The Rise of Henry Kissinger
Niall Ferguson’s authorized biography
ends with Henry Kissinger’s appointment as national security advisor to Richard
Nixon in late 1968. Given the controversy that followed it is hard to believe
today that his appointment was nearly universally acclaimed by both the Left
and the Right. That appointment was a dramatic move up for an Orthodox Jewish
kid from Furth, Germany, whose family fled Nazi oppression in 1938.
Kissinger’s family established their household
in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Something must have been in the
water because out of that neighborhood came Allan Greenspan and my ex-boss at
Salomon Brothers, Henry Kaufman. Had not World War II intervened, Kissinger was
on his way to becoming an accountant.
The army changes him. He sees combat at
the Battle of the Bulge, witnesses first- hand the horrors of the Nazi
concentration camps and as a sergeant in the counter intelligence corps he
works after the war to round up Nazis that have gone to ground. Along the way
he leaves his orthodox faith. My guess is that is seeing the violence of the
front in World War II enabled him 20 years later to risk is life visiting the
war zones of 1965 Vietnam. Not much has been written about his physical
courage. Further during his first visit he realized that the Vietnam War was
unwinnable and a negotiated settlement was required.
Through some lucky breaks and an active
mentor Kissinger ends up in Harvard and it is in undergraduate years he becomes
an idealist in the Kantian sense. He truly believes in democracy and human
choice. He goes on to his Ph.D. and writes a very remarkable dissertation on the
Congress of Vienna and its aftermath which is later published as “A World
Restored.” Although not as famous as Keynes’s “Economic Consequences…” about
Versailles, he offers a unique insight into the geopolitics of 1815 Europe and
the key roles of Metternich and Castlereagh. One can certainly argue that this
book offered a window into Kissinger’s later thinking the 1970s with respect to
U.S. policy concerning Russia and China. Where he appears to lose his idealism
is in seeing up close how policy is really made and the machinations of De
Gaulle and the North Vietnamese. He begins to merge Castlereagh with Bismarck
to form the foundations of the “realpolitik” that he would become known for.
Kissinger becomes a public figure in
1957 with his publication of “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” which places
him in the center of the post-Sputnik foreign policy debate. From there it on
to both Kennedy’s National Security Council and the Rockefeller Brothers think
tank. Ferguson demonstrates Kissinger’s
adroitness in balancing his loyalties to both the Democrat Kennedy and the
Republican Rockefeller. After leaving the administration he works as
Rockefeller’s leading foreign policy wonk writing most of his speeches. He is
horrified by the 1964 Republican Convention which brought back memories of
1930s Furth and goes on to vote for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater.
Ferguson highlights the importance of
history to the making of foreign policy. Too many practitioners are unaware of
the path dependence of the irrevocable decisions they make. He also rightly
believes that Kissinger is correct that in analyzing policy it is important to
look at the counter factuals. For example had Britain and France stopped Hitler
in the Rhineland they likely would have avoided World War II, but they could
very well have been blamed for whatever events transpired later. Statesmen have
to act with incomplete information, because when you have full information it
is too late.
We also see Kissinger as a man with his
relationships with his parents, his less than happy marriage and his dog Smokey.
In my opinion Ferguson has set the stage for his next volume, where we will see
the Kissinger that most of us know, become quite a bit more controversial, to
say the least.
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