Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy

The purpose of this research is to examine Diplomacy by Henry A. Kissinger. The plan of the research will be to set forth the theme of and pattern of ideas in the book and then to discuss the style, emphasis, sources, organization, bias of the author, and other features that comprise the means by which the theme is elaborated, as well as Kissinger's career--all with a view toward providing an evaluation of the contributions it makes to an understanding of the subjects it undertakes.

The theme of Diplomacy has a double perspective, one historical and the other critical. From one point of view, it is a historical survey of some three hundred years worth of international relations in and among the nation-states of Europe and the United States. The survey seems partly meant to show that certain problems now being faced by the West have roots as far back as the beginning of nation-state development, which followed the era of the medieval world view and feudal social structures, intersected with the period of divine-right monarchy, and ran parallel with the end of tension between religious hegemony and religious warfare in Europe. But Diplomacy does not begin the historical account, starting with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War (i.e., the last great religious war), until the third chapter. That is because of the second perspective of the book, which is to give an account and critique of transformations of modern (i.e., twentieth-century) Amer

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as "realism" and Realpolitik and second, a "structure of peace" by way of a balance of power, specifically a "triangular" relationship between the world's three big nuclear powers, the U.S., U.S.S.R., and P.R.C. Important in this regard is that Nixon (and Kissinger) formulated this view of America's permanent status as a superpower in the period of declining American prestige owing to Vietnam. The fact that Diplomacy compresses into one current volume a historical review of foreign relations allows Kissinger to prepare a foundation for his case that the so-called new world order contains little that is really new. To the degree the objectives of the new world order derive from moralistic arguments based on democratic values, Kissinger is unenthusiastic about them because they have the potential to cloud the "geopolitical analysis" necessary to find a way through "the maze of new complexities" in a post-Cold War world. On the other hand, Kissinger credits Ronald Reagan's advocacy of exporting democracy around the world and his particular kind of foreign-policy idealism, which he favorably characterizes as ideological and "relentlessly confrontational," with bringing about the collapse of the Soviet empire. It is difficult t

Category: Government - H