henry kissinger phd thesis pdf

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Henry A Kissinger The Meaning Of History Reflections On Spengler, Toynbee, And Kant

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Henry a. kissinger, ph.d., nobel prize for peace, i grew up in germany during the nazi period, and i came to this country when i was 15. and then i had to work in a factory because we had no resources. and i went to night school. so, it was not a rational ambition for me to become a world statesman..

Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in Fürth, Germany, a medium-sized town neighboring the larger city of Nuremberg in Northern Bavaria. His father Louis taught in the local gymnasium, or college preparatory school. The family valued education, although young Heinz, as he was then known, preferred soccer to studying. Like many of the Jewish families of Fürth, the Kissingers enjoyed a secure position in the community until the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Louis Kissinger was fired from his job and the family lost all the rights of German citizenship. Eager to leave, the Kissingers faced the same problem as the other Jews who fell under Nazi rule, the difficulty of finding a country to take them in. In 1938, the Kissinger family — mother, father and two sons — received permission to enter the United States by way of London. The rest of the extended family remained behind in Germany, where most of them perished. The Kissinger family settled in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, among other German Jewish refugees.

The 15-year-old Heinz became Henry and applied himself to his studies, but after his first year at George Washington High School, his family’s precarious finances compelled him to take a full-time job in a shaving brush factory. He continued to study for his diploma at night, and after completing high school he entered the City College of New York, where he studied accounting. He was thriving academically when he was drafted into the United States Army in 1943.

While in basic training, he became a United States citizen at age 20, and joined his unit, the 84th Infantry, in time for the Battle of the Bulge. A superior officer, fellow German refugee Fritz Kraemer, was impressed with young Kissinger and assigned him to the military intelligence section of the division. Private Kissinger volunteered for dangerous duty and was soon promoted to sergeant in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He was given responsibility for re-organizing civilian administration in liberated towns in Germany, and won a Bronze Star for hunting down Gestapo officers and saboteurs. Sergeant Kissinger was teaching at the European Command Intelligence School when he received his discharge. He continued teaching at the school as a civilian employee for some months after his separation from the Army.

The G.I. Bill enabled Kissinger to return to college. He won admission to Harvard, where he received his undergraduate degree in history, summa cum laude, in 1950.   He remained at Harvard to earn his graduate degrees. On completing his masters degree in 1952, he became Director of the Harvard International Seminar. With the completion of his doctorate in 1954, he joined the faculty of the Department of Government and the new Center for International Affairs.

Kissinger’s doctoral research on the diplomacy of post-Napoleonic Europe provided the foundation of his first book, A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace, 1812-1822 , published in 1957.  The same year saw the publication of his first book on current affairs, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy .

While teaching at Harvard, Kissinger served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rand Corporation, the State Department, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. As Director of the Special Studies Project for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, he came into contact with the Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller.   Kissinger became a foreign policy advisor to Governor Rockefeller, supporting the governor’s three campaigns for the presidency in 1960, 1964 and 1968. Although Rockefeller never won the Republican nomination he had sought, Kissinger attracted the attention of the man who defeated Rockefeller for the nomination in 1968, Richard Nixon.

After winning the national election in 1968, Nixon appointed Kissinger to serve as National Security Advisor. When Nixon and Kissinger arrived in Washington, the U.S. was deeply embroiled in the Vietnam War, and peace talks in Paris had stalled. During his campaign, Nixon had promised “peace with honor.” In office, President Nixon gradually reduced the American role in ground combat, while escalating the bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Nixon ordered incursions into neighboring Cambodia, provoking bitter protests at home, while Kissinger focused on trying to negotiate a ceasefire with North Vietnam.

Nixon had first made his name as one of the most vigorous anti-communists in the U.S. Congress, but Kissinger made his top priority the promotion of a policy of détente , or relaxation of tension, between the United States and the Soviet Union. He initiated strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) with the Soviets.

Kissinger’s efforts drew criticism from both ends of the political spectrum, from liberals who favored a more rapid withdrawal from Vietnam and from conservatives who distrusted his outreach to China and the Soviet Union. Although Kissinger himself disowned the term, his foreign policy approach was often described as one of realpolitik , the pursuit of a nation’s interest based on immediate practical considerations, rather than adherence to a set of fixed principles or ideology.

Kissinger sought to exploit the growing tensions between the two communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, by playing one against the other. Since the communist revolution of 1949, the United States had had no diplomatic relations with the government in Beijing. In the summer of 1971, Kissinger made a secret trip to China and initiated a process that would eventually lead to full diplomatic recognition and the integration of China into the global economy. In 1972, he arranged for President Nixon to meet in Beijing with Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. This was a virtual earthquake in world politics. Kissinger and Nixon’s decision to “play the China card” is widely credited with inducing greater cooperation from the Soviet Union in the arms limitation talks, resulting in the SALT I Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In October 1972, Kissinger and the North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, drafted an agreement, and with the American presidential election only a few weeks away, Kissinger announced that “peace is at hand.” President Nixon was elected to a second term in a 49-state landslide. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed by all parties the following January. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Le Duc Tho refused to accept his award; Kissinger announced that he would donate his prize money “to the children of American service members killed or missing in action in Indochina.

