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Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman
A new account of America's most controversial diplomat that moves beyond praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America's current imperial stance. In his fascinating new book, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America - its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home - we have to understand Henry Kissinger.
Examining Kissinger's own writings as well as a wealth of newly declassified documents, Grandin reveals how Richard Nixon's top foreign policy advisor, even as he was presiding over defeat in Vietnam and a disastrous, secret, and illegal war in Cambodia, was helping to revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency. Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard facts, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder future bold action, Kissinger anticipated, even enabled the ascendance of the neoconservative idealists who took America into crippling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Going beyond accounts focusing on either Kissinger's crimes or accomplishments, Grandin offers a compelling new interpretation of the diplomat's continuing influence on how the United States views its role in the world.
Greg Grandin is the author of The Empire of Necessity, Fordlandia (which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award), Empire's Workshop, and The Blood of Guatemala. A professor of history at New York University and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library, Grandin has served on the UN Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The New York Times.
Examining Kissinger's own writings as well as a wealth of newly declassified documents, Grandin reveals how Richard Nixon's top foreign policy advisor, even as he was presiding over defeat in Vietnam and a disastrous, secret, and illegal war in Cambodia, was helping to revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency. Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard facts, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder future bold action, Kissinger anticipated, even enabled the ascendance of the neoconservative idealists who took America into crippling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Going beyond accounts focusing on either Kissinger's crimes or accomplishments, Grandin offers a compelling new interpretation of the diplomat's continuing influence on how the United States views its role in the world.
Greg Grandin is the author of The Empire of Necessity, Fordlandia (which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award), Empire's Workshop, and The Blood of Guatemala. A professor of history at New York University and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library, Grandin has served on the UN Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The New York Times.
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First published August 1, 2015
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About the author
Greg Grandin
26 books558 followersGreg 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.
Toni Morrison called Grandin's new work, The Empire of Necessity, "compelling, brilliant and necessary." Based on years of research on four continents, the book narrates the history of a slave-ship revolt that inspired Herman Melville's other masterpiece, Benito Cereno. Philip Gourevitch describes it as a "rare book in which the drama of the action and the drama of ideas are equally measured, a work of history and of literary reflection that is as urgent as it is timely."
Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times.
He received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, in 1992 and his PhD from Yale in 1999. He has been a guest on Democracy Now!, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Chris Hayes Show.
Toni Morrison called Grandin's new work, The Empire of Necessity, "compelling, brilliant and necessary." Based on years of research on four continents, the book narrates the history of a slave-ship revolt that inspired Herman Melville's other masterpiece, Benito Cereno. Philip Gourevitch describes it as a "rare book in which the drama of the action and the drama of ideas are equally measured, a work of history and of literary reflection that is as urgent as it is timely."
Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times.
He received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, in 1992 and his PhD from Yale in 1999. He has been a guest on Democracy Now!, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Chris Hayes Show.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
January 8, 2026
This motherfucker… actual evil incarnate who thought he was a philosopher cuz he taught at Harvard and read Hegel and Kant. Girl fuck you
February 23, 2017
Anything that flies on anything that moves. - Kissinger ordering the bombing of Cambodia
A word on the subtitle. My guess is that the publisher chose it. The word 'controversial' after all is a euphemism. As Grandin so ably demonstrates, the evidence against Kissinger is actually incontrovertible. The man is a war criminal. If there were any justice in this world, he would have been tried and convicted a long time ago.
However, this is book is not merely another cry of righteous indignation, like Christopher Hitchens's Trials of Henry Kissinger. Hitchens's all-consuming hatred of Kissinger was no doubt justified. Nonetheless by focusing so relentlessly on the moral deformities of a single individual, Hitchens blinded himself to broader questions of history and power (this is a problem that runs throughout his oevure, part of the reason why, despite being a considerable rhetorician, he really was never much of either a leftist or an intellectual, RIP).
Grandin, by contrast, tries to situate Kissinger within the institutions of the national security state, institutions he himself did not create. By the time he came to power in '68 the war on Vietnam had already been raging for years. Kissinger would initiate the sadistic and gratuitous bombing campaign against Cambodia, but similar operations had already occurred in Laos. Moreover, long before September 11 1973, the CIA already had a long practice of sponsoring right-wing coups in third world countries (Iran in '53, Guatemala in '54, Indonesia in '65).
All this being so, Grandin still argues Kissinger has had a significant role in shaping the culture of American militarism. For the most part we now all accept permanent war as the normal state of things. This was as true of Obama, with his drone strikes, as it was of his Republican predecessor.
Please read this book, especially if you're a fellow American. We really do need to have a national dialogue about the enormous violence our government has sowed throughout the world. Granted I'm a whack-a-doodle Marxist, but please note it's not just me and my Trotskyists friends who think so. This book comes with a blurb from conservative military historian Andrew Bacevich. Grandin quotes a Republican congressman who visited the site of the bombing in Cambodia and described it as "a greater evil than we have done to any country in the world" (pp 76).
Hopefully some day the bombings of Laos and Cambodia will be taught to middle school students learning American history. For now they remain shamefully obscure.
*
Last summer Grandin wrote an editorial for the Nation, 'Hilary Clinton's Embrace of Kissinger is Inexcusable.' In it he argues that Sanders should make his endorsement of Clinton conditional on her repudiating Kissinger. Clinton never did that. She actively sought Kissinger's endorsement and has been close personal friends with him for years.
This is the sort of the thing that's often lost when liberals denounce those 'purists' or 'Bernie bros' (eeek!!) on the left who refused to cast a vote for Clinton. Liberals present it as if it's disagreement between people who essentially want the same thing, with the 'purists' stubbornly refusing to make any compromise with practical necessity. This is utter obfuscation. We on the left should insist that we're not on the same side as anyone who shares the same basic foreign policy assumptions as Henry Kissinger. Under certain conditions, the relative balance of evil might still justify a vote for someone like Clinton, but that's a tactical question. On matters of principle we ought to be clear.
https://www.thenation.com/article/hil...
December 3, 2023
Not actually a break from my binge reading about Palestine. The rationale for what's happening in Gaza is on display here in striking detail. Grandin a master as usual, but I found this particularly, horribly useful to understand this political moment. And yes, Kissinger is dead.
February 13, 2016
As Greg Grandin makes clear from the beginning, unlike Christopher Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger this book is not an indictment for war crimes. By no means does Grandin offer an apologist's perspective for this former Secretary of State and Director of the National Security Council, directly (Cambodia) and indirectly (East Timor) responsible for the murders of tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians worldwide.
Rather, Grandin's purpose is to reveal the motives behind the man by examining the political theories--and notable departures from these theories--that shaped this non-elected official who wielded the greatest influence of any individual over modern U.S. foreign policy. Kissinger's complicated legacy began in the context of the Cold War but as Grandin illustrates, extends well into today's conflicts in the Middle East.
"Nixon's top foreign policy adviser helped revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency....Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard fact, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder bold action in the future."
Kissinger favored his own hunches over the analysis of intelligence agencies and saw himself not as a bureaucrat but a man of action who shaped the world of international relations rather than reacting to events. Thus he advocated using madmen theory against Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh: rather than waiting to defend in predictable situations, the U.S. should strike randomly and without provocation thereby leading the nation's enemies to believe the U.S. military capable of anything. As a man of action, he personally oversaw the covert and illegal bombing of Cambodia--going so far as to order the military commanders precisely where to drop their payload. He even went to battle against U.S. intelligence agencies in order to contain the so-called domino effect (another overreaching theory of the spread of Soviet influence) and prevailed by inflicting what would prove to be disastrous U.S. involvement in Angola.
