This is the second book I've read on Kissinger, (the first being Niall Ferguson's "Kissinger: The Idealist"). It is also the second book I've read by Greg Grandin (the first being "The End of the Myth," about frontier colonialism in the United States).

As I mentioned in my other review, a friend prompted: "we can all agree that Kissinger was evil; but would worse evils have been perpetrated if Kissinger hadn't done what he had done?" This book isn't interested in answering that question.

BALANCE OF VIOLENCE

Although such an argument is somewhat cliché at this point, I do agree that nuclear weapons were a turning point in the history of civilization, and that they've intensified an ethos of impossible choices. With a clash of great empires, like between the USA and the USSR in the Cold War, all roads lead to violence. Either both nations are more or less in balance (this balance maintained by "small wars" in other countries), or one nation becomes dominant, in which case there is much hardship in the nation that has fallen behind.

In other words, there is a system of a balance of violence (“balance of power” is the more domestic term). If you follow this logic (as Kissinger does), then anti-war protests, denuclearization, and any form of "backing down" come across as not only naïve, but downright perverse and suicidal. Peace activists may think of themselves as bringing about peace, but from Kissinger's view, this is only possible because they've failed in their objectives. If they were successful, the USA would become a Russian territory.

You could say, "but what about Russian peace activism? If both movements were successful, couldn't this ensure world peace?" One of the challenges here is that there hasn't yet been devised a "global balance of peace" system. Russia was pro-denuclearization. Why? Because they saw the ways in which the US populace would hold their government accountable in a way which the government in the USSR would simply disregard. There's a quote in the book, when Chairman Mao is chatting with Kissinger. He says something to the effect of, "why is this Watergate thing such a big deal?" In the context of the Chinese Communist Party, citizens are accountable to the government, not the other way around. And so the concept of a populace holding their government "to account" just comes across as absurd. Why would any leader be willing to submit to such shackles?

To fast forward to the present day, Xi in China, Putin in Russia, and Modi in India have all been consolidating power and building an autocracy. Trump was doing the same. Biden has kept in place many of Trump's autocratic systems rather than dismantling them, and Trump may be re-elected at the end of this year to pick up the project again.

To restate the argument here: if you believe, as Kissinger did, that foreign empires will play a no-holds-barred game for global domination, then any kind of deescalation is a form of self harm and the best we can hope for is a rough balance of violence.

It is challenging to square such rhetoric in a democratic context. If you're playing a game where agility is your friend and rules or limits are your enemy (such as in war), autocracies have a lot to recommend themselves. In this context, democracies become games of convincing the populous of beliefs that benefit your positions as a leader. In other words, voters become instrumental cogs to be manipulated, both domestically and through campaigns of cross-border propaganda. If you have an autocracy facing off against a democracy, democracy becomes a liability for the latter and an advantage for the former. All else being equal, the autocracy will prevail.

I'm not suggesting that I endorse such a perspective. I'm simply pointing out that, if you start where Kissinger began, there is nothing surprising about where he ended up.

BEHAVIORAL DIPLOMACY AND THE ALTERNATIVE

One of Kissinger's core tenants was that good diplomacy is a combination of incentives and threats (and that the threats must be regularly exercised to remain sharp). At base, this is a behavioral theory; it takes the other party and looks at them from an exterior perspective.

On the other hand, we hear that Kissinger had a human side in his negotiations. To the shame of many Americans, Kissinger sidled up alongside many a dictator and treated them with respect. He was fascinated with their interior world. This kind of empathy is the opposite of the behavioral diplomacy described above.

All of this has me wondering—what are other paradigms of diplomacy, and if we're employing a multi-modal diplomacy, what is the hierarchy (e.g. does empathy trump behavioralism, or is it the other way around)?

INTUITION AND NIHILISM

Kissinger's core epistemology was intuition. He spoke a lot in his later years of the "interdependence" of nations. He snubbed the "fact men," myopically fixated on their statistics. Iain McGilchrist, whose research has focused on brain hemispheres, would say that this is a "right hemisphere" approach aligned with gestalt perception. Grandin implies that he is critical of this capacity, but I wouldn’t say that on its own, it is a problem.

Kissinger's core cosmology was nihilism. In the 1950s, Kissinger spoke of a "spiritual crisis" in the West. This may be true, but with such a comment Kissinger reveals his own spiritual vacuity. Kissinger never managed to mature beyond this spiritual poverty, and spent his days in a state of perpetual adolescence (as do many Western leaders). This is a left-hemisphere-dominant dynamic.

What happens when you combine these two attributes? You get a great diplomat, but a poor leader.

LEGACY

Ferguson notes: Kissinger had statistically exceptional qualities, but was not able to create bureaucratic systems that mentored a future generation of his equals (not that that would necessarily be a good thing, but it didn’t happen, regardless). Rather, what remains are his precedents of spontaneous wars and an expansion of Executive Branch power. Grandin points out that neoconservatives (such as Dick Cheney with the Iraq War) and liberals alike (such as Barack Obama’s drone killings in Yemen) readily adopted precedents set by Kissinger for unaccountable war.

While on the subject of Dick Cheney, it is worth noting that in Adam McKay’s film, “Vice,” he presents essentially the same thesis about Cheney that I’ve noted Kissinger would argue about himself—worse evils would have occurred were it not for the actions they took.

