The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World

by Barry Gewen

Overview

One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020


A new portrait of Henry Kissinger focusing on the fundamental ideas underlying his policies: Realism, balance of power, and national interest.

Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries’ attempts at democracy. For this reason, many today on both the right and left dismiss him as a latter-day Machiavelli, ignoring the breadth and complexity of his thought.

With The Inevitability of Tragedy, Barry Gewen corrects this shallow view, presenting the fascinating story of Kissinger’s development as both a strategist and an intellectual and examining his unique role in government through his ideas. This book analyzes his contentious policies in Vietnam and Chile, guided by a fresh understanding of his definition of Realism, the belief that world politics is based on an inevitable, tragic competition for power.

Crucially, Gewen places Kissinger’s pessimistic thought in a European context. He considers how Kissinger was deeply impacted by his experience as a refugee from Nazi Germany, and explores the links between his notions of power and those of his mentor, Hans Morgenthau—the father of Realism—as well as those of two other German-Jewish émigrés who shared his concerns about the weaknesses of democracy: Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt.

The Inevitability of Tragedy offers a thoughtful perspective on the origins of Kissinger’s sober worldview and argues that a reconsideration of his career is essential at a time when American foreign policy lacks direction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324004059
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/28/2020
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	94,832
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Barry Gewen, an editor at the New York Times Book Review for thirty years, has written on politics, international affairs, and culture for several publications, including the Times, the New Republic, Dissent, and the National Interest. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prologue in the First Person xi

Chapter 1 Chile 1

Chapter 2 Hitler 51

Chapter 3 Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt 97

Chapter 4 Hans Morgenthau 166

Chapter 5 Vietnam 229

Chapter 6 Kissinger in Power 291

Chapter 7 Kissinger Out of Power 343

Acknowledgments 395

Notes 397

Selected Bibliography 429

Credits 433

Index 435

Editorial Reviews

…a timely and acute defense of the great realist's actions, values and beliefs…Gewen's book is a thoughtful rumination on human behavior, philosophy and international relations, not a womb-to-tomb biography…

The New York Times Book Review - John A. Farrell

04/13/2020

America’s most celebrated and vilified diplomat was a philosopher-statesman shadowed by his experience as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, according to this trenchant debut. New York Times Book Review editor Gewen assesses Kissinger, national security adviser and secretary of state to Presidents Nixon and Ford, as an intellectual whose foreign-policy “Realism” cold-bloodedly pursued national interests and an international balance of power while eschewing “idealistic” goals of anti-communist crusading, promoting human rights, or spreading democracy abroad. Gewen first offers a fascinating interpretation of Hitler as a popular democratic politician, then delves into the ideas of philosophers Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt and “Realist” political scientist (and Kissinger friend) Hans Morgenthau, all of them German-Jewish refugees fearful, like Kissinger, that democratic idealism can lose to totalitarianism. Gewen also explores Kissinger’s opposition to Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende (in an eye-opening chapter, Gewen paints Allende as a potential dictator and mostly absolves Kissinger and the U.S. of blame for orchestrating the coup that overthrew him) and his détente with Russia and China. Gewen’s defense of some of Kissinger’s policies, however, including prolonging the Vietnam War for the sake of American “credibility” and “prestige,” isn’t always convincing. Still, this is a rich, nuanced, thought-provoking reconsideration of Kissinger’s worldview and its impact on history. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Gewen seeks to escape [a] cartoon depiction of Kissinger, absurd in its Manichaean extremes. He does so successfully with sympathy for his subject, subtlety, good writing and not a little humour.... Gewen tells us that Kissinger is more than a figure out of history, and that we dismiss or ignore him at our peril."

Christopher Meyer - The Spectator

"Barry Gewen provides a profound intellectual and philosophical framework for assessing Henry Kissinger’s approach to diplomacy and also for understanding the role that Realism has played in America’s foreign policy. It is a fascinating and deeply researched book."

Walter Isaacson

"Meticulously researched, consistently stimulating and deeply insightful.... This beautifully written and engaging gem is an exciting, exhilarating must-read for anyone interested in international relations, American foreign policy or the ideas of Kissinger, whether you agree with him or not."

Roger Bishop - BookPage

"A sterling, highly readable intellectual biography.... Gewen convincingly argues that a full appreciation of Kissinger’s realist philosophy is now more important than ever."

Jessica T. Matthews - Foreign Affairs

"A brilliantly rendered intellectual biography of arch-Realist Henry Kissinger. It’s impossible to responsibly grapple with the last seventy years of U.S. foreign policymaking without reading this seminal book. Every chapter is brimming with shrewd analysis, deep learning, good writing, and philosophical depth. A landmark achievement."

Douglas Brinkley

"Surprising, disturbing, beautifully written—a book that upsets easy moralism and cheerful optimism in haunting prose."

David Frum

"The Inevitability of Tragedy is an intellectually stimulating and thoughtful examination of competing visions of the world and relations among states. It examines these subjects through the prism of the thinking of Henry Kissinger, one of America’s greatest thinkers and writers on those subjects—albeit one whose views, as Barry Gewen explains vividly, are founded on the grim vantage point associated with the Realist school of thinking. As one who strongly endorses the value of what Gewen describes as Dr. Kissinger’s ‘pessimistic sensibility,’ I found this book to be of enormous value at a time when the tectonic plates of global relations are shifting and call for informed, thoughtful, and realistic foreign policy thinkers and practitioners."