It had long been apparent that Kissinger had the greatest influence over the president in matters of foreign policy, eclipsing that of his Secretary of State, William P. Rogers. In the first year of Nixon’s second term, Rogers stepped down and Kissinger succeeded him as Secretary of State, while retaining the position of National Security Advisor.

Another controversial aspect of Kissinger’s tenure was the administration’s policy in the southern cone of South America. In Chile, the military overthrew the government of the elected president, Salvador Allende, a socialist sympathetic to communist Cuba. In Argentina, a military coup ousted President Isabel Perón, widow of the populist strongman Juan Perón. The CIA played a role in destabilizing the Allende regime, and the United States was quick to recognize the new regimes in both countries. In Kissinger’s view, the stability offered by reliably anti-communist regimes was preferable to the risk posed by unstable or openly hostile governments in the Western Hemisphere. Many years elapsed before the return of electoral democracy in Chile and Argentina, and the U.S. role in their history remains a sore spot in hemispheric relations.

The major international crisis of Nixon and Kissinger’s second term was the Yom Kippur War of 1973. With the Soviet Union supporting Egypt and Syria, and the United States supplying Israel, the conflict threatened to escalate into a confrontation between the superpowers. Kissinger helped persuade the combatants to accept a UN-proposed ceasefire. When a peace conference in Geneva failed to produce an agreement, Kissinger undertook “shuttle diplomacy,” flying back and forth between direct meetings with the Israelis, the Egyptians and the Syrians. His labors eventually produced a disengagement agreement, with the institution of UN buffer zones between Israel and its two hostile neighbors. The war had strained Egypt’s relations with its longtime patron, Russia. Kissinger seized the opportunity and cultivated a relationship with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. With Kissinger’s encouragement, Egypt gradually moved from the Soviet orbit to the American one.

Kissinger planned further foreign policy initiatives for President Nixon’s second term, but the president soon became hopelessly mired in the Watergate scandal. Nixon resigned in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, retained Kissinger as Secretary of State, and sought to maintain continuity with the Nixon administration.

The United States had ended its ground operations in Vietnam, but the North Vietnamese failed to honor the peace agreement and resumed their advance in South Vietnam. When the capital, Saigon, fell to the communist forces in 1975, Kissinger offered to return his Nobel Prize medal to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Gerald Ford sought a full term in the presidency but lost to Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976. In his last month in office, President Ford awarded Kissinger the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Kissinger’s term as Secretary of State ended with Carter’s inauguration in January 1977.

After leaving office, Kissinger wrote, lectured and consulted widely, teaching at Georgetown University’s Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service. He also revisited an earlier interest, serving as Chairman of the North American Soccer League. In 1980 he received the National Book Award for his memoir, The White House Years . He has since continued his life story in Years of Upheaval and Years of Renewal .

In 1982, he founded a consulting firm, Kissinger and Associates. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and some of his advisors initially sought to disassociate themselves from Kissinger’s policy of détente , and the arms limitation process, but eventually pursued a similar course themselves. President Reagan called on Henry Kissinger to chair a panel on Central American policy. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush invited Kissinger to chair a commission of inquiry.

In recent years, Henry Kissinger has joined with former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense William Perry in calling for the complete phasing out of nuclear weapons. His books on international affairs include Diplomacy (1994) and Does America Need a Foreign Policy? (2001).

At the time of his 2000 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Kissinger was at work on his book Vietnam: A Personal History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (2002) . His books since then include On China (2011) and World Order (2014).

In 2021, Kissinger co-wrote a book about artificial intelligence titled “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future”, warning that governments should be prepared for the potential risks associated with this technology. Following this, in 2022, he authored “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy,” examining the distinct strategies of six extraordinary leaders. He posited that leaders balance knowledge from the past with uncertain future intuitions, setting objectives and crafting strategies accordingly. He highlighted the strategies of Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher, weaving historical insight with personal knowledge. The book culminated in reflections on today’s world order and the critical role of leadership.

On May 27, 2023, Henry Kissinger celebrated his 100th birthday, having outlived many of his political contemporaries who helped guide the United States through significant historical events, including the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. His son, David Kissinger, wrote in The Washington Post that his father’s centenary could have been predicted by those who knew his force of character and passion for historical symbolism. Despite his age, Kissinger remained remarkably active well into his 90s, outliving many of his peers, notable critics, and students.

In honor of his centenary, Kissinger undertook a series of visits to New York, London, and his birthplace, Fürth, Germany. Throughout recent years, he maintained significant influence over Washington’s power brokers in his role as an elder statesman. He provided counsel to both Republican and Democratic presidents, including during the Trump administration, while keeping up an international consulting business. His speeches, often delivered in the German accent he retained since escaping the Nazi regime as a teenager, were marked by his unique insights and perspectives.

As recently as the previous month, Kissinger commented on major global issues, suggesting that the war in Ukraine was nearing a critical point with China’s entry into negotiations. He predicted these negotiations would reach their peak by the end of the year, consistently advocating for peace through negotiation to resolve the conflict.

Few figures in the history of diplomacy have had as large an impact on world history as Dr. Henry Kissinger. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Dr. Kissinger is generally credited with crafting the policy of détente with the Soviet Union and effecting the historic opening to China. He was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Le Due Tho of North Vietnam, for negotiating a ceasefire agreement in the Vietnam War.

Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in Fürth, Germany. Fleeing the rise of the Nazis, the Kissinger family came to the United States in 1938. He became a United States citizen in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. From 1954 until 1969, he was a member of the faculty of Harvard University.

President Richard Nixon selected Henry Kissinger as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in 1969. Dr. Kissinger retained this position throughout the Nixon administration, even after being appointed Secretary of State in 1973, a position he retained in the subsequent administration of President Gerald Ford. Under President Reagan he chaired the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, and served as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1984 to 1990. Today, Dr. Kissinger is Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.

(Dr. Henry Kissinger was interviewed twice by the American Academy of Achievement — on June 8, 2002 at the Summit in Dublin, Ireland and on September 22, 2016 at the New York Public Library in New York City. The transcript draws on both interviews.)

When you were growing up, did you ever imagine you would become a world statesman?

Henry Kissinger: I grew up in Germany during the Nazi period, and I came to this country when I was 15. And then I had to work in a factory because we had no resources. And I went to night school. So it was not a rational ambition for me to become a world statesman. Then I became over time a professor and I wrote about world history, but I was not an active participant. In 1968, President Nixon, newly elected, invited me to become his Security Advisor. And as the Security Advisor all the problems that have to do with national security flow through the Office of the Security Advisor to the President. So it is in that period that I became an active participant because President Nixon sent me as his principal negotiator to negotiate the end of the Vietnam War, the opening to China, and three Middle East peace agreements.

What did you say when you got that call from President Nixon?

Henry Kissinger: I had been really advisor to Governor Rockefeller, who was an opponent within the Republican Party of President Nixon. So when President Nixon offered me that position, I said, “I need to talk to Governor Rockefeller, with whom I’m associated.” And Rockefeller said to me, “Think about it this way, he is taking a much bigger chance on you than you are taking on him.” And so then I accepted the job.

When President Nixon asked you to serve as National Security Advisor in 1969, the U.S. was already deeply involved in the Vietnam War. Why were we involved there, and why did it take us so long to extricate ourselves? 

Henry Kissinger:  The first thing to remember is the Nixon administration actually did not get involved in Vietnam. We found the war and our task was to liquidate it.

In retrospect, we got involved in Vietnam because we thought that the tragedy in Vietnam was a part of a vast communist system and that the way to resist global penetration of communism was to fight it wherever it occurred. That was sort of the accepted view and it was done in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. I think in retrospect it was a mistake. It was an honorable mistake by people carrying out the traditions of previous American foreign policy. The question of how do you get out when you have 500,000 troops in place and you have a million allied troops and about the same number of hostile troops, how you can get out without producing a catastrophe, and secondly, how you can get out without undermining the face of the United States. That was the problem the administration which I served faced, which had inherited 550,000 troops in place. We thought the honor of the United States required a gradual extrication. There was no dispute about getting out. The dispute was how to get out, and under what conditions. It was easy to take heroic stances, carrying placards around. Those were not the people who had to implement the decisions.

There is still bitterness and confusion about the war. There are even people who believe that we left American prisoners behind .

Henry Kissinger: That is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous that we left American prisoners there. There is not a shred of evidence that American prisoners were left. There have been Congressional hearings that went into everything. When you think about it rationally, why would an American administration that is accused on the one side of having fought unnecessarily end it by leaving American prisoners there? That is not a rational accusation.

The question arose because of soldiers who were missing and never accounted for. Henry Kissinger: Being not accounted for has to do with the difficulty of the terrain. The Vietnamese had an obligation to account for the missing. They seemed to have a warehouse of bones. Every time they wanted to make an impression on America, they give us a few bones. That is a disgrace.

Looking back on that war with the hindsight of so many years, would you have advised differently? Henry Kissinger:  I have written a book that will come out which will discuss what we did. The administration which I served found 555,000 troops and we got them out. There can be a lot of heroes with retroactive consideration who can have brilliant ideas about what should have been done and what might have been done. We did the best we could under the extremely difficult circumstances. There is nothing I would significantly do differently.

We’d like to discuss the opening to China. Why was establishing diplomatic relations with China so important in your view?

Henry Kissinger: It is a fifth of the human population. It was not natural for the United States and China to have no contacts. It made it extremely difficult to conduct foreign policy when on every issue China was considered an enemy. Therefore, we thought we were serving the cause of peace by bringing China into a relationship with the United States and thereby with the rest of the world because China didn’t have contact with any other country either. So, we led the way into dialogue with China and thereby made it possible to have a wider international system.

You were born in Germany. How did the coming of Hitler affect your father and the rest of the family?

Henry Kissinger:  My father was a teacher in a middle school and he lost his job, which was something that never happened in his life. So, the condition of our family changed from being members of the community to being a discriminated minority. I was a kid, and children adjust to everything, so I can’t say that – I mean any of these people could be run up on the street. They almost became part of the existence. I didn’t realize how hard that was until I came to the United States. So I can’t say that I’ve suffered deeply, but I developed understanding. When I teach at public schools at New York, I understand what minorities feel.

How much of your family came to America with you?

We were very lucky that my parents and my brother — so the whole nuclear family came together. About 15 of our relatives, that is brothers and sisters of my parents and grandmother, didn’t make it. But the nuclear family, we were all together.