There is a poignant quote in the book, a letter of advice from a colleague to Kissinger’s when he received high level security clearances, speaking about the emotional rollercoaster. His colleague notes the humility at realizing you’ve been criticizing leadership for decades with extremely partial information—often missing the key information about what was actually going on. But on the other hand he speaks of a risk that you yourself begin to discount anyone’s observations if they don’t have the same clearances you do. The colleague advises humility here too; that we can still learn from others, even if they don’t have the full picture.

All of this reminds me of the “wall facers” in Cixin Liu’s “Remembrance of the Earth’s Past,” series. These are individuals that, for reasons of alien surveillance technology, cannot disclose anything about their plans to anyone else, otherwise the enemy would have valuable intelligence. So they go about, executing grand plans, without any explanation to the vast armies they’ve rallied to serve under them. As an aside, I’ll note that this is Xi’s fantasy, and the series wouldn’t be China’s most-ready work of sci-fi without Xi’s endorsement. But that aside, I think that on a more poetic level, there is something fundamental here: that we can never fully understand nor fully comprehend each other or the world around us. A schizophrenic approach to this quality of reality is to scrabble for an ineffable control. A wiser path forward is to marvel in mystery and wonder, and to do the best with our sense of a given situation.

In closing, I’ll say that you’re welcome to condemn Kissinger, and I too have done the same. In the same breath though, we might remember that, in the world we’ve created of impossible choices, inevitably there will be people that need to make these choices, and they will be demonized. ( )

Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman by Greg Grandin is a look at a man who was instrumental in American foreign policy and has outlived critics and supporters. Grandin is the author of Fordlandia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A Professor of History at New York University, Grandin has published a number of other award-winning books, including Empire's Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and The Blood of Guatemala.

Love him or hate him, Kissinger is a man that shaped modern American foreign policy and still today writes on the topic as an experienced sage. It was once said that Machiavelli does not write about how a leader should act in a perfect world, but rather how a leader needs to act in this world. Kissinger may be the equivalent in the modern world. He is the father of American Realism in foreign policy -- The idea that a nation must act on its own accord, even when it does not have the support from other nations. Kissinger believes in power and the actual exercise of that power to create foreign policy. Kissinger, like Al Capone, believed you can get more with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.

Grandin covers Kissinger's life from the military to the post 9/11 world. There is no doubt of Kissinger's brilliance in his ideas, but the practice of those did not always have the desired results. The massive bombings of North Vietnam did not have the desired effect as Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator, verbally embarrassed and harassed Kissinger at the peace talks. Kissinger threatened more bombings and Tho simply told Kissinger that America had already lost the war. Vietnam was holding firm and the American public was rejecting the war. The mouse stood up to the lion. Kissinger could not understand that.

Kissinger was the central figure in and covering up the secret bombings of Cambodia. The four years of bombing were known as Operation Menu and Kissinger worked to cover up the real targets of the bombings. Much of this remained unknown until General George S Brown told what he knew to congress during hearings for his selection for Air Force Chief of Staff. Kissinger dodged any responsibility. The result, however, brought an impeachment charge against Nixon that was dropped. Congress also passed The War Powers Act of 1973 over Nixon's veto. Kissinger stayed on after Nixon's resignation and although Ford removed him from the position of National Security Advisory, he stayed on as Secretary of State. Kissinger faced opposition from the crowd of rising neo-conservatives -- Cheney and Rumsfeld. He did, however, convince Ford to overreact to the Mayaguez incident reaffirming America's will to use force.

Kissinger's hand runs deep through American policy from the well known Cambodian bombings, opening relations with China, SALT talks with the Soviets, and the coup in Chile. He also took part in lesser known actions in Rhodesia, Bangladesh, and East Timor. His role did not end with Carter's election victory. George W. Bush called him back to service to chair the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Kissinger, now in his 90s is no longer active in foreign policy, but the world is still experiencing the effects of his actions. His role cannot be denied in the forming of late 20th Century American foreign policy. A great biography and read. ( )

Greg Grandin's "Kissinger's Shadow" attempts to explore the reality of Kissinger - and in Grandin's mind, the reality is that everything Kissinger did was a mistake. You don't get balance in this book - you get polemic.

Kissinger was never the most corrupt Secretary of State we've ever had (remember, Hillary Clinton had the job, too), and he wasn't the purehearted shining light either. The reality, as it always is, was much more difficult, but that idea would only get in the way of Grandin's agenda. Criminal? Check. Cryptonazi? Check. Boogeyman? Check.

Kissinger presided - or helped preside, to be more accurate - over the Vietnam War, yes, but he also opened China - how can you possibly ignore 1 billion people, as U.S. foreign policy did?

Like him or not (and Grandin obviously doesn't), Kissinger is the most consequential man in American foreign policy in the last 50 years.

I received this book as a free review copy.

More reviews at my WordPress site, Ralphsbooks. ( )

Incredibly researched and detailed, like all of Grandin's work. Knowing that Kissinger has advised the current Democrat front-runner in the US election made this too disturbing for me to finish. I'm looking forward to returning to this -- no joke -- in ten years or so; I don't think I could stand it until then.

I found the author's take on Kissinger to be overly harsh. From my other studies of Kissinger and Nixon, while I do not admire Kissinger, I do not believe he was as bad as the author made him out to be. ( )