Henry Kissinger and the American Century (review)

Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most controversial U.S. secretary of state since Dean Acheson, has received critical evaluations from numerous scholars—for example, Jussi Hanhimäki, whose view of Kissinger’s role in U.S. foreign policy is summed in his book’s title, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Jeremi Suri offers a more positive, although somewhat mixed, assessment, treating Kissinger as one of a generation of “good men” whose “good intentions” sometimes had bad consequences (p. 15). Suri has produced a significant book, but readers may not be convinced by some of his arguments—for example, about Kissinger as a “revolutionary” policymaker—or by Suri’s treatment of Kissinger’s anti-democratic leanings.

Asking “why” Kissinger, a Jew in a Protestant-dominated establishment, could become so influential, Suri finds much of the answer in globalization. “Kissinger,” he writes, “was an agent of globalization, but his influence comes from the social margins of a changing world, not from the traditional centers of ‘established’ authority” (p. 5). Emphasizing Kissinger’s German-Jewish upbringing and flight from Nazi Germany in 1938, Suri argues that these experiences were absolutely critical to Kissinger’s intellectual formation. Kissinger’s background, according to Suri, also underlay his ability to act as a “bridge figure” between Western Europe and the post–World War II U.S. foreign policy establishment. Confirming I. F. Stone’s insight about Kissinger’s keen sense of timing, Suri believes that what helped make this “outsider” so successful was not so much his ideas as his capacity to comprehend, and take advantage of, new circumstances.

When Kissinger went to work for a president whom Suri describes as an anti-Semitic “gangster,” he drew on his personal and intellectual skills to operate as a “revolutionary” statesman remaking the international system by “engaging adversaries” and “pushing for compromise,” calibrating “military power for political purposes,” and “insulating the . . . management of foreign policy from public interference” (pp. 246–247). The convergence of Richard Nixon’s downfall with a crisis and war in the Middle East made it possible for Kissinger to use his “insider-outsider” status to good advantage in negotiations with Arabs and Israelis to prevent the outbreak of another regional war. Yet Suri finds serious flaws in Kissinger’s conduct as a policymaker. Critical of Kissinger’s Vietnam policy and indifference to human-rights concerns, among other failings, Suri sees a “tendency for [Kissinger’s] antidemocratic fears to empower repressive regimes” (p. 274).

Suri’s book is well written, and his research in primary and secondary source material is extensive, including interviews with Kissinger. The book’s most valuable contribution is its account of Kissinger’s pre–White House career, especially Suri’s assessment of Kissinger’s German-Jewish background and its impact on the future leader’s worldview and career. A central point is that Kissinger’s experience with the rise of Nazism and the democracies’ tardy resistance to German aggression made him skeptical about the resilience of democratic institutions. Thus, early in his career Kissinger concluded that an effective national security policy required “heroic politics” to create space for “charismatic, forward-looking, undemocratic decisionmaking in government” (p. 8).

Suri also does a good job of covering Kissinger’s career at Harvard University, showing how his management of the international affairs seminar gave him connections around the world that would later serve him well. Although Suri points out that Kissinger’s rise to influence was based on new Cold War institutions, he misses the crucial role of a well-established source of power in American society—corporate capitalism. The wealth of Nelson Rockefeller and funding from the corporate-oriented Council on Foreign Relations were crucial to facilitating the work that made Kissinger prominent.

Suri’s emphasis on Kissinger’s thinking about federalism in foreign policy is important to the book’s presentation. Kissinger’s “dynamic conservatism,” in Suri’s view, was designed to tackle the limits of containment and of American power by...