Henry Kissinger: Well of course for my family and me, coming to America saved our lives. But more important than that, we lived in a totalitarian state, and when we came to America, and we could see how people talked to each other and dealt with each other, that was a liberating experience. And I wrote an essay in high school about coming as a refugee, and could you find many things different, and you miss many things. But then you remember that you can walk across the street with your head erect and then that makes it all worthwhile.

How did you first discover your direction in life?

Henry Kissinger: The military service was tremendously important because I came to this country, as I said, as a refugee. And I lived in a section of New York where there were also a lot of other refugees. So it wasn’t in the Army — until the Army that I met, what you would call “average Americans” on a regular basis. In the factory in which I worked, there was mostly Italian refugees or Italian immigrants. It wasn’t so much refugees. In my military service I was with the 84th Infantry Division. And that division was composed of people from Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. And that was and is sort of the heartland of America. So it was tremendously important in teaching me about how the typical, average American thinks, and in the Army you are dependent on each other, and nobody really cares what you did before, and it was an absolutely formative aspect of my life — I can’t say I enjoyed digging foxholes and things like this, but in retrospect it was a very important part of my life.

An instructor you met in the Army commented that you had a very sharp mind, deeply attuned to history. I know you are a musical person. Where does that sense of history come from?

Henry Kissinger: I can’t really tell you because when this man said this, it was news to me.  He turned out to be a man who affected my life by calling my attention to some of these qualities. If I can describe it, having seen failure early in my life, how an apparently normal existence can disintegrate under the impact of dictatorship and the imposition of force, and therefore we reflect about how one can mitigate or avoid such conditions.

Who was this Army instructor?

Henry Kissinger: He wasn’t really an instructor .   He was a very odd personality, actually. He was a German, not Jewish, and left Germany out of conviction. He was much older than I and had been drafted into the Army. He had a stupendous education and he was doing odd jobs for division headquarters. I heard him speak once and dropped him a note, which I practically never do. And so, we got to know each other. For about 20 years afterwards, he became somebody that I took very seriously. Then, when I got into government, he thought that I was making too many agreements with the Soviets and our relations then ended on his side. But he was a huge influence in my life.

What was his name?

Henry Kissinger:  Fritz Kraemer.

You reached the highest levels of the American government with a very distinctive accent. How did people react to that?

Henry Kissinger:  I was sort of self-conscious about my accent, but in the Army nobody ever mentioned it. So I thought I had lost it. It wasn’t until I got out of the Army back to Harvard that people started asking about my accent. By the time I was in office, it had become sort of a trademark and not consciously, but so then people didn’t ask me about my accent. They sometimes made — It became a subject of benevolent jokes. But we didn’t get much hate mail about my accent.

Did your father and mother urge you to achieve? Were they ambitious for you?

Well, my father was a teacher in Germany. And he was of course very interested, as these parents generally were, that I would be a good student. But when we were in Germany I have to say I was more interested in football than in studying, and I got pretty good grades, but nothing outstanding. But then when I came here then I became a good student.

What changed?

Henry Kissinger: Well it was one way to distinguish myself. I knew I wasn’t going to be a great football star anymore.

What made you want to distinguish yourself?

Henry Kissinger:  I guess it is something born into you, but I’ve been lucky in the sense that all of my life, that I could control, I was enabled to do what I love doing, and what I’m most interested in, which is study of history, study of foreign policy, and the execution of foreign policy. And I had the good fortune that all my life, even today, I could still combine all of these.  I know people always expect you to say that you have some crazy regret, and as everybody I didn’t get everything at the time that I wanted, but the major direction of my life was the way that I wanted it to go. And so I think I was extremely fortunate.

I think it must be genes. My father was very studious, and my mother was extremely energetic. And so I did an outstanding job in picking my parents.

When you talk to college students and young people who want to use their lives to make a difference, what advice do you have for them?

Henry Kissinger:  There are a lot of ambitious younger people, and some of them have a specific job that they think they want to do. I always tell them, do what most interests you in any one year in which you can glow a bit. And let the job take care of itself. If you are good, a job will find you. If you strive all the time for immediate advancement, you’re bound to get disappointed somewhere along the road.

You really keep going. Is there still more you want to do? Are there things you still want to achieve?

Henry Kissinger:  I work all the time. Now, not for financial reasons, but because I do things I want to do. So I’m writing a book right now and of course I want to finish that. And there are various international issues in which I get involved. But I have no specific ambition. I’ll be 94 at my next birthday. So I don’t have to fill an indefinite number of years.

Thank you for speaking with us today.

• 34 photos

The Search for Purpose: Henry Kissinger's Early Philosophy and American Foreign Policy

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The Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Parts II and III

Collection contents.

The papers consist of correspondence, memoranda, writings, speeches, photographs and other material that document the career of the diplomat, author and foreign policy expert and scholar Henry A. Kissinger.  Dr. Kissinger served as United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from 1969 to 1975.

Part II (MS 1981) documents Dr. Kissinger’s pre-government, government, and post-government careers.  It is comprised of materials that are owned either by the Library of Congress or Yale University.  When the materials were in Dr. Kissinger’s possession, they formed an integrated collection.  To maintain that integrity, as well as increase access to these materials, the two institutions agreed to a joint project undertaken by Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library to arrange, describe, and digitize them.  

Part III (MS 2004) is comprised of materials mainly documenting Kissinger’s post-government career after 2000 although a few items pertain to earlier years.  The materials are owned by the Yale University Library.  