His philosophical world view centered heavily on his studies of German metaphysics--order over justice: "[He] valued stability and the advance of national interests above ideals like democracy and human rights." It is no coincidence that Kissinger escorted dictatorships into power (Chile, Uruguay), helping them to consolidate and/or maintain their apparatus of repression (Guatemala and South Africa, where his 'tar baby option' was every bit as racist as it sounds) while privately loathing bothersome talk of human rights though publicly paying it lip service (UN). A tyrant in his own right, Kissinger railroaded or sabotaged any colleagues in his way and detested oversight of Congress. He lorded over his own rubber stamping secret committees and held disdain for the public, which he divided and manipulated to his own ends.
When it was expedient for his career and especially when it promised proximity to power: "Kissinger's relativism was a tool of self-creation and self-enhancement. Kissinger; who admittedly believed in nothing, was skilled at being all things to all people, particularly of a higher station." Thus he played a covert role in sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks, leading to the Republican election and securing a place at the table despite Nixon's personal dislike for him.
Kissinger continues to hold a reputation of charming diplomat and confidant. (Former nicknames included: Super K, Henry of Arabia, the Playboy of the West Wing.) Today he is widely viewed by the Washington elite as the wise adviser, respected academic, essential consultant. He and Clinton agreed on economics, especially NAFTA. George W. Bush named him chair of the 9/11 Commission, though Kissinger quickly resigned once the widows--concerned about conflicts of interest--requested to see Kissinger Associates' client list. Politicians and news services fawn over him as if he is an all-knowing Oracle even as the policies he formulated and instigated have weakened U.S. democracy and led the nation deeper into a quagmire featuring: an oversized role in international relations, an endless state of militarization requiring perpetual (mostly covert) war, the disintegration of traditional political foundations and the rise of bitter partisanship in favor of an imperial presidency.
In Kissinger's own words: There are two kinds of realists: those who manipulate facts an those who create them. The West requires nothing so much as men able to create their own reality.
Like a modern-day Machiavelli, "the ends always justify the means" but in Kissinger's case the ends were always personal and the means--no matter the wanton destruction--inconsequential. The word Kissingerian should not be synonymous with realpolitik but rather: political opportunism no matter the cost.
I am a huge fan of Professor Greg Grandin, especially Empire's Workshop and Fordlandia, and have a background in international relations. I enjoyed this academic-level investigation but otherwise this book would have been a challenge to get through. If you are looking for a more substantive biography, Grandin praises Seymour Hersh's 1983 The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House.
Rather, Grandin's purpose is to reveal the motives behind the man by examining the political theories--and notable departures from these theories--that shaped this non-elected official who wielded the greatest influence of any individual over modern U.S. foreign policy. Kissinger's complicated legacy began in the context of the Cold War but as Grandin illustrates, extends well into today's conflicts in the Middle East.
"Nixon's top foreign policy adviser helped revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency....Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard fact, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder bold action in the future."
Kissinger favored his own hunches over the analysis of intelligence agencies and saw himself not as a bureaucrat but a man of action who shaped the world of international relations rather than reacting to events. Thus he advocated using madmen theory against Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh: rather than waiting to defend in predictable situations, the U.S. should strike randomly and without provocation thereby leading the nation's enemies to believe the U.S. military capable of anything. As a man of action, he personally oversaw the covert and illegal bombing of Cambodia--going so far as to order the military commanders precisely where to drop their payload. He even went to battle against U.S. intelligence agencies in order to contain the so-called domino effect (another overreaching theory of the spread of Soviet influence) and prevailed by inflicting what would prove to be disastrous U.S. involvement in Angola.
His philosophical world view centered heavily on his studies of German metaphysics--order over justice: "[He] valued stability and the advance of national interests above ideals like democracy and human rights." It is no coincidence that Kissinger escorted dictatorships into power (Chile, Uruguay), helping them to consolidate and/or maintain their apparatus of repression (Guatemala and South Africa, where his 'tar baby option' was every bit as racist as it sounds) while privately loathing bothersome talk of human rights though publicly paying it lip service (UN). A tyrant in his own right, Kissinger railroaded or sabotaged any colleagues in his way and detested oversight of Congress. He lorded over his own rubber stamping secret committees and held disdain for the public, which he divided and manipulated to his own ends.
When it was expedient for his career and especially when it promised proximity to power: "Kissinger's relativism was a tool of self-creation and self-enhancement. Kissinger; who admittedly believed in nothing, was skilled at being all things to all people, particularly of a higher station." Thus he played a covert role in sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks, leading to the Republican election and securing a place at the table despite Nixon's personal dislike for him.
Kissinger continues to hold a reputation of charming diplomat and confidant. (Former nicknames included: Super K, Henry of Arabia, the Playboy of the West Wing.) Today he is widely viewed by the Washington elite as the wise adviser, respected academic, essential consultant. He and Clinton agreed on economics, especially NAFTA. George W. Bush named him chair of the 9/11 Commission, though Kissinger quickly resigned once the widows--concerned about conflicts of interest--requested to see Kissinger Associates' client list. Politicians and news services fawn over him as if he is an all-knowing Oracle even as the policies he formulated and instigated have weakened U.S. democracy and led the nation deeper into a quagmire featuring: an oversized role in international relations, an endless state of militarization requiring perpetual (mostly covert) war, the disintegration of traditional political foundations and the rise of bitter partisanship in favor of an imperial presidency.
In Kissinger's own words: There are two kinds of realists: those who manipulate facts an those who create them. The West requires nothing so much as men able to create their own reality.
Like a modern-day Machiavelli, "the ends always justify the means" but in Kissinger's case the ends were always personal and the means--no matter the wanton destruction--inconsequential. The word Kissingerian should not be synonymous with realpolitik but rather: political opportunism no matter the cost.
I am a huge fan of Professor Greg Grandin, especially Empire's Workshop and Fordlandia, and have a background in international relations. I enjoyed this academic-level investigation but otherwise this book would have been a challenge to get through. If you are looking for a more substantive biography, Grandin praises Seymour Hersh's 1983 The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House.
December 1, 2023
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/07/...
Really, return to his "self-creation"? "His picture" of the world?
"The dark side of Henry Kissinger is very, very dark"
If you want to read this book, this is my recommendation before you start reading it, watch this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tIVDZYV...
Kissinger is 97 now. Once Grandin tried to write the Kissinger's obituary for a London paper.
One of the main thesis of the book is to prove Kissinger is not much of a realist, rather a subjectivist.
"Getting rid of Kissinger is important, yes. But if he is replaced by just another Rockefeller frontman, the gesture will be meaningless. In order to survive, America must repudiate Kissinger's policies and restore its determination to remain free and independent (...) It is not too late to tell Henry Kissinger and his masters and mentors in the Shadow Goverment that we want no part of their New World Order". Gary Allen, 1976
"Mao and Kissinger shared a mutual appreciation of German metaphysics"
Greg Grandin
[Dialogue]
Mao- what kind of doctor are you? Are you a doctor of philosophy?
