Henry Kissinger's purpose in Diplomacy is to place America's twentieth-century foreign policy firmly in the flow of the history of foreign relations that begins with the Concert of Europe following the Napoleonic wars. At that time the dream of a European empire was largely abandoned for the more practical balance of power among a varying cast of nations. The subsequent Realpolitik of Bismarck and others contains, Kissinger believes, the germ of truth about power and international relations. Kissinger, a professional student of European foreign policy, has promoted the Realist approach to international politics for his entire career. This book demonstrates his belief that America's fate in the twentieth century illustrates the inherent truth of the Realist belief in the primacy of power in international relations. Kissinger also seems to possess a secondary purpose in the book, that is, placing himself and his career in the flow of the history of modern diplomacy. His extensive treatment of American involvement in Vietnam takes the form of a justification of his actions there while his diplomatic work in the US recognition of mainland China is merely explained -- and very well.
Kissinger is fascinated throughout, of course, by the question of power, as its primary role in international relations is the basis of any Realist analysis. But the purpose of the diplomatic arrangement he admires most, the Concert of Europe arranged at Vienna, and of diplomacy in general was to control power and keep it from asserting its primacy. Diplomacy must, according to Kissinger, recognize the importance of power in order to control it. The system he most admires and feels is best for the international order is a balance of power. The problem, as Kissinger sees it, was that the balance of power embodied in the Concert of Europe (the only such balance that ever existed on a broad scale) collapsed prior to World War I and the next new balan...