinger said: “We have a tendency to deal with foreign policy as a missionary enterprise, such that we define our purpose in entering wars as an effort to transform the world to our principles. As a general objective, that is what we prefer to happen when we decide to participate in a war, but when that rationale is applied to concrete cases, you must ask, ‘What are the limits of what America can do?’”
Allison gave this assessment of his mentor’s perspective: “He saw realism in statecraft as a moral idealism …aimed at the construction of a viable order to prevent catastrophic war. …His imperative was peace.”
The negotiator
Not only was he a master global strategist, he could effectuate his strategies because hewas a world-class negotiator. His exemplary approach was described in the book Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level by Harvard professors James K. Sebenius, R. Nicholas Burns and Robert H. Mnookin. They noted that he began every negotiation away from the table, first identifying his ultimate goal and then working backward to determine what had to be in place and in sequence for the deal to be made.
If Kissinger knew that his negotiating position was weak then before starting any dialogue with his counterpart, he found ways to add cards to the hand he was dealt by identifying new incentives he could offer and penalties he could threaten that would potentially motivate the person across the table to accept his terms.
Upon arriving at the table, he knew that to move a negotiation toward his goal would more likely occur if there was genuine rapport between the parties. No one was better at building rapport with others than Henry Kissinger. Many Dallas leaders saw it firsthand, and said this about it after his passing:
President George W. Bush: “America has lost one of its most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs. I am most grateful for his friendship. Laura and I will miss his wisdom, his charm, and his humor.”
Richard W. Fisher, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and former vice chair of Kissinger’s consulting firm: “He was a patient teacher to presidents, heads of state, and even lowly people like me. He helped me understand the lessons of the early 19th century that underpinned his framework for the modern world. He listened carefully to my briefings on the economy and monetary policy, then asked erudite questions that reflected his genius for synthesizing and getting to the point. I saw him shortly before his death, and he told me to remember him simply as a patriotic American, grateful for our country’s having taken his family in from Nazi Germany, and allowing him to prosper. ‘I could only have become me in America.’”
Bill Lively, former SMU vice president: “When we created the Tate Lecture Series 41 years ago, we knew we needed to begin with an especially substantive lecturer to suggest the promise of the series’ stature. So we invited him to present the inaugural lecture. He was predictably informative and inspiring, and his participation validated the series’ importance at its inception.”
Jim Falk, president emeritus of the World Affairs Council of D-FW: “He saw the world not as we wish, but as it is. At our events, he was kind, low-maintenance, and generous with his time, talking extensively with our guests, especially students.”
Liz Brailsford, president and CEO of the World Affairs Council of D-FW: “He was one of the most consequential figures in 20th century foreign policy and unfailingly gracious to our staff and members.”
As for my own experience with Kissinger, one memory stands out. In doing research for my first interview with him in 2013, I learned he was a serious baseball fan. So I sent him the two baseball history books I’d written, hoping to generate some goodwill between us before we met in person.
When I first met him on the morning of the program, he grasped my hand, looked into my eyes, and said, “Talmage, I loved your baseball books.” Instant rapport! When we finished lunch that day and walked toward the stage where the interview would take place, he said, “I sure hope you’ll ask me a question about Joe DiMaggio.”
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