Kissinger-yes (laughter)
"Kissinger is a friend"
Hillary Clinton
Not really being an attempt to prosecute Kissinger, Grandin's book is good from the Historical and Philosophical points of view. It seems he's saying Kissinger is a survivor despite all attempts to criminalize him (like activist and militant Christopher Hitchens did). Kissinger will get away, for sure. But it's just too late. No vulnerability to make a case, I guess. Grandin believes also Kissingerism will endure,"as well".
UPDATE
(Is he saying "adieu"?)
He's back. According to him, as he told The Economist*, "Biden has assembled a very competent team". Kissinger believes in China's democratization [🤔]. So, things will get better vis a vis China, ....won't they?
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyvrU...
P.S. Just a note. Hitchens would pronounce "Kissinger" in a different way, unlikely what most Americans do, he would say the "g" like in "singer". You go figure. I wonder whether Hitchens would call Kissinger by Heinz, ...in his dreams for justice.🤨
Update
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.then...
October 12, 2020
I am not sure I learned anything new from this book--it's not really a biography of Kissinger (which I wouldn't want to read) nor is it an account of his deeds (ditto), but it did promise to be an analysis of sorts of what his tenure did to America and the world. There are definitely some insights here but I don't think enough to make it worthwhile. I loved Grandin's The End of The Myth but was a bit disappointed in this one
August 4, 2020
Excellent, focused yet comprehensive account of Kissinger’s philosophy of, career in, and enduring influence on United States foreign policy. If you want to know the origin story of America’s current forever-war moment, this book is a good place to start.
While Grandin’s book is measured, my takeaways from it are not. After serving in World War Two, Kissinger enrolled at Harvard and proceeded to get way too far up his own ass in German metaphysics. By the end of it, he concluded that nothing really mattered. In this revelation, he found immense freedom, because if nothing matters, then people are freed to do whatever they want in order to achieve an end. The world would soon be paying dearly for this revelation.
Upon becoming a foreign policy advisor, Kissinger created a series of circular arguments that ensured the United States would be forever at war. “The purpose of American power is to create an awareness of American purpose.” “Inaction has to be avoided so as to show that action is possible. Only action will void the systemic incentive for inaction.” (i.e. Vietnam syndrome) “Power isn’t power unless one is willing to use it. The purpose of action is to neutralize the inertia of inaction.” “We have to escalate in order to prove we aren’t impotent, and the more impotent we prove to be, the more we have to escalate.” “Power is weakness unless one is willing to use it.” “We gotta doooooo somethinggggg.” ...actually, wait, that last quote is from Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek. My bad.
Kissinger pioneered two concepts that would later prove crucial to neoconservative foreign policy: randomly attacking countries that had nothing to do with an existing conflict (invading Iraq after 9/11) and justifying it by making shit up (WMDs!!). He called this the “madman theory,” where instead of engaging, say, North Vietnam, a country you are currently at war with, directly, you bomb neighboring countries (Laos, Cambodia) back to the stone age, just to prove to your enemies that you’re a madman capable of anything. Kind of like in Bull Durham when Tim Robbins threw an aggressively wild pitch in order to make the batter feel unstable at the plate, except that it didn't work in Kissinger's case. North Vietnam and others were wholly unshaken by the "madman" stance. If anything, it only emboldened and radicalized existing insurgencies against the United States, or created new ones out of thin air, a concept known as "blowback."
And after you take military action against a random country, you lie to the public about it. In the words of Kissinger, “Initiative creates its own consensus.” Or, in other words, statesmen shouldn’t wait until all the facts are in before they seize the initiative and take military action. “Conjecture and intuition” were enough cause for Kissinger to murder tens of thousands of people. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what the neocons did post 9/11. Dick Cheney’s version is called the “one percent doctrine,” where if there is even the slightest chance that a threat will be realized, the United States should act as if that threat were a foregone conclusion. “It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence,” Cheney said. “It’s about our response.” Too bad they ended up finding absolutely no evidence of WMDs.
(My absolute favorite Kissingerian precursor-to-WMD example is when, in 1970, Kissinger looked at reconnaissance photos of southern Cuba showing the construction of soccer fields. “These soccer fields mean war,” Kissinger said to his colleagues, “Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer.” Kissinger insisted that the photos must mean the Russians were building a naval base nearby for nuclear submarines. When further reconnaissance showed absolutely no evidence of this happening, Kissinger used this to further his argument, maintaining that the fact that the US couldn’t find evidence of a submarine base actually made it more likely that it existed. Thankfully, Nixon and others in the cabinet eventually told him to fuck off about Cuba, and no war was pursued. Kissinger still to this day claims that the soccer field naval base existed, despite there being no evidence other than his dumbass thought that Cubans don't play soccer. Fast forward 33 years to the first few months of the invasion of Iraq, when the United States still had not found any WMDs, the Bush administration used the same line: the fact that WMDs cannot be found actually proves their existence further.)
How did Kissinger get away with all this? How is he still, to this day, an exalted figure in American politics? War crimes aside, his proximity to Nixon should have been enough for political ruin, as most of the Nixon administration became political pariahs after Watergate. How did he survive this? While it might make sense that right-wingers would like him for his policies, why is he also well-liked throughout the liberal establishment, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama and Samantha Power? According to Grandin, Kissinger was known for his charm and intellect. His ability to klink cocktails and talk German metaphysics with the right people in Washington, especially liberal journalists, academics, and other opinion leaders, gave him a wide personal appeal. He was even given endearing nicknames: Super K, Henry of Arabia, the Playboy of the West Wing. He dated good-looking women. He enchanted American high society, even as they found Nixon’s crassness disgusting. And, in Grandin’s words, “Kissinger's relativism was a tool of self-creation and self-enhancement. Kissinger; who admittedly believed in nothing, was skilled at being all things to all people, particularly of a higher station.”
How much can you get away with in America if you speak well, have the right credentials, and impress the right people? Why is the entire cast and crew of George Bush’s hit series “The Iraq War,” seasons 1 to ??? being rehabilitated by the liberal elite as they look at Trump with disdain. Nancy Pelosi et al. long for the days of “civility” under Bush. It’s almost as if the only thing they see wrong with Trump is that he can’t string a sentence together. But destroying entire countries, murdering hundreds of thousands of people, and not showing any remorse for it, will get you interviews on Colbert and Ellen, so long as you’re like Henry Kissinger and can quote Nietzsche off the dome.
Why did Kissinger pursue a murderous foreign policy, killing hundreds of thousands (millions?) in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Bangladesh, Angola, Argentina, and others? I think a lot of it certainly had to do with Kissinger believing his own bullshit. He wrote entire philosophies supporting his foreign policy. But Grandin suggests that it also had to do with plain old fashioned self-advancement: “Every single policy that Henry Kissinger advocated as being good, both materially and morally, for the long-run, strategic ends of the United States also happened to be good for the personal advancement of Henry Kissinger.”
On a final, random note, Kissinger had the completely insufferable habit of comparing world leaders that he wanted to demonize to Hitler, and using World War Two, especially the tale of Neville Chamberlain, as an analogy and justification for the actions he took. All while constantly claiming that history is useless for ordering one’s future actions. What a guy.
While Grandin’s book is measured, my takeaways from it are not. After serving in World War Two, Kissinger enrolled at Harvard and proceeded to get way too far up his own ass in German metaphysics. By the end of it, he concluded that nothing really mattered. In this revelation, he found immense freedom, because if nothing matters, then people are freed to do whatever they want in order to achieve an end. The world would soon be paying dearly for this revelation.