In 2015, Yale University Library digitized Parts II and III in their entirety.  The online access system linked to this webpage through the search button to the right includes description and digital reproductions of all of the materials in the two parts.

The arrangement, description, and digitization of Parts II and III was generously funded by Charles Johnson, Yale ‘54, and Nicholas Brady, Yale ‘52.

(Part I, housed in the Library of Congress, consists of materials primarily documenting Dr. Kissinger’s  government career and includes copies of records from his government service.)

Research Strengths of the Collection

Parts II and III together provide rich and extensive documentation on numerous aspects of Dr. Kissinger’s career.  Areas of particular strength for this collection include materials concerning Kissinger’s:

• Scholarship on international relations and his career at Harvard University, 1954-1968
• Work as a foreign policy advisor to Nelson A. Rockefeller in the 1950s and 1960s
• Early government consulting before the Nixon administration
• Personal correspondence from his years of government service, 1969-1977
• Writing career after government
• Personal and professional contacts with prominent individuals around the world

The papers in Parts II and III are an important supplement to the official records in documenting Kissinger’s diplomatic career, but they do not include most of these official records.  For those, contact the Library of Congress for Part I of the Kissinger papers or the National Archives and Records Administration.

More detailed description of the contents of Parts II and III is available accompanying the digital collection. 

Requesting Access

The materials in Parts II and III have been designated as one of three access levels – open, open with permission, or restricted.  In Part II, the following sections are open for research:  Writings in Series I; White House, State Department, and Public correspondence and Speeches and public statements in Series II; 1982 heart surgery correspondence and Speeches and writings in Series III; and Series IV-VII.  In Part III, Series IV and VI-VIII are open for research.

Access to materials designated as open with permission requires written permission from Henry Kissinger or his designated representative until five years after Dr. Kissinger’s death, at which time all open with permission materials will become open.

Requesting access requires researchers to create an account .  Each folder of materials that requires permission to access contains a “request access” link to a form that must be completed and submitted by researchers.  Researchers will be informed by email when their request has been approved or denied.

Part III, Series III is closed for twenty-five years after Kissinger's death, after which it is open to research.  Researchers may not request access to the documents in this series; the documents will be automatically opened for research when their restrictions expire.

Ownership & Copyright

Copyright is retained by Henry A. Kissinger for works he has authored and provided during his lifetime, to the Special Collections at the Yale University Library. After the lifetime of Dr. Kissinger, all intellectual property rights, including without limitation all copyrights, in and to the works authored by Dr. Kissinger pass to Yale University, with the exception of all intellectual property rights, including without limitation all copyrights, motion picture and/or audio rights in and to his books, interviews and any films that will be retained Dr. Kissinger’s heirs and assigns. Copyright status for collection materials other than those authored by Dr. Kissinger is unknown.

Except for the limited purposes allowed by the Yale University Library Guide to Using Special Collections, exploitation, including without limitation the reproduction, distribution, adaption, or display of Dr. Kissinger’s works protected by the U.S. Copyright Act (Title 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners . Works not in the public domain shall not be commercially exploited without permission of Dr. Kissinger, the copyright owner . Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy

The Kissinger papers at Yale serve as a foundation for the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy.  As a program of Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, in collaboration with International Security Studies and the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, the Johnson Center encourages research and teaching on United States foreign policy by drawing on the Kissinger papers as well as other important Yale library collections in this field.  The Center brings prominent statesmen to campus as Kissinger Senior Fellows; hosts Kissinger Visiting Scholars who are researching and writing about the history and practice of American diplomacy; and organizes an annual conference and a variety of other events relating to international affairs.

Related Resources

• Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
• Terms Governing Use
• American Diplomacy: A Yale Guide to Primary Sources and Archives

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Henry A. Kissinger papers, part III

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Scope and Contents

The papers consist of correspondence, memoranda, writings, photographs and other material that document the career of the diplomat, author and foreign policy expert and scholar Henry A. Kissinger, who served as United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from 1969 to 1975. These papers constitute Part III of a three part collection of Kissinger's personal papers. The Part III papers primarily document his career after he worked in government, as an influential author and commentator on international affairs and consultant. The Part III papers also contain material relevant to his years in office and career before government. There are three major collections (Parts I-III) of Kissinger’s personal papers at the Yale University Library and the Library of Congress. Part I, maintained at the Library of Congress, consists of materials primarily documenting his government career and includes copies of records from his government service. Part II is maintained at both the Library of Congress and Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Part III, which this finding aid describes, is maintained at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, and is comprised of materials mainly documenting Kissinger’s post-government career after 2000. The papers in Part III primarily document Kissinger’s professional life from 2001 to 2007 although Part III also contains a number of files related to Kissinger’s government service and early career. The three Parts of the Henry A. Kissinger papers complement and overlap each other in numerous ways which the finding aids for each Part describe in greater detail. The Provenance section of this finding aid provides more information about the division of the papers into the three Parts. The Part III papers to a great extent serve as a supplement to the materials found in Part II. The correspondence files continue into the years 2001 to 2007 the series of professional and personal correspondence found in Part II. Likewise, the photographs series extend coverage of his career and social activities into 2006. For documenting Kissinger’s government service, Part III materials are a significant supplement to Part I and Part II materials and to the official records of Kissinger’s government service found at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Of particular note among the subject files (Series II) are a set of Nixon tapes partial transcripts which recount Kissinger’s conversations captured by the White House taping system from 1971 to 1973. The subject files also include a small number of memoranda of conversation with journalists and business and church leaders from 1971 to 1974. Series IV consists of a substantial, but incomplete, collection of copies of Kissinger’s telephone conversation transcripts from 1969 to 1974 from the Nixon Presidential Library. These invaluable transcripts document virtually every aspect of his foreign policy work for the Nixon administration. A small amount of the correspondence in Series I and a substantial portion of the photographs in Series VII date from Kissinger’s time in office. In conjunction with Part II, the Part III papers document Kissinger’s career after he left office in 1977. The papers do not include files from his international consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, which he founded in 1982. The papers, however, do provide insight into his dealings with the international business community and foreign governments, primarily through correspondence and photographs. Additional material documents Kissinger’s work as an author and prominent commentator on international affairs, especially in Series II and V, which include research files from his books White House Years (1979), Diplomacy (1994), and Years of Renewal (1999) and an extensive collection of drafts of his syndicated articles. Part III also provides a limited amount of material on Kissinger’s family and social life, mainly through correspondence and photographs. Part III materials relevant to Kissinger’s youth and early career are very limited and consist primarily of a copy of the final version of his undergraduate thesis at Harvard University and a small number of photographs.

