Overview

Henry Kissinger dominated American foreign relations like no other figure in recent history. He negotiated an end to American involvement in the Vietnam War, opened relations with Communist China, and orchestrated detente with the Soviet Union. Yet he is also the man behind the secret bombing of Cambodia and policies leading to the overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende. This well researched account brings to life the complex nature of American foreign policymaking during the Kissinger years. It will be the standard work on Kissinger for years to come.

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9780195172218

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Reviews

His extensive use of original sources will give this narrative of the Kissinger years a special value for readers. * James M. Murphy, TLS *

A striking indictment. Hanhimaki is one of the most persuasive of the many detractors of Henry Kissinger. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Absorbing and rich.... Hanhimaki provides breaking news by revealing Kissinger's efforts throughout the early 1970s to engineer a way of extracting US forces from Vietnam 'without immediate embarrassment,' meaning he was willing to betray South Vietnam. --Kirkus Reviews The tone is critical, it is not at all polemical. Hanhimaki gives Kissinger due credit for his very real accomplishments while not concealing unpleasant facts, placing this work midway between Seymour Hersh's Price of Power and Marvin and Bernard Kalb's more admiring Kissinger. --Library Journal No one can read The Flawed Architect without being impressed by the scope and complexity of the issues that ended up on Kissinger's desk. He was--as every secretary of state should be--a superb juggler. However, he displayed disdain for democracy and impatience with a free press and an active Congress. He sought refuge in secrecy, back channels and outright lies. He approved the wiretapping of his own staff. Many have considered these failings peccadilloes compared to his brilliance as a diplomat. By showing us precisely how Kissinger's globalist vision blinkered him to regional realities and how this undermined the effectiveness of his diplomacy, Hanhimaki makes us think again. --Raleigh News & Observer Was Kissinger a war criminal or a calculating realist? Was he the creative architect of a new world order or a traditional cold warrior? Was he an imaginative diplomat or a secretive opportunist bent on maximizing his personal power? Using a broad array of new archival materials and brilliantly assessing Kissinger's policies in the Third World, Hanhimaki persuasively argues that 'Super-K' was a superb tactician and flawed strategist. This book is essential reading for an understanding of the evolution of the Cold War. --Melvyn P. Leffler, Stettinius Professor of American History, University of Virginia Hanhimaki's study of Kissinger in power is first-rate scholarship. The author has mined rich veins of previously unavailable government documents to explain in detail a controversial set of foreign policies. Crisp prose and a sure command of materials make this important book a pleasure to read. In short: a splendid contribution to the literature of post-1945 U.S. diplomatic history. --David Mayers, Boston University A fine and illuminating reappraisal of one of the most lastingly controversial figures in the history of U.S. foreign policymaking. Rooted in a slew of recently declassified documentation on Kissingers tenure, The Flawed Architect gives us the good (detente, the opening to China, the Arab-Israeli shuttles), the bad (the secret bombing of Cambodia, the protracted agony of Vietnam, the coup in Chile), and the ugly (a tangled web of secrecy and deception all too redolent of Nixon's White House). As the United States struggles anew to find the right balance between American interests and American values, this book is as timely as it is engrossing. --Warren Bass, author of Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance Hanhimaki offers the most detailed, considered, and persuasive account of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy in print. Most impressive, Hanhimaki offers a fair and balanced judgment of a man who more frequently inspires polemics. Those who wish to understand Henry Kissinger, the Cold War, and its legacies must read this book. --Jeremi Suri, author of Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente It is good to have a full, reliable account of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy by a well respected historian who has written extensively on post-1945 international affairs. Hanhimaki carefully examines Kissinger's accomplishments, frustrations, and failures in the context of his ideology and personality, as well as of his relationship with Richard Nixon and other world leaders. --Akira Iriye, Professor of History, Harvard University A striking indictment. Hanhimaki is one of the most persuasive of the many detractors of Henry Kissinger. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Absorbing and rich.... Hanhimaki provides breaking news by revealing Kissinger's efforts throughout the early 1970s to engineer a way of extracting US forces from Vietnam 'without immediate embarrassment,' meaning he was willing to betray South Vietnam. --Kirkus Reviews The tone is critical, it is not at all polemical. Hanhimaki gives Kissinger due credit for his very real accomplishments while not concealing unpleasant facts, placing this work midway between Seymour Hersh's Price of Power and Marvin and Bernard Kalb's more admiring Kissinger. --Library Journal No one can read The Flawed Architect without being impressed by the scope and complexity of the issues that ended up on Kissinger's desk. He was--as every secretary of state should be--a superb juggler. However, he displayed disdain for democracy and impatience with a free press and an active Congress. He sought refuge in secrecy, back channels and outright lies. He approved the wiretapping of his own staff. Many have considered these failings peccadilloes compared to his brilliance as a diplomat. By showing us precisely how Kissinger's globalist vision blinkered him to regional realities and how this undermined the effectiveness of his diplomacy, Hanhimaki makes us think again. --Raleigh News & Observer Was Kissinger a war criminal or a calculating realist? Was he the creative architect of a new world order or a traditional cold warrior? Was he an imaginative diplomat or a secretive opportunist bent on maximizing his personal power? Using a broad array of new archival materials and brilliantly assessing Kissinger's policies in the Third World, Hanhimaki persuasively argues that 'Super-K' was a superb tactician and flawed strategist. This book is essential reading for an understanding of the evolution of the Cold War. --Melvyn P. Leffler, Stettinius Professor of American History, University of Virginia Hanhimaki's study of Kissinger in power is first-rate scholarship. The author has mined rich veins of previously unavailable government documents to explain in detail a controversial set of foreign policies. Crisp prose and a sure command of materials make this important book a pleasure to read. In short: a splendid contribution to the literature of post-1945 U.S. diplomatic history. --David Mayers, Boston University A fine and illuminating reappraisal of one of the most lastingly controversial figures in the history of U.S. foreign policymaking. Rooted in a slew of recently declassified documentation on Kissingers tenure, The Flawed Architect gives us the good (detente, the opening to China, the Arab-Israeli shuttles), the bad (the secret bombing of Cambodia, the protracted agony of Vietnam, the coup in Chile), and the ugly (a tangled web of secrecy and deception all too redolent of Nixon's White House). As the United States struggles anew to find the right balance between American interests and American values, this book is as timely as it is engrossing. --Warren Bass, author of Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance Hanhimaki offers the most detailed, considered, and persuasive account of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy in print. Most impressive, Hanhimaki offers a fair and balanced judgment of a man who more frequently inspires polemics. Those who wish to understand Henry Kissinger, the Cold War, and its legacies must read this book. --Jeremi Suri, author of Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente It is good to have a full, reliable account of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy by a well respected historian who has written extensively on post-1945 international affairs. Hanhimaki carefully examines Kissinger's accomplishments, frustrations, and failures in the context of his ideology and personality, as well as of his relationship with Richard Nixon and other world leaders. --Akira Iriye, Professor of History, Harvard University