Upon becoming a foreign policy advisor, Kissinger created a series of circular arguments that ensured the United States would be forever at war. “The purpose of American power is to create an awareness of American purpose.” “Inaction has to be avoided so as to show that action is possible. Only action will void the systemic incentive for inaction.” (i.e. Vietnam syndrome) “Power isn’t power unless one is willing to use it. The purpose of action is to neutralize the inertia of inaction.” “We have to escalate in order to prove we aren’t impotent, and the more impotent we prove to be, the more we have to escalate.” “Power is weakness unless one is willing to use it.” “We gotta doooooo somethinggggg.” ...actually, wait, that last quote is from Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek. My bad.
Kissinger pioneered two concepts that would later prove crucial to neoconservative foreign policy: randomly attacking countries that had nothing to do with an existing conflict (invading Iraq after 9/11) and justifying it by making shit up (WMDs!!). He called this the “madman theory,” where instead of engaging, say, North Vietnam, a country you are currently at war with, directly, you bomb neighboring countries (Laos, Cambodia) back to the stone age, just to prove to your enemies that you’re a madman capable of anything. Kind of like in Bull Durham when Tim Robbins threw an aggressively wild pitch in order to make the batter feel unstable at the plate, except that it didn't work in Kissinger's case. North Vietnam and others were wholly unshaken by the "madman" stance. If anything, it only emboldened and radicalized existing insurgencies against the United States, or created new ones out of thin air, a concept known as "blowback."
And after you take military action against a random country, you lie to the public about it. In the words of Kissinger, “Initiative creates its own consensus.” Or, in other words, statesmen shouldn’t wait until all the facts are in before they seize the initiative and take military action. “Conjecture and intuition” were enough cause for Kissinger to murder tens of thousands of people. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what the neocons did post 9/11. Dick Cheney’s version is called the “one percent doctrine,” where if there is even the slightest chance that a threat will be realized, the United States should act as if that threat were a foregone conclusion. “It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence,” Cheney said. “It’s about our response.” Too bad they ended up finding absolutely no evidence of WMDs.
(My absolute favorite Kissingerian precursor-to-WMD example is when, in 1970, Kissinger looked at reconnaissance photos of southern Cuba showing the construction of soccer fields. “These soccer fields mean war,” Kissinger said to his colleagues, “Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer.” Kissinger insisted that the photos must mean the Russians were building a naval base nearby for nuclear submarines. When further reconnaissance showed absolutely no evidence of this happening, Kissinger used this to further his argument, maintaining that the fact that the US couldn’t find evidence of a submarine base actually made it more likely that it existed. Thankfully, Nixon and others in the cabinet eventually told him to fuck off about Cuba, and no war was pursued. Kissinger still to this day claims that the soccer field naval base existed, despite there being no evidence other than his dumbass thought that Cubans don't play soccer. Fast forward 33 years to the first few months of the invasion of Iraq, when the United States still had not found any WMDs, the Bush administration used the same line: the fact that WMDs cannot be found actually proves their existence further.)
How did Kissinger get away with all this? How is he still, to this day, an exalted figure in American politics? War crimes aside, his proximity to Nixon should have been enough for political ruin, as most of the Nixon administration became political pariahs after Watergate. How did he survive this? While it might make sense that right-wingers would like him for his policies, why is he also well-liked throughout the liberal establishment, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama and Samantha Power? According to Grandin, Kissinger was known for his charm and intellect. His ability to klink cocktails and talk German metaphysics with the right people in Washington, especially liberal journalists, academics, and other opinion leaders, gave him a wide personal appeal. He was even given endearing nicknames: Super K, Henry of Arabia, the Playboy of the West Wing. He dated good-looking women. He enchanted American high society, even as they found Nixon’s crassness disgusting. And, in Grandin’s words, “Kissinger's relativism was a tool of self-creation and self-enhancement. Kissinger; who admittedly believed in nothing, was skilled at being all things to all people, particularly of a higher station.”
How much can you get away with in America if you speak well, have the right credentials, and impress the right people? Why is the entire cast and crew of George Bush’s hit series “The Iraq War,” seasons 1 to ??? being rehabilitated by the liberal elite as they look at Trump with disdain. Nancy Pelosi et al. long for the days of “civility” under Bush. It’s almost as if the only thing they see wrong with Trump is that he can’t string a sentence together. But destroying entire countries, murdering hundreds of thousands of people, and not showing any remorse for it, will get you interviews on Colbert and Ellen, so long as you’re like Henry Kissinger and can quote Nietzsche off the dome.
Why did Kissinger pursue a murderous foreign policy, killing hundreds of thousands (millions?) in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Bangladesh, Angola, Argentina, and others? I think a lot of it certainly had to do with Kissinger believing his own bullshit. He wrote entire philosophies supporting his foreign policy. But Grandin suggests that it also had to do with plain old fashioned self-advancement: “Every single policy that Henry Kissinger advocated as being good, both materially and morally, for the long-run, strategic ends of the United States also happened to be good for the personal advancement of Henry Kissinger.”
On a final, random note, Kissinger had the completely insufferable habit of comparing world leaders that he wanted to demonize to Hitler, and using World War Two, especially the tale of Neville Chamberlain, as an analogy and justification for the actions he took. All while constantly claiming that history is useless for ordering one’s future actions. What a guy.
August 13, 2021
hell is too pleasant of a place for this man
February 5, 2025
If there's a hell, he's in it.
June 12, 2021
This reviewer takes Henry Kissinger down from the shelf, dusts him off with a few sentences and then puts him back in his place.
Kissinger has a barren aesthetic sense, is obsessive-compulsive on an emotional level and a analytical, anti-humanity devours every bit of him. He is more a robotic policy propagator, lacking empathy and a heartbeat.
Henry Kissinger can never be anymore than a Richard M. Nixon groupie and an underboss in the first presidential mafia. This is his epitaph. Go, already, into that good night.
Chris Roberts
Kissinger has a barren aesthetic sense, is obsessive-compulsive on an emotional level and a analytical, anti-humanity devours every bit of him. He is more a robotic policy propagator, lacking empathy and a heartbeat.
Henry Kissinger can never be anymore than a Richard M. Nixon groupie and an underboss in the first presidential mafia. This is his epitaph. Go, already, into that good night.
Chris Roberts
May 16, 2016
The first half of this book is a clear and cogent review of Kissinger's academic career and his role in the Nixon and Ford Whitehouses. The second half is less convincing. Grandin tries hard to convince us that Kissinger's shadow has fallen across successive presidencies, but I'm not sure Grandin provides enough evidence of that. In any case, the book is a decent overview of modern American foreign policy and the (toxic) belief that American power must always appear to be justified and vigorous, even if it isn't.
June 22, 2020
Good, succinct yet in-depth book about just how broadspread and malign Kissinger's influence has been.
A sharper look at Hank in some ways than Hitchens' book, and also with a broader POV.
A sharper look at Hank in some ways than Hitchens' book, and also with a broader POV.
Read
March 30, 2020This article captures perfectly what the book reports....
https://thebaffler.com/civilification...
https://thebaffler.com/civilification...