• 1930 - 2011
• Majority of material found within 1977 - 2007
• Kissinger, Henry, 1923-2023

Language of Materials

The materials are primarily in English.

Conditions Governing Access

Series IV, VI, VII, and VIII are open for research. Access to Series I, II, and V requires written permission of Henry A. Kissinger or his designee, during his lifetime and for five years from the date of Dr. Kissinger's death, after which access is unrestricted. Researchers must use the online access system for the digital version of this collection to submit their requests for permission from Kissinger. The portal to the digital collection provides researchers further instructions for requesting access and permissions, see http://web.library.yale.edu/digital-collections/kissinger-collection. Series III is closed for twenty-five years after Kissinger's death, after which it is open to research. Researchers may not request access to the documents in Series III; the documents will be automatically opened to researchers as restrictions expire. Original computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies. The entire collection has been digitized. As per repository policy, researchers must use the digital copies instead of the originals.

Existence and Location of Copies

The entire collection is available in digital form through Yale University Library.

Series Accession 2017-M-0019 "Declassified Library of Congress Kissinger Papers" contains ditigized material which is available and searchable (as of March 18, 2021) on the CIA Electronic Reading Room . Researchers should access the material via the CIA's site.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright is retained by Henry A. Kissinger for works he has authored and provided during his lifetime to the Yale University Library. After the lifetime of Dr. Kissinger, all intellectual property rights, including without limitation all copyrights, in and to the works authored by Dr. Kissinger pass to Yale University, with the exception of all intellectual property rights, including without limitation all copyrights, motion picture and/or audio rights in and to his books, interviews and any films that will be retained by Dr. Kissinger’s heirs and assigns. Copyright status for collection materials other than those authored by Dr. Kissinger is unknown. Except for the limited purposes allowed by the Yale University Library Guide to Using Special Collections, exploitation, including without limitation the reproduction, distribution, adaption, or display of Dr. Kissinger’s works protected by the U.S. Copyright Act (Title 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain shall not be commercially exploited without permission of Dr. Kissinger, the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Henry A. Kissinger, 2011 and 2015.

Arrangement

The papers are arranged in eight series: I. Correspondence, 1941-2009. II. Subject files, 1958-2007. III. Restricted files, 1947-2006. IV. Telephone conversation transcript copies, 1969-1974. V. Writing and research materials, 1950-2006. VI. Cartoons and graphic materials, circa 1969-1989. VII. Photographs, 1938-2009. VIII. Moving images and sound recordings, 1976-1997; and three additions.

Related Materials

Associated material: Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Part I are located at the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Related material: Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Part II (MS 1981).

151.1 Linear Feet (343 boxes)

1 Optical Discs (DVD) (7, 895 computer files)

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.2004

Additional Description

The papers consist of correspondence, memoranda, writings, photographs and other material that document the career of the diplomat, author and foreign policy expert and scholar Henry A. Kissinger, who served as United States Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 and as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from 1969 to 1975.

Biographical / Historical

Henry Alfred Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in 1938. After studying at Harvard University, he joined the faculty there as a member of the Department of Government and made a reputation for his scholarly work on international affairs, which included his best-selling book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy , published in 1957. He served as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from 1969 to 1975 and as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In office, he was known especially for his work on normalizing relations with China, detente with the Soviet Union, peace negotiations for the Vietnam War and his Middle East shuttle diplomacy. After leaving office, Kissinger remained an influential author and commentator on foreign affairs and founded the international consulting firm Kissinger Associates.