General David Petraeus (U.S. Army

Barry Gewen’s elegantly written study of one of the most complex figures of the twentieth century offers an insightful look into what makes Henry Kissinger a unique figure in the history of American foreign relations. The Inevitability of Tragedy also offers a subtly nuanced vision of the nature of international politics that policymakers in the U.S. and abroad would do well to study.

Walter Russell Mead

Diplomatic and intellectual history at its best.

Booklist (starred review)

04/01/2020

Gewen, longtime editor of the New York Times Book Review, presents a balanced, erudite biography of former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), asserting that he is the most important diplomat of the nuclear age. Kissinger, as the author lucidly shows, is an advocate of realism, the political school that promotes balance of power and national interest. More than a third of the book is devoted to realism's founders: Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Kissinger's mentor, Hans Morgenthau. All four shared a mistrust of democracy in international relations because of their Holocaust experiences; additionally, all barely escaped Nazi Germany, where Kissinger lost 13 relatives. Kissinger, a master of realpolitik, promoted praiseworthy policies that opened China and established détente with the USSR, but supported less-than-honorable strategies in Southeast Asia that sacrificed Vietnamese and American lives for a face-saving U.S. retreat. Gewen skillfully shows that Kissinger's realism diplomacy accepted evil as something that could not be destroyed, making tragedy inevitable. VERDICT This authoritative and exhaustive biography will challenge general readers, but will find an appreciative audience among political scholars and modern philosophy academics. A solid companion to Thomas Schwartz's Henry Kissinger and American Power (2020).—Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Library Journal

★ 2020-01-12
Masterly work on the making of Henry Kissinger—and what American foreign policy can learn from his dark experience and pessimistic outlook.

In this deeply thoughtful, meticulously researched work, longtime New York Times Book Review editor Gewen looks at both Kissinger's life experiences—e.g., his teen years as a Jew in Bavaria living under Nazi persecution—and his assimilation of the academic work of fellow German Jewish intellectuals Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Hans Morgenthau as he steered American statecraft in the 1970s. While Kissinger is considered by some as criminal, even evil, for his advocating for the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and other dispassionate realpolitik decisions as secretary of state under Richard Nixon, Gewen takes a more philosophical approach to his subject, delving into the reasons behind Kissinger's coolheaded "assessment of power" and refusal to be swayed by "high moral principles like self-determination or national sovereignty." Because he was hounded by the Nazis during his youth, Kissinger recognized the "realities of power" and, through his own father's "powerlessness," began to believe that "weakness…was synonymous with death" (as he wrote near the end of World War II). Kissinger was deeply influenced by the work of Strauss and Arendt, who "opposed tyranny but nursed a deep suspicion of democracy and majoritarian processes," and became a colleague to Morgenthau, who eschewed traditional moralistic certainties for an approach based more on "incrementalism and perfectionism," "stability rather than justice," and "the less bad rather than the unqualified good." In this well-measured, beautifully written book, Gewen thoroughly considers each facet of Kissinger's evolution and how his choice of "less bad" became his modus operandi—e.g., the "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam at the end of 1972, forcing Hanoi to the negotiating table—ultimately tarnishing his elusive, urbane legacy.

Gewen has used the distance from events to refine his research into an elegant, elucidating study of comparative statecraft.

Kirkus Reviews

"Timely… provides new insight into what might have gone wrong and landed the US in a late imperial funk."

Iain Martin - Times (UK)

"Explains why Kissinger’s thinking—his view of history, power, and democracy—should command our attention.… [Barry] Gewen deftly sets him in the wider context of the rise of totalitarianism in the past century, seeking to understand Kissinger as he understood himself."

Jacob Heilbrunn - National Interest

"Incisive.… Demands to be studied."

Michael Hirsh - Foreign Policy

"Highly readable.… Gewen’s prose is mellifluous."

Lloyd Green - Guardian

"A revelation.… Gewen’s book is more than a biography; it is a thorough exploration of Kissinger’s world-view and how he came to it."

Dennis Ross - Jewish Review of Books

"Ingeniously organized, flawlessly argued, this big book moves with the speed of a magazine essay. Its signal point is incontrovertible: that in a messy, shrinking world where little is black and white and America is no longer protected by oceans, Henry Kissinger’s tragic Realism becomes increasingly relevant and increasingly undeniable."

Robert D. Kaplan

"Barry Gewen’s extraordinary study seeks neither to condemn nor defend Henry Kissinger but to comprehend him. With a keen understanding of the nuances of Cold War politics and diplomacy, from every angle, Gewen cuts to the core of Kissinger’s Realism, haunted by the twentieth century’s lessons that democracy and good intentions can just as easily produce catastrophe as uplift. A tour de force of historical reconstruction, the book flatters no one, least of all its readers. It will make you think hard about world events that continue to shape our lives, and about one of the truly major figures of our times."

Sean Wilentz

"Timely and acute.… A thoughtful rumination on human behavior, philosophy and international relations."

John A. Farrell - New York Times Book Review

"Deeply insightful.… This more-than-four-decade split of authority suggests the need for fresh views and intellectually honest discourse on Kissinger’s diplomatic career, and Gewen has risen to the challenge."

Talmage Boston - Washington Independent Review of Books

"Gewen seeks to escape [a] cartoon depiction of Kissinger, absurd in its Manichaean extremes. He does so successfully with sympathy for his subject, subtlety, good writing and not a little humor.… Gewen tells us that Kissinger is more than a figure out of history, and that we dismiss or ignore him at our peril."

Christopher Meyer - Spectator

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