April 24, 2024
really good - the perfect length, not bogged down with autobiography. just a very deftly critical history, from a left perspective, of kissinger's legacy as an imperial official and unindicted genocidaire. does a great job of putting into context kissinger's role in normalising, over many decades, the culture of open-ended warfare we now take for granted. and also ''semantic collapse' - a dissociation of words and things, belief and action, in which ethics are unmoored from their foundation and abstractions are transmuted into their opposite'. the immunity to blowback he enjoyed his entire career (despite mounting evidence that revealed his sordid role in facilitating mass atrocities the world over) makes perfect, galling sense if you understand that the administrators of empire he paved the way for - from reagan through to biden - retroactively absolved him of any wrongdoing through their own kissingerian actions (e.g. bush snr’s 2x gulf wars, obama's drone strikes, biden's war on gaza). an ouroboros of unending violence :) what kissinger felt he had to do in secrecy - carpet bombing cambodia and laos back to the stone age, establishing an international death squad consortium in latin america (operation condor) - his past and current successors now do in the open. it’s hard not to grow numb to it all (i am feeling very depressed and kinda defeated after reading this book but don’t let that stop you from reading it; u gotta know what you’re fighting against)
December 23, 2023
Henry Kissinger is a terrible person, there is no justice, I'm glad he's dead, and Greg Grandin is brilliant and we should all only read all of his books and discuss them and reread them and love them from now on.
October 19, 2016
Henry Kissinger (now age 92) has been a prominent international figure since I was in high school when he became Nixon's National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State. He seemed to me to be an urbane realist then and an elder statesman now. By looking deeply at Kissinger's early writings and the record of his actions as filled out by declassified top secret documents from previous decades, historian Greg Grandin offers a very different picture in Kissinger's Shadow.
Kissinger's early work as a student at Harvard reveals someone who believed that morals, ethics and values in international affairs were secondary to the importance of using power to prove resolve and shake off the stagnation that came when an empire reached its peak. He also did not think history was a helpful guide to the future. It bogged leaders down in "what ifs." Action is what mattered.
As a result Kissinger advocated action heedless of consequences. And if there were consequences, that was not a problem either. Just take more action, usually with force. Thus among Nixon's advisors, he was (despite his well-groomed public persona) the most hawkish of hawks. He was the father and architect of the year-long secret bombing of Cambodia, a neutral country, and of later pounding the entire country with B-52s.
The consequences that Kissinger didn't care about? Tens of thousands killed, and a country that was precariously holding on to neutrality was thrown into chaos and civil war. The disintegration allowed the radical Kmer Rouge to gain thousands of followers who in turn killed between one and two million of their own countrymen.
Other Kissinger policies included supporting brutal Latin American dictators, giving the nod for Indonesia's Suharto to commit genocide in East Timor, betraying the Iraqi Kurds in the early 1970s, and helping derail the 1969 peace talks with Vietnam only to get credit as a peacemaker in 1973 for ending a war he had extended by four unnecessary years. Kissinger was not the moderate keeping arch conservatives at bay, as he portrayed himself. He himself, says Grandin, was the far right.
One hole is that Grandin doesn't spend much time discussing Kissinger's realist policies toward the Soviet Union. Perhaps that is because it doesn't fit Grandin's thesis.
The shadow Grandin refers to is Kissinger's influence on the United States' pattern of constant warfare from the unprovoked invasion of Iraq in 2003 to drone attacks in dozens of neutral countries today. Yet this perhaps gives Kissinger too much credit. The US had intervened militarily over fifty times in Latin America alone from 1846 to 1968 when Kissinger joined the Nixon White House. So Kissinger was also falling into a well-established tradition, though a tradition he extended and intensified.
With clarity and passion, Grandin lays the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands at Kissinger's feet. In doing so he shows the immense tragedy that arises when we disparage morals and ignore history.
Kissinger's early work as a student at Harvard reveals someone who believed that morals, ethics and values in international affairs were secondary to the importance of using power to prove resolve and shake off the stagnation that came when an empire reached its peak. He also did not think history was a helpful guide to the future. It bogged leaders down in "what ifs." Action is what mattered.
As a result Kissinger advocated action heedless of consequences. And if there were consequences, that was not a problem either. Just take more action, usually with force. Thus among Nixon's advisors, he was (despite his well-groomed public persona) the most hawkish of hawks. He was the father and architect of the year-long secret bombing of Cambodia, a neutral country, and of later pounding the entire country with B-52s.
The consequences that Kissinger didn't care about? Tens of thousands killed, and a country that was precariously holding on to neutrality was thrown into chaos and civil war. The disintegration allowed the radical Kmer Rouge to gain thousands of followers who in turn killed between one and two million of their own countrymen.
Other Kissinger policies included supporting brutal Latin American dictators, giving the nod for Indonesia's Suharto to commit genocide in East Timor, betraying the Iraqi Kurds in the early 1970s, and helping derail the 1969 peace talks with Vietnam only to get credit as a peacemaker in 1973 for ending a war he had extended by four unnecessary years. Kissinger was not the moderate keeping arch conservatives at bay, as he portrayed himself. He himself, says Grandin, was the far right.
One hole is that Grandin doesn't spend much time discussing Kissinger's realist policies toward the Soviet Union. Perhaps that is because it doesn't fit Grandin's thesis.
The shadow Grandin refers to is Kissinger's influence on the United States' pattern of constant warfare from the unprovoked invasion of Iraq in 2003 to drone attacks in dozens of neutral countries today. Yet this perhaps gives Kissinger too much credit. The US had intervened militarily over fifty times in Latin America alone from 1846 to 1968 when Kissinger joined the Nixon White House. So Kissinger was also falling into a well-established tradition, though a tradition he extended and intensified.
With clarity and passion, Grandin lays the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands at Kissinger's feet. In doing so he shows the immense tragedy that arises when we disparage morals and ignore history.
December 4, 2015
This famous psychopath won a Nobel Prize for ending a war he played a large part in helping along. He proved the validity of his published theories because he was never indicted for any of his crimes and instead only became more powerful. Kissinger was caught ordering, “Anything that flying on anything that moves”. As Noam Chomsky says, rarely in human history have orders for genocide been this clearly documented yet nothing has happened. This book has lots of great info: Nixon won the election over Humphrey because Johnson knew Nixon’s made a deal with the South Vietnamese through Anna Chennault and though he thought the action treasonous he kept quiet. Instead of outrage swinging the election to Humphrey, Johnson’s silence gave the election to Nixon. Kissinger approved “each of the 3,875 Cambodia bombing raids in 1969 and 1970 as well as the methods for keeping them out of the newspapers.” When a staff member balked at the idea of invading a neutral nation Kissinger’s response was, “Your views represent the cowardice of the eastern establishment.” He told the next staff member, he wasn’t “manly enough”. Apparently only people who can sleep well after murdering of thousands of Cambodian children can be called “manly enough”. Psychopaths traditionally have only contempt for those who dare to show empathy. “The more impotent we prove to be, the more we have to escalate.” Who says this kind of stuff except a madman? Again, why is this creep still on the streets and not in prison fending off male sexual advances from a very large person? ☺ Thanks to Kissinger, Laos is “the most heavily bombed country in history.” When it came to war reparations legally due, his response was “Every effort should be made to avoid the necessity for a special budgetary request to provide funds for this claim.” 30% of the bombs dropped by the US didn’t detonate so in Laos alone there is 80 million unexploded cluster bombs under a thin layer of soil packed with ball bearings. Henry should proud to also know that 40% of the landmine victims are children. “I don’t see how it is possible to conduct foreign policy when there’s a systematic attempt to destroy both your threats and you incentives”. With Henry at the helm, endless bombing wasn’t to win against North Vietnam, “the bombing was meant to win at home”. Kissinger and Nixon were both “…keying their actions not to external reality but rather to their need to manipulate domestic opinion.” Nixon is an equally empathetic human: “I’m going to destroy the goddamn country.” Kissinger said to resigning staffers that if Tom Hayden and Quakers and others won a revolution the right would take over and so he was protecting them from the right. The staffers replied: “You are the right.” A great book and Greg makes a convincing case that what Jill St. John’s favorite psychopath did nearly fifty years ago while in power, “created the conditions for today’s endless wars.”