Custodial History

Part I: Materials in Part I of the Kissinger Papers document his life from 1957 to 1982 and include copies of records from his government service. Part I was given to the Library of Congress by Henry A. Kisinger in 1976 and 1977, shortly after leaving office. Consult the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/rr/mss/) for further information. Part II is comprised of materials that are owned either by the Library of Congress or Yale University (Yale) and document Dr. Kissinger’s pre-government, government and post-government careers. When they were in Dr. Kissinger’s possession, the papers formed an integrated collection. To maintain that integrity, as well as increase access to these materials, the two institutions agreed to a joint project undertaken by Yale to arrange, describe and digitize them. Each institution now holds both paper and digital copies of Part II. The work was funded by Charles Johnson, Yale class of 1954, and Nicholas Brady, Yale Class of 1952. Part III: Materials in Part III were originally maintained by Dr. Kissinger’s staff. They primarily document his post-government years. They were gifted to Yale in 2011.

Processing Information

Materials that contained classified national security information have been removed from the collection for declassification review. Classified item withdrawal forms mark the specific locations from where these documents have been removed and provide brief descriptions of the documents. When files are arranged chronologically, archivists have provided undated material that appears at the end of a section with rough date approximations in order to facilitate digital searching and discovery. These date approximations take the form of, for example: “Undated, circa 1967-circa 2009.”

• China -- Foreign relations -- United States
• Diplomats -- United States
• Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006
• National Security Council (U.S.)
• Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994
• Soviet Union -- Foreign relations -- United States
• United States -- Foreign relations -- 1969-1974
• United States -- Foreign relations -- 1974-1977
• United States -- Foreign relations -- China
• United States -- Foreign relations -- Soviet Union
• United States. Department of State

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Repository details.

Part of the Manuscripts and Archives Repository

Sterling Memorial Library Room 147 120 High Street New Haven, CT 06511

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Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Part III (MS 2004). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University.

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Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Part III (MS 2004). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/5240 Accessed April 09, 2024.

Henry Kissinger’s Three Europes

• Original Article
• Published: 18 February 2019
• Volume 17 , pages 5–21, ( 2019 )

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• Mario Del Pero 1  

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A Correction to this article was published on 05 March 2019

This article has been updated

This article discusses the three Europes that informed Kissinger’s narrative of world affairs and Transatlantic relations: Europe as history offering vital lessons the USA was called to study and master; Europe as a junior (and subaltern) ally of the USA; Europe as the primary Cold War theater and, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the object of superpowers’ détente. The article highlights how these three narratives were used in the attempt to build a new domestic consensus around a foreign policy still driven by basic Cold War imperatives, the limits and contradictions of this attempt, and its ultimate failure.

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Change history, 05 march 2019.

The article Henry Kissinger’s Three Europes, written by Mario Del Pero, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 18 February 2019 with open access.

Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy (New York, Norton, 1977, 3rd ed.), 302. The “without escape, without respite” slogan became a sort of evergreen in Kissinger’s rhetoric. See, for example, Address by Secretary of State Kissinger, Boston World Affairs Council, March 11, 1976 in Foreign Relations of the United States (hereinafter FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. XXXVIII: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1973–1976 , (Washington DC, United States Government Printing Office, 2012) ( https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p1/d71 , last accessed on August 30, 2018).

I’ve tried to put forward this argument in The Eccentric Realist. Henry Kissinger and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). From a different angle, a partially similar argument can be found in Jeremy Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).

For some examples, see Jussi M. Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought: from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press: 1986); Argyris G. Andrianopolous, Western Europe in Kissinger’s Global Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); John L. Gaddis, Rescuing Choice From Circumstances: the Statecraft of Henry Kissinger in Gordon A. Craig and Francis Loewenheim (eds.), The Diplomats, 1939–1979 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 564–592; Thomas A. Schwartz, “Henry Kissinger, Realism, Domestic Politics and the Struggle Against Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy.” Diplomacy and Statecraft , 1, 2011, 121–141.

As we shall see, Europe is here understood both as actor (the powers of the post-Vienna concert; the US allies during the Cold War) and as object (the stable nineteenth-century European system; the geopolitical core of the post-1945 confrontation with the Soviet Union). In Kissinger’s view, this broader Europe was often reduced to its three main centers and actors: Germany, France and Britain.

Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation. American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1994, 2nd ed.); Stephan Kieninger, Dynamic Détente: The United States and Europe, 1964–1975 (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2016).

Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). Kissinger’s senior thesis has been at the center of some very original reflections on him and his alleged realism. See, for example, Bruce Kuklick, Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 182–203 and Greg Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow. The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015). See also Barbara Keys, “The Kissinger Wars.” Process: a Blog for American History , November 1 2016 ( http://www.processhistory.org/the-kissinger-wars/ , last accessed September 2, 2018).

Kissinger as quoted in Suri, Kissinger and the American Century, 129.

On the cyclical oscillations in US Cold War strategies between universalistic and particularistic approaches see the classic and still unsurpassed John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, 2nd ed).

Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little Brown, 1979), 57.

Memorandum of Conversation between Henry Kissinger and members of the Business Council , Washington DC, December 1, 1971, in FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. 1: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969–1972 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003) ( https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d101 , last accessed August 28, 2018).

Henry A. Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 289–290.

Peter Dickson, Henry Kissinger and the Meaning of History (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press), 1987.

Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968. The Idealist (New York: Penguin, 2015).

