Kissinger

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/kissingers-shadow-by-greg-grandin...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/niall-fergusons-kissinger-volume-...

There is a notation re the reviewer ANDREW ROBERTS at the bottom of the Ferguson book review that should probably be read first.

The most amazing thing, to me, is that Niall Ferguson has discovered someone whom he considers more fascinating than himself. Doesn’t it figure that it would be Henry Kissinger.

I like the suggestion at the end of the review of Grandin's book that Kissinger is a far less historically significant figure than we make him out to be. This seems very likely true.

Ferguson
http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60633959

Grandin
http://www.c-span.org/video/?327849-1/greg-grandin-kissingers-shadow

Maybe it isn't either or but a combination of both Grandin and Ferguson's viewpoints.

He was Heinz before Henry.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/henry-kissinger-every-presidents-guru

I admit neither Niall Ferguson or Henry Kissinger is seen by me as being terribly important, but Like Dick Cheney, they have iconic qualities...Ferguson not so much. I remember Barbara Streisand, who dated him, said he was a mousy little professor, and said he was a good deal less fun than Canada's then PM Pierre Trudeau. Like Cheney, he wasn't much liked in Canada...the joke being that if he came he would be introduced to our Justice minister who would then arrest him for War Crimes.

Like many of us college kids in the late 60's and 70's , Kissinger was they guy we all learned it hate. Cambodia 1970 and Haiphong 1971 just two markers en route to Chile 1973. Maybe I have just gotten old and comfortable or perhaps I have taken the last 40 years to study and experience our history, but Henry has grown on me. Perhaps it is the fact the most if not all strategic thought in this country since then barely qualifies as either, and his argument and point of view regarding the national interest is so clear compared to messianic Wilsonian/Bushian rhetoric. Whatever the reason, Kissinger is important and remains so. My only fault with him now lies in his pathetic and unsuccessful effort to curry favor with Goldwater's pathetic little inheritors by compromising his own basic beliefs.

>6 chagonz::
Kissinger's way is the way of blood, a retreat behind technological walls enlivened by violent forays into an increasingly hostile world. The cosseting of the movers and shakers of the global economic power structure isn't paying off in terms of bringing peace, it is increasing violence. Would you draft your children to increase someone else's profits? Now, at the moment it's done with mercenaries and drones, but the profit margin is gradually shrinking. The Globalists can't find anyone to fight for the USA in Syria, remember only five recruits for what $500,000,000.00 in training costs? Soon the price in blood will be laid at your door.

A tad too dramatic I think. One does not have to look too far to see the basic falsity of your premise. Notwithstanding Pinkers thesis of reducing violence, there is no doubt that we, the human race, are a very violent species. Fr my grandsons generation I hope for a more peaceful world, just as my mothers generation hoped for a world without general war. She more or less got it and we survived without thermonuclear destruction. I don't think the arguement is binary, either or. Understanding human motivations and priorities. To better manage relations among nation states and maintain the peace is not a form of criminality. Wild, emotional, idealistic forays and experiments soon can be. What is needed are cooler heads, rational, even if nasty, decisions about what is worth it or not.
What is the appropriate response to Paris? What is in France's national interest ? What is the decent moral course of action? These are the hard decisions that have to be made. I know where I stand though , thank God I am not at the pay grade entitles one entrusted with those decisions.