March 1, 2019
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.
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.
January 21, 2025
Masterful analysis of Kissinger’s legacy in building and normalizing the unending American war machine. Grandin reviews the major episodes in Kissinger’s career from Harvard academic to National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to Nixon and Ford, and finally elder statesman and private consultant to the rich and powerful while emphasizing his guiding philosophies: that gut feeling is more important that objective fact, the ends justify the means, you must demonstrate willingness to break the enemy’s back, and other now well-established standards of American military exceptionalism.
Though he was initially challenged by Reagan and the neocons, Kissinger was ultimately embraced by successive generations of Republicans and Democrats, including the Clintons, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and other architects of the imperial presidency. “This book… focuses not on Kissinger's outsized personality but rather on the outsized role he had in creating the world we live in today, which accepts endless war as a matter of course.”
Though he was initially challenged by Reagan and the neocons, Kissinger was ultimately embraced by successive generations of Republicans and Democrats, including the Clintons, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and other architects of the imperial presidency. “This book… focuses not on Kissinger's outsized personality but rather on the outsized role he had in creating the world we live in today, which accepts endless war as a matter of course.”
December 9, 2018
If you read one book about American history in the mid to late 20th Century, consider this one for the short list. If you lived through it, then all the better. Those times and people all belong to history now, or as in Kissinger’s mind, history is only the product of the questions we ask it, and statesmen should not pay it too much attention or they will fail to act decisively enough and quickly enough.
This book delves into Kissinger’s mind and behavior as a result of his beliefs rather than just reciting his actions and statements, which makes it a good book and more informative than just a reciting of dates and things that happened.
Kissinger was a German metaphysician shaped by Oswald Spengler and the Holocaust. He believed that statesmen made history by their actions and did not have to seriously consider it to take those actions properly. He abhorred the statisticians, analysts, and strategists who collected as much data as possible and shaped their decisions with it. From this book it is probably more likely he abhorred them because they competed with him and would apply that data and analysis to him and the Presidents he served, most notably Richard Nixon.
His go-to answer for dealing with the Russians, and anybody else for that matter, was the “Mad Man” theory that the US should act brutally, quickly, and without guilt in attacking the USSR’s surrogates or any other country challenging America. For years he ran the Cambodian bombing personally from the Nixon Whitehouse basement. Whenever he served another President he always went back to that strategy of bomb and attack, civilians be dammed.
He was incredibly manipulative and exchanged one set of twisted truth and political position for another in order to keep himself on the inside of every administration from Nixon, to Ford, to Reagan and Bush I and the neoconservatives who hated him at the beginning of the Reagan years. He morphed and manipulated himself into them so they all eventually let him and Kissinger Associates into their inner sanctum, right through the George W. Bush Administration. Most recently he has had meeting with Donald Trump according to press reports.
In the telling of this author it appears that Kissinger was very much like the Nazis who had tried to kill him in the end. People were only a means to an end for him, especially people in other weaker and poorer nations.
The only issue I have with the book is that the first part through the Nixon years was very tight and objective. In the latter half the author’s opinion shows through more and some readers who are blinded by the left-right culture war climate of the Trump years will scream “liberal!” and stop reading. You have to read things from all sides and all kinds of writers, otherwise your own thoughts and beliefs become ossified and limited. That said, this book is worth a read by anyone interested in recent American history from any viewpoint. It is history and everything the author says is supported by historical facts and data, which of course, Kissinger would hate.
This book delves into Kissinger’s mind and behavior as a result of his beliefs rather than just reciting his actions and statements, which makes it a good book and more informative than just a reciting of dates and things that happened.
Kissinger was a German metaphysician shaped by Oswald Spengler and the Holocaust. He believed that statesmen made history by their actions and did not have to seriously consider it to take those actions properly. He abhorred the statisticians, analysts, and strategists who collected as much data as possible and shaped their decisions with it. From this book it is probably more likely he abhorred them because they competed with him and would apply that data and analysis to him and the Presidents he served, most notably Richard Nixon.
His go-to answer for dealing with the Russians, and anybody else for that matter, was the “Mad Man” theory that the US should act brutally, quickly, and without guilt in attacking the USSR’s surrogates or any other country challenging America. For years he ran the Cambodian bombing personally from the Nixon Whitehouse basement. Whenever he served another President he always went back to that strategy of bomb and attack, civilians be dammed.
He was incredibly manipulative and exchanged one set of twisted truth and political position for another in order to keep himself on the inside of every administration from Nixon, to Ford, to Reagan and Bush I and the neoconservatives who hated him at the beginning of the Reagan years. He morphed and manipulated himself into them so they all eventually let him and Kissinger Associates into their inner sanctum, right through the George W. Bush Administration. Most recently he has had meeting with Donald Trump according to press reports.
In the telling of this author it appears that Kissinger was very much like the Nazis who had tried to kill him in the end. People were only a means to an end for him, especially people in other weaker and poorer nations.
The only issue I have with the book is that the first part through the Nixon years was very tight and objective. In the latter half the author’s opinion shows through more and some readers who are blinded by the left-right culture war climate of the Trump years will scream “liberal!” and stop reading. You have to read things from all sides and all kinds of writers, otherwise your own thoughts and beliefs become ossified and limited. That said, this book is worth a read by anyone interested in recent American history from any viewpoint. It is history and everything the author says is supported by historical facts and data, which of course, Kissinger would hate.
August 26, 2020
I'm sure a lot of American friends will resonate with the feeling that whole sections of US history--especially foreign policy--were totally whitewashed, misrepresented, or just outright obfuscated in our education. This book was a whole exercise in that feeling. I remember when one professor suggested that maybe the Vietnam War was worth fighting because Pol Pot killed a million people in Cambodia, and that's just what communism does, so obviously our attempts to thwart communism were justified. I was a historical idiot (still am) and probably other students were taught the same dumb history curriculum I was, so I wish that professor had mentioned that Kissinger & Nixon illegally and secretly bombed the shit out of Cambodia for 4 or 5 years and killed thousands of people, and maybe having your infant child or mother or uncle killed by the US had something to do with the recruitment success of the Khmer Rouge. It just feels like we were taught a self-serving history by people who must have known better. More than any other subject, I think, it's necessary to be suspicious & discerning toward what you were taught about US foreign policy.
It's just the right length for the point Grandin's trying to make. "Kissingerism" is difficult to pin down ideologically partly by design. It starts with a pessimistic worldview that life is difficult, suffering is inevitable, and our civilization is constantly on the brink of decline. It's possible to prevent that decline, but only by reaffirming our national purpose. What is our purpose? To exercise power and prove that we are still capable of acting; to prove that we are not impotent; to prove that we have a purpose. What do we exercise power to accomplish? That's really not important -- the key is to affirm our purpose.