That most Strangelovian of public servants-and his legacy comes in for close analysis-and are found badly wanting. Kissinger cut a brilliant figure for a long while, writes Hanhimaki (History and Politics/Graduate Institute of International Studies), bringing analytical skills, a broad range of references, and a pronounced gift for networking to the service of whoever would listen to him. (Kissinger appears to have wanted a post in the Kennedy administration, Hanhimaki hints, but was rebuffed.) Almost alone in academia in applauding Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, Kissinger was rewarded with a consultancy that involved backroom negotiations with North Vietnam, his first touch of secret diplomacy for which his appetite would later prove insatiable. Further rewards would come when Kissinger linked his fortunes to Richard Nixon's, and when he refined his own notions of linkage and leverage to go head to head with the world powers, playing the Soviets off the Chinese and inventing an elaborate system of punishments and rewards to gain diplomatic concessions. The major flaw there, writes Hanhimaki, was that Kissinger had little or no interest in the intricacies of the local causes of conflicts or in the world outside the superpowers, which drove him to distraction when the North Vietnamese insisted on going their own way during the peace talks, and which led to many other American debacles. Hanhimaki provides breaking news by revealing Kissinger's efforts throughout the early 1970s to engineer a way of extracting US forces from Vietnam without immediate embarrassment, meaning he was willing to betray South Vietnam: While we cannot bring a communist government to power, Kissinger wrote at the time, if, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, we ought to be able to accept it. Hanhimaki writes, by way of faint praise, that Kissinger has never even come close to being irrelevant. Still, those who take the view that Kissinger is a war criminal will find little to contradict them in this absorbing and rich account. (Kirkus Reviews)

His extensive use of original sources will give this narrative of the Kissinger years a special value for readers. James M. Murphy, TLS

Author Information

Jussi Hanhimaki is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. An editor of the journal Cold War History, he is the author or co-author of five books, and won the 2002 Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

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