London What is the recipe for success for a bestseller? First, take a world-renowned author. Secondly, take a topic that promises to attract a great deal of attention, especially given the disorientation that is being felt everywhere at the present time.
Henry Kissinger’s latest book, which is entitled “Leadership” in the original English, exceeds these criteria. The 99-year-old “Yoda” of international diplomacy takes the reader on a historical journey through time, from the end of World War II to the war in Ukraine. Kissinger is not concerned with chronology, but with what lessons today’s state leaders should draw from history.
Basically, his book is a handbook for “statecraft” – the German title. He therefore chose five statesmen and one stateswoman to travel with, all of whom in their own way were formative for their country and beyond – and who he felt had “leadership” qualities.
Konrad Adenauer anchored (West) Germany in the political west of Europe after the lost war. Charles de Gaulle once again made France a “Grande Nation”. Anwar el-Sadat, as President of Egypt, made a historic peace with Israel.
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Singapore’s longtime Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew turned his city-state into a thriving economic and financial metropolis. Richard Nixon opened the door to China with his visit to Beijing 50 years ago. And the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher turned the economic thinking of her time upside down with the United Kingdom.
Henry Kissinger, Statecraft
C. Bertelsmann Verlag
Munich 2022
608 pages
38 euros
Translation: H Dedekind, H Dierlamm, K Dürr, A Lerz, K Petersen, S Reinhardus, K Schuler, T Stauder.
According to Kissinger, they all have in common not only that they were shaped by an era (1914 to 1945) that the author describes as the “second thirty-year war”. They all came from middle class backgrounds and brought virtues such as self-discipline and patriotism to their positions.
What is more important, the former US Secretary of State writes, is that they are not afraid to speak hard truths directly and openly – regardless of consensus politics. They all combined the qualities of the pragmatic “statesman” with those of a visionary “prophet”.
For Kissinger, the sextet documents the transition from the aristocracy of the Metternich epoch to the meritocracy, where not origin, but achievements count. According to the American, the most important qualities of statesmanship are courageously “choosing a direction from among complex and difficult options” and staying on course with strength of character, the benefits and risks of which can only be incompletely assessed at the moment of decision-making.
“It’s this intuitive grasp of direction that enables state leaders to define goals and set strategy.” Kissinger sets the bar for state artists very high, and not all of the ones he’s chosen create in the eyes of the more neutral Into the Transformational Leaders Hall of Fame.
The biggest doubts come from Richard Nixon. The 37th President of the United States was undoubtedly a historical figure – but he hardly serves as a model for today’s heads of state. The Nixon name is forever associated with the Watergate affair and the abuse of state power by an isolated, maniacally suspicious and notoriously power-hungry leader.
Criticism of the West too
The fact that Kissinger is rather light-footed about it may also have to do with the fact that, as Nixon’s national security adviser and later secretary of state, he was far too close to his boss at the time to place him historically in the right place. But it is also because the doyen of American foreign policy is a representative of power-political realism, who is primarily concerned with global power balances and national interests and who all too often sees domestic political crises like Watergate as disruptions to the more important fortunes of the world leaders.
The chapters on Adenauer and de Gaulle contain little that is new. Kissinger probably knew her rather casually, but never maintained such close relationships with either of them as he did, for example, with Sadat, Lee or British Prime Minister Thatcher.
The “Iron Lady” made no secret of her dislike of the Germans, and so it is a little surprising that Kissinger praises both Adenauer and Thatcher for their quite different attitudes towards a united Europe.
However, the American deserves praise for presenting history as a human work of influential personalities and less as the result of anonymous forces. For a long time, this more human perspective was neglected by many historians and only experienced a – albeit sad – resurgence with Putin’s war in Ukraine.
For today’s contemporaries, Kissinger’s thoughts on the relationship between the West and Russia and China should be of particular interest. Kissinger has made it clear in many interviews that the current conflict in Ukraine must end with a negotiated solution that also takes Russia’s security interests into account. “Russian foreign policy translates a mystical patriotism into an imperial attitude of entitlement, which, however, is associated with a permanent feeling of insecurity,” analyzes Kissinger.
Kissinger also considers the future relationship between the USA and China
Ultimately, Russian insecurity stems from its long-felt strategic vulnerability to invasions across the East European plain. “The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this egregious violation of international law, is therefore largely the outgrowth of a failed strategic or half-hearted dialogue,” the 99-year-old criticized the West. Even as Putin’s empire is severely weakened by Western sanctions, Russia’s nuclear and cyber capabilities continue to empower the country for doomsday scenarios.
Kissinger devotes more space to the future relationship between the USA and China. “The key question in US-China relations is whether and how two such disparate concepts of national greatness can peacefully coexist,” writes the German-born American.
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For the author, new technologies such as artificial intelligence play a decisive role in the struggle between the great powers. Last year Kissinger published a book entitled “The Age of AI” together with former Google boss Eric Schmidt and scientist Daniel Huttenlocher from the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“In a world where increasingly potent technology can either fuel or disrupt human civilization, there is no ultimate solution to great power competition,” predicts the author. An unrestrained technological race, based on an ideologization of foreign policy in which each side is convinced of the malicious intentions of the other side, will ultimately create a similarly devastating vicious circle of mutual distrust that triggered World War I.
Kissinger’s outlook is rather pessimistic: “Today it seems quite possible that the liberal order based on universally applicable rules (…) will in practice be replaced by an at least partially decoupled world for an indefinite period of time.” Such a split could lead to this result in the search for spheres of influence intensifying on the fringes.
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