Search results for ""Author Henry Kissinger""

In 1971 Henry Kissinger took the historic step of reopening relations between China and the West, and since then has been more intimately connected with the country at the highest level than any other western figure. This book distils his unique experience, examining China's history from the classical era to the present day, describing the essence of its millennia-old approach to diplomacy, strategy and negotiation, and reflecting on these attitudes for our own uncertain future.

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Henry Kissinger analyses how six extraordinary leaders he has known have shaped their countries and the world'Leaders,' writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, 'think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.'In Leadership, Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls 'the strategy of humility'. Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by 'the strategy of will'. During the Cold War, Richard Nixon gave geostrategic advantage to the United States by 'the strategy of equilibrium'. After twenty-five years of conflict, Anwar Sadat brought a vision of peace to the Middle East by a 'strategy of transcendence'. Against the odds, Lee Kwan Yew created a powerhouse city-state, Singapore, by 'the strategy of excellence'. Although when she came to power Britain was known as 'the sick man of Europe', Margaret Thatcher renewed her country's morale and international position by 'the strategy of conviction'.To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and - because he knew each of their subjects, and participated in many of the events he describes - personal knowledge. The book is enriched by insights and judgements such as only he could make, and concludes with his reflections on world order and the indispensability of leadership today.

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This third and final volume of memoirs completes a major work of contemporary history and a brilliantly told narrative full of startling insights, candour and a sweeping sense of history. It begins with the resignation of Nixon - including Kissinger's final assessment of Nixon's tortured personality and the self-inflicted tragedy that ended his presidency, making Kissinger, for a time, the most powerful man in American government. This book abounds in crisis - Vietnam, Watergate, the Cold War. Here are brilliant scenes, as only an insider could write them, of the high-level meetings that shaped American foreign policy, the famous 'shuttle' diplomacy by which Kissinger succeeded in bringing a reluctant and wary Rabin and anxious Sadat together to begin to return of the Sinai to Egypt and the SALT talks with the Soviet Union that began the process of nuclear limitation. Here also are intimate and profound portraits of world leaders from Mao, teasing Kissinger while displaying a poetic wisdom, to Brezhnev at the Vladivostock summit, confused, ill-prepared, unwell, desperately to conceal the Soviet Union's difficulties with a screen of blustering bravado.

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In World Order, Henry Kissinger - one of the leading practitioners of world diplomacy and author of On China - makes his monumental investigation into the 'tectonic plates' of global history and state relations.World Order is the summation of Henry Kissinger's thinking about history, strategy and statecraft. As if taking a perspective from far above the globe, it examines the great tectonic plates of history and the motivations of nations, explaining the attitudes that states and empires have taken to the rest of the world from the formation of Europe to our own times.Kissinger identifies four great 'world orders' in history - the European, Islamic, Chinese and American. Since the end of Charlemagne's empire, and especially since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europeans have striven for balance in international affairs, first in their own continent and then globally. Islamic states have looked to their destined expansion over regions populated by unbelievers, a position exemplified today by Iran under the ayatollahs. For over 2000 years the Chinese have seen 'all under Heaven' as being tributary to the Chinese Emperor. America views itself as a 'city on a hill', a beacon to the world, whose values have universal validity. How have these attitudes evolved and how have they shaped the histories of their nations, regions, and the rest of the world? What has happened when they have come into contact with each other? How have they balanced legitimacy and power at different times? What is the condition of each in our contemporary world, and how are they shaping relations between states now?To answer these questions Henry Kissinger draws upon a lifetime's historical study and unmatched experience as a world statesman. His account is shot through with observations about how historical change takes place, how some leaders shape their times and others fail to do so, and how far states can stray from the ideas which define them. World Order is a masterpiece of narrative, analysis and portraits of great historical actors that only Henry Kissinger could have written.

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