Unquestionably, hundred of thousands of people died in Cambodia, Vietnam, East Timor, Chile, and a dozen other places because Kissinger was playing realpolitik and demonstrating to the world that we were capable of acting decisively.
It's just the right length for the point Grandin's trying to make. "Kissingerism" is difficult to pin down ideologically partly by design. It starts with a pessimistic worldview that life is difficult, suffering is inevitable, and our civilization is constantly on the brink of decline. It's possible to prevent that decline, but only by reaffirming our national purpose. What is our purpose? To exercise power and prove that we are still capable of acting; to prove that we are not impotent; to prove that we have a purpose. What do we exercise power to accomplish? That's really not important -- the key is to affirm our purpose.
Unquestionably, hundred of thousands of people died in Cambodia, Vietnam, East Timor, Chile, and a dozen other places because Kissinger was playing realpolitik and demonstrating to the world that we were capable of acting decisively.
February 2, 2026
I think this book just made me really angry. While it is undeniable that Kissinger was a towering figure in the sheer scale of his influence on global politics over decades, it feels like the author somewhat admires him, his impact his intellect, and his political influence. Lots of focus on framing the bombing of Cambodia, Laos, the escalation in Vietnam and all of his many war crimes in contest of his philosophy, his ambition, and his thinking that came out of his Harvard thesis. The way it is framed in terms of philosophy, foreign policy and policy outcomes seems, in my opinion, to normalize the consequences. And at the end of the day, Kissinger is one of the worst war criminals in history responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the architect of many of the horrific wars of today. He was never prosecuted. Kissinger’s own world view treats this mass death as a by product of realism and recasts atrocity as inevitability. I understand that this book wants to portray a neutral view of Kissinger and reflect on the sheer scale of his impact but at the end of the day it reinforces somewhat of a mythology of him which I feel to be obscene.
March 27, 2016
It would have surprised me to think that I would read a political biography of Henry Kissinger, let alone devour it in 3 subsequent evening sittings. This is an exceptional book. Grandin’s work is deeply-researched and his prose is fast-moving, giving us the impression that we are being presented with only the most essential facts and stories about this evil genius. The author’s commentary runs throughout, and provides further evidence in his judicious use of footnotes. That Grandin can present a satisfying history of “the long reach of America’s most controversial statesman” in 230 short pages is quite an accomplishment. As a result, Grandin succeeds in proving that Kissinger’s political footprint on the United States cannot be overstated.
I regret not having written this review shortly after reading the book last year. The book is important enough that I’m now going through the notes of its margins to rescue what for me are the key takeaways to remember.
Kissinger strikes a strange pose, this foreign-born intellectual occupying high offices of power and whispering instructions to those elected to even higher offices of power. Grandin begins the book with the Kissinger’s intellectual beginnings, his doctorate thesis. He convincingly shows that Kissinger’s thesis lays the crackpot philosophical foundation that informed his work throughout his lifetime.
It goes something like this. Reality does not objectively exist. Men [and yes, he only would have said men] are free to make reality with their choices. History does not consist of cause and effect. Historical events are to be used as analogies. Men have the freedom to intuit the correct course of action without being hindered by lessons, facts or data. Grandin explains that Kissinger
“affirmed the existence of a realm of consciousness that superseded the material world a realm that Spengler called ‘destiny’ but Kissinger preferred to describe as ‘freedom.’ ‘Reality that is subject to the laws of causality,’ Kissinger wrote, represents only the outer, surface appearance of things. But ‘freedom is an inward state’ and ‘our experience of freedom testifies to a fact of existence which no thought-process can deny’” (20).
Grandin explains in other words the enduring power of Kissinger’s philosophy: “the ‘realism’ he is famous for is profoundly elastic, anticipating the extreme subjectivism of the neoconservatives. Kissinger taught that there was no such thing as stasis in international affairs: great states are always either gaining or losing influence, which means that the balance of power has to be constantly tested through gesture and deed” (190).
Men must make choices and act: “‘inaction has to be avoided so as to show that action is possible’…Only ‘action could overcome the paralyzing fear of the ‘drastic consequences’ (that is, nuclear escalation) that might result from such ‘action.’ Only through ‘action’—including small wars in marginal areas like Vietnam—could America become vital again…” (29).
There is more circular reasoning: “Put in Spenglerian terms, ‘power’ is history’s starting and ending point, history’s ‘manifestation’ and its ‘exclusive objective’…we can’t defend our interests until we know what our interests are and we can’t know what our interests are until we defend them” (29).
Such ethical relativism serves a foreign policy that senselessly bullies other nations in order to demonstrate dominance and a destroy domestic political foes. This is how we can begin to understand how it is that a nation like Laos “‘became the most heavily bombed country in history’” (29).
This is an impressive stew of high theory to justify what boils down to America’s thuggish foreign policy. In fact, Grandin argues that Kissinger’s intellectualism brought him a broader sort of respect: “even if Kissinger couldn’t convince liberal and left-wing intellectuals about the soundness of Nixon’s policy, they were still reassured that someone at ease with concepts such as ‘bourgeois society,’ ‘objective conditions,’ and ‘structural crisis’ was in the White House” (85).
We’re talking about the kind of thuggery that lead to the stunt of a “rescue” of an American container ship from the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Despite the fact that the seamen aboard were safely returned, Kissinger advised President Ford to “‘do something that will impress the Koreans and the Chinese’” (141), which resulted in 41 American soldier deaths and an unknown number of Cambodian deaths from bombing “a railroad yard, port, oil refinery, and over three hundred buildings,” plus nine Cambodian ships (142).
The thuggery extends to how the American people are to be handled when they are faced with these amoral atrocities: as someone described the Reagan’s administration’s airstrike on Libya, “‘as a superpower with global responsibilities, if our forces are attacked in another country, you can construe it as an attack on our territory.” And, as Grandin points out, in a “global war on terror,” “There is, today, no part of the earth that cannot be considered ‘our territory’” (195).
I regret not having written this review shortly after reading the book last year. The book is important enough that I’m now going through the notes of its margins to rescue what for me are the key takeaways to remember.
Kissinger strikes a strange pose, this foreign-born intellectual occupying high offices of power and whispering instructions to those elected to even higher offices of power. Grandin begins the book with the Kissinger’s intellectual beginnings, his doctorate thesis. He convincingly shows that Kissinger’s thesis lays the crackpot philosophical foundation that informed his work throughout his lifetime.
It goes something like this. Reality does not objectively exist. Men [and yes, he only would have said men] are free to make reality with their choices. History does not consist of cause and effect. Historical events are to be used as analogies. Men have the freedom to intuit the correct course of action without being hindered by lessons, facts or data. Grandin explains that Kissinger
“affirmed the existence of a realm of consciousness that superseded the material world a realm that Spengler called ‘destiny’ but Kissinger preferred to describe as ‘freedom.’ ‘Reality that is subject to the laws of causality,’ Kissinger wrote, represents only the outer, surface appearance of things. But ‘freedom is an inward state’ and ‘our experience of freedom testifies to a fact of existence which no thought-process can deny’” (20).
