Henry Kissinger at the age of 99 remains alert, a keen observer of global affairs. For all the flaws attributed to his behavior in his years in power under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, he is by and large yet considered a foremost spokesperson on diplomacy. His books, written over the years, have been regarded, with good reason, as commentaries on the state of the world even as perspectives have changed all around since he left office.
Kissinger’s new work, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, is the newest expression of the ideas he has generally held in his approach to politics on a global scale. Kissinger’s understanding of history, the earliest instance of which came through in the late 1950s, has been a remarkable study of the men and events he believes have shaped the modern world, especially the one which emerged following the end of the Second World War.
Leadership is, in large measure, a whole lot more than his admiration of the six individuals covered in the work. The admiration rests on what he perceives to be the strategies these individuals applied in shaping, sometimes reshaping, their nations and their ties with the world beyond their frontiers. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany following the war, is for a class of historians a nearly forgotten figure in post-war history.
But that, according to Kissinger in so many words, is an erroneous attitude --- because it fell upon Adenauer, even as his country came to be occupied by the allied powers, to take Germans back to a state of self-esteem. It was a difficult task, given that Germany had splintered into two states. Besides, there was France, with which nation Adenauer needed to work out new arrangements for peaceful co-existence.
The task of restoring dignity and legitimacy to a crushed Germany, notes Kissinger, thus fell to Adenauer. And into the picture comes Charles de Gaulle in a display of statesmanship rare in modern history. De Gaulle, a relentless observer of historical trends, was clearly determined to remake history in his fashion. The mistakes committed after the First World War, leading to the rise of Nazi nationalism, clearly occupy De Gaulle’s mind as he moves to restructure diplomacy in Europe. He invites Adenauer to his country home in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises (no other foreign leader would ever be invited there) to fashion a new European order even as the Cold War set in and hardened.
Charles de Gaulle dominated world politics in a way few have been able to emulate. His insistence on Europe looking to its own affairs, without letting the United States coming into the scene, is a story Kissinger captures well in the work. Besides, De Gaulle’s reconfiguration of French politics through the creation of the Fifth Republic and the withdrawal from Algeria were strategies the Frenchman applied brilliantly, to a point where French politics and decolonization in Africa are today largely a tribute to his statesmanship.
The chapter on Richard Nixon predictably takes an admiring view of a politician whose contributions to such developments as the opening to China --- where Kissinger himself played no small a part --- remain a significant section of history. Snippets relating to Nixon’s trip to Beijing in February 1972 will interest observers of history. When Nixon called on Mao Zedong, we are told, the Chinese leader was present for only forty-five minutes owing to a grave medical condition the week earlier.
Kissinger’s observations on Vietnam, wide-ranging as they are, dwell on the details of the Nixon plan for a drawing down of American forces in South Vietnam soon after the President’s inauguration in January 1969. Kissinger’s protracted negotiations in Paris with Hanoi’s Le Duc Tho are examined in detail. He shrewdly rushes through the Vietnam episode, without focusing on the invasion of Cambodia by US forces in 1970 and the destruction wrought in the region.
It is on the Bangladesh crisis that Nixon’s leadership, with Kissinger as an important adjunct in an assertion of it, comes through as obfuscation. Kissinger refers to the crisis breaking out in March 1971 without giving readers the precise details of what led to that situation. He makes the error of noting that Yahya Khan abolished the electoral system when the reality was that the junta had repudiated the results of the December 1970 election.
The electoral system stayed in place, though badly damaged. An added blunder is Kissinger’s assertion that once the crisis broke out, Yahya declared martial law, conveniently ignoring the fact that martial law had already been in force since March 1969. Explaining the White House attitude to Bangladesh in 1971, Kissinger remarks in what could be regarded as a statement stretching credulity:
“Washington’s reticence to become publicly involved in the crisis had little to do with insensitivity …”
He then states, rather improbably:
“As soon as the crisis began in early March, the NSC staff concluded that the probable -- and desirable -- outcome was East Pakistan’s autonomy and eventual independence.”
The statement follows with a weak caveat:
“But we wanted to arrive at this goal without challenging Pakistan directly or wrecking our channel to China.”
The Nixon administration’s deliberate distortion of facts comes through his assertion that ‘India invaded East Pakistan’ on 4 December, pushing under the rug the fact that a War of Liberation had been going on under a Bengali government-in-exile and that India was directly drawn into the conflict in December when Pakistan’s air force carried out bombing missions in the western sector.
The chapter on Nixon suffers thus from grievous flaws. Nixon’s leadership, in comparison with that of the other leaders, except for Margaret Thatcher, Kissinger writes on, reduces and with good reason a strategic shaper of diplomacy into a politician wrecked by his shortcomings. Of course, they are shortcomings in the making of which Kissinger was to play a major role.
The section on Anwar Sadat is an examination of the adventurism combined with pragmatism which the Egyptian leader undertook in his mission of changing the status quo in the Middle East. Kissinger is clearly appreciative of the courage Sadat displayed in going for peace with Israel, despite the fact that his trip to Jerusalem and the subsequent Camp David agreement alienated him from the rest of the Arab world.
Sadat’s strategy, as Kissinger hints at, was to be instrumental in creating a safer Middle East despite the hawkish politics of strongmen such as Syria’s Hafez al Assad. And into the picture comes a recap of the shuttle diplomacy Kissinger undertook following the Yom Kippur War, a crisis that would leave economies around the world in chaos.
Lee Kwan Yew is a respected figure for the remarkable transformation he brought about in Singapore following its ejection from the Malaysian federation in 1965. Margaret Thatcher is a tough leader who turned Britain’s fortunes around, after an enervating demonstration of leadership by Labour’s James Callaghan.
The work ought to make the reader wonder if Kissinger could not have focused on such personalities as Zhou En-lai, with whom his interaction was intense, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Francois Mitterrand. These names would have enriched the volume under review.
That said, the work is somewhat a nostalgic journey back into an era of purposeful, if often flawed, statesmanship in our times. One does not have to agree with Kissinger, but one cannot avoid listening to him.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