Grandin explains in other words the enduring power of Kissinger’s philosophy: “the ‘realism’ he is famous for is profoundly elastic, anticipating the extreme subjectivism of the neoconservatives. Kissinger taught that there was no such thing as stasis in international affairs: great states are always either gaining or losing influence, which means that the balance of power has to be constantly tested through gesture and deed” (190).
Men must make choices and act: “‘inaction has to be avoided so as to show that action is possible’…Only ‘action could overcome the paralyzing fear of the ‘drastic consequences’ (that is, nuclear escalation) that might result from such ‘action.’ Only through ‘action’—including small wars in marginal areas like Vietnam—could America become vital again…” (29).
There is more circular reasoning: “Put in Spenglerian terms, ‘power’ is history’s starting and ending point, history’s ‘manifestation’ and its ‘exclusive objective’…we can’t defend our interests until we know what our interests are and we can’t know what our interests are until we defend them” (29).
Such ethical relativism serves a foreign policy that senselessly bullies other nations in order to demonstrate dominance and a destroy domestic political foes. This is how we can begin to understand how it is that a nation like Laos “‘became the most heavily bombed country in history’” (29).
This is an impressive stew of high theory to justify what boils down to America’s thuggish foreign policy. In fact, Grandin argues that Kissinger’s intellectualism brought him a broader sort of respect: “even if Kissinger couldn’t convince liberal and left-wing intellectuals about the soundness of Nixon’s policy, they were still reassured that someone at ease with concepts such as ‘bourgeois society,’ ‘objective conditions,’ and ‘structural crisis’ was in the White House” (85).
We’re talking about the kind of thuggery that lead to the stunt of a “rescue” of an American container ship from the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Despite the fact that the seamen aboard were safely returned, Kissinger advised President Ford to “‘do something that will impress the Koreans and the Chinese’” (141), which resulted in 41 American soldier deaths and an unknown number of Cambodian deaths from bombing “a railroad yard, port, oil refinery, and over three hundred buildings,” plus nine Cambodian ships (142).
The thuggery extends to how the American people are to be handled when they are faced with these amoral atrocities: as someone described the Reagan’s administration’s airstrike on Libya, “‘as a superpower with global responsibilities, if our forces are attacked in another country, you can construe it as an attack on our territory.” And, as Grandin points out, in a “global war on terror,” “There is, today, no part of the earth that cannot be considered ‘our territory’” (195).
Read
December 23, 2023A short, thoughtful, and close analysis of Kissinger, his rise to power and celebrity and his enduring influence on US politics (not just foreign policy).
March 22, 2024
Niektóre cytaty i przemyślenia Kissingera pobudzają do zastanowienia się czy nie powinniśmy zestawiać go z totalitarnymi przywódcami i zbrodniarzami. Jego czyny pozbawiają wątpliwości
December 18, 2025
man this guy is evil, someone should do something about him
Read
July 30, 2023Cambodia bombings. Pentagon Papers. Current foreign policies. Eye-opening. It’s a big shadow.
October 11, 2017
Truth is, this author is so liberal that even though I generally agree with him about Kissinger, I have to step back and rethink my opinions because Grandin’s are so far left. No, I wouldn’t recommend it.
June 22, 2024
At least he's finally dead. Unfortunately we all still live in the world he created. The current state of Cambodia, the support of Pinochet, East Timor, Western Sahara, Angola, the Kurds, it just never ends. Also shocked (but not that shocked) that there are more files from Abu Ghraib with more harrowing information hidden from the public. As always fuck Henry Kissinger.
July 11, 2016
A short easily readable political biography of the remarkable Henry Kissinger by respected New York University history professor Greg Grandin. The book covers Kissinger’s theoretical writings as a brilliant college student, his success as statesman, and his evolution into a respected elder statesman.
As only an amateur political scientist, it is hard for me, personally, to assess the book’s accuracy. At least, it is not obviously falsified and there are extensive citations. Some 10% of the book’s pages contain endnotes, and there are many long discursive footnotes as well. But multiple stories can be told from any set of facts and I can only wonder what other stories might be told from these. Still, it is hard for me to see how the record of military interventions and deaths that grew from Kissinger’s policies could lead to a story which gives a positive account of Kissinger. It is also difficult for me to see how one can honestly deny the long-term failure of these policies. Kissinger himself would probably say that these realities which US policy created can themselves be changed, but that does not in fact appear to be the case; the US ability to control the long-term results of its policies becomes less and less as allies and enemies become exhausted and resentful of abuse, and as new media technology makes quickly visible the results of policy. It was possible, back in the days of Nixon, for a compliant media to bury the endless deaths that US foreign policy produced and this is no longer so. Kissinger, as a student in the 1950s, hated the idea that policy could be grounded in measured sociological reality, what today we would call “big data,” but big data, aided by the internet, seems to have won the day.
Kissinger is the original “policy creates reality” man, a German Jewish refugee who came to the USA with his family at 15, yet it is striking to me how horrible the realities he created were. Was there never, in his philosophy, the idea that he might create peace and justice rather than simply making his adopted nation strong and terrible? Perhaps there was. Faced with a sufficiently powerful enemy, he did negotiate, creating pacts with the USSR and China. While these probably would have eventually been negotiated had Kissinger not been involved, it remains true that he did negotiate these deals, earning him the hostility of the far right, and his own marginalization. By the time the Reagan administration came to power, he was shut out.
Grandin argues, I think correctly, that the monster Kissinger created, which Grandin names “Kissingerism,” has outlived Kissinger’s direct participation. Kissinger was consulted by both Bush administrations. His ideas of power and intervention, and their uses in persuading a democratic polity to war, live on.
As only an amateur political scientist, it is hard for me, personally, to assess the book’s accuracy. At least, it is not obviously falsified and there are extensive citations. Some 10% of the book’s pages contain endnotes, and there are many long discursive footnotes as well. But multiple stories can be told from any set of facts and I can only wonder what other stories might be told from these. Still, it is hard for me to see how the record of military interventions and deaths that grew from Kissinger’s policies could lead to a story which gives a positive account of Kissinger. It is also difficult for me to see how one can honestly deny the long-term failure of these policies. Kissinger himself would probably say that these realities which US policy created can themselves be changed, but that does not in fact appear to be the case; the US ability to control the long-term results of its policies becomes less and less as allies and enemies become exhausted and resentful of abuse, and as new media technology makes quickly visible the results of policy. It was possible, back in the days of Nixon, for a compliant media to bury the endless deaths that US foreign policy produced and this is no longer so. Kissinger, as a student in the 1950s, hated the idea that policy could be grounded in measured sociological reality, what today we would call “big data,” but big data, aided by the internet, seems to have won the day.
Kissinger is the original “policy creates reality” man, a German Jewish refugee who came to the USA with his family at 15, yet it is striking to me how horrible the realities he created were. Was there never, in his philosophy, the idea that he might create peace and justice rather than simply making his adopted nation strong and terrible? Perhaps there was. Faced with a sufficiently powerful enemy, he did negotiate, creating pacts with the USSR and China. While these probably would have eventually been negotiated had Kissinger not been involved, it remains true that he did negotiate these deals, earning him the hostility of the far right, and his own marginalization. By the time the Reagan administration came to power, he was shut out.
Grandin argues, I think correctly, that the monster Kissinger created, which Grandin names “Kissingerism,” has outlived Kissinger’s direct participation. Kissinger was consulted by both Bush administrations. His ideas of power and intervention, and their uses in persuading a democratic polity to war, live on.
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