“In short,” Osgood wrote, “there is a widespread feeling that the nation is ‘over-committed’ and that the familiar rationale of American involvement—containment, falling dominoes, the Munich analogy—no longer fits the facts as it seemed to fit them in a simpler period of East–West confrontation. At the moment this feeling reflects a mood of doubt and frustration, not a set of hardened convictions. It is “limitationist” rather than “isolationist”. … The commitments the limitationists are prepared to accept would have struck the so-called neo-isolationists of the late 1940's [sic] as the product of extravagant interventionism. On the other hand, now that the U.S. has become a global power, the impact of limitationism upon the position of the U.S. in the world could be no less significant than the impact of isolationism before World War II.” Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon , October 20 1969, FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. 1 ( https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d41 , last accessed August 28, 2018).

For McCormick the creation of the Atlantic Community constituted “the rise of the New Atlantis.” “It is”—she wrote—“as if the lost continent of Atlantis had suddenly emerged from the sea that covered it and become solid ground again … once evoked, Atlantica is not likely to sink into the sea again …it is a nucleus which could grow into anything.” Anne O’Hare McCormick, “Cause and Effect of the Rise of the New Atlantis.” New York Times , March 23 1949 and idem, “The Security Pact is not an End but a Beginning,” New York Times . April 4 1949.

Suri, ‘Henry Kissinger and the American Century’ and Idem, “Henry Kissinger, the American Dream, and the Jewish Immigrant Experience in the Cold War”. Diplomatic History , 1, November 2008, 719–747. See also Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, “Defending the West: Occidentalism and the Formation of NATO”. The Journal of Political Philosophy , 3, 2003, 223–252.

For some reflections on various Transatlantic crises see Mario Del Pero and Federico Romero (eds.), Le Crisis Transatlantiche. Continuità e Trasformazioni (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007); Geir Lundestad (ed.), Just Another Major Crisis ? The United States and Europe Since 2000 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Kissinger cited in Ferguson, Kissinger, 382–3; See Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957) and Idem, The Necessity for Choice .

Henry Kissinger, The Troubled Partnership: a Reappraisal of the Atlantic Alliance (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965).

Kissinger, Troubled Partnership , 6, 227, 235–6; Idem, “For an Atlantic Confederacy.” Reporter , 2, February 1961, 16–20.

I’ve tried to deal with this understanding of the Atlantic communitas , and the idea that the driver behind its foundation was not what its members shared, but what instead they lacked in Mario Del Pero, When the High Seas Finally Reached Italian Shores. Italy’s Inclusion in the Atlantic Communitas, in Marco Mariano (ed.), Defining the Atlantic Community. Culture, Intellectuals and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2010), 161–173.

Kissinger, Troubled Partnership, 244.

Kissinger, Troubled Partnership , 40–64; Idem, “The Illusionist: Why We Misread De Gaulle.” Harper , March 1965, 70–77.

For some examples see Kieninger, Dynamic Détente ; Matthias Schultz and Thomas A. Schwartz (eds.), The Strained Alliance. U.S.-European Relations from Nixon to Carter (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Mario Del Pero, Victor Gavìn, Fernando Guirao, Antonio Varsori, Democrazie. L’Europa meridionale e la fine delle dittature (Florence: Le Monnier, 2010); Silvia Pietrantonio, “The Year that Never Was: 1973 and the Crisis Between the United States and the European Community.” Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 2, 2010, 158–177.

Stanley Hoffmann, “Varieties of Containment.” Reviews in American History , 2, June 1983, 281.

Kissinger cited in William Burr (ed.), The Kissinger Transcripts: the Top Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow (New York: Free Press), 1998, 4.

The USA and the Soviet Union, Kissinger argued in 1972, “has come into possession of power singlehandedly capable of exterminating the human race. Paradoxically, this very fact, and the global interest of both sides, create a certain commonality of outlook, a sort of interdependence for survival between the two of us.” Briefing by the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, June 15 1972, FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. I ( https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d118 , last accessed September 1 2018).

Mary Kaldor, The Imaginary War: Understanding the East–West Conflict (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) and, more recently, “Nationalism and Globalisation.” Nations and Nationalism , 1/2, 2004, 161–177.

On the inner contradictions of détente see also the recent Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: a World History (New York: Basic Books), 365–421.

Guido Formigoni, Aldo Moro: lo statista e il suo dramma, (Bologna: Il Mulino), 2016.

Kieninger, Dynamic Détente; Del Pero, Eccentric Realist.

Silvio Pons, Berlinguer e la fine del comunismo (Turin: Einaudi, 2006); Antonio Muńoz Sànchez, El amigo alemàn: el SPD y el PSOE de la dictadura a la democracia (Barcelona: RBA Libros, 2012); Michele Di Donato, I comunisti italiani e la sinistra europea: il PCI e i rapporti con le socialdemocrazie (Rome: Carocci, 2016). “When you imagine what communist Governments will do inside NATO,” Kissinger instead maintained, “it doesn’t make any difference whether they’re controlled by Moscow or not. It will unravel NATO and the European community into a neutralist instrument. And that is the essence of it. Whether or not these parties are controlled from Moscow—that’s a subsidiary issue […] we keep saying that there’s no conclusive evidence that they are not under the control of Moscow, implying that if we could show they were not under the control of Moscow, we could find them acceptable […]. A Western Europe with the participation of communist parties is going to change the basis of NATO […] to bring the communist into power in Western Europe […] would totally reorient the map of postwar Europe.” Meeting Secretary of State’s Staff , January 12, 1975 and July 1 1976, National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA), Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State (RG59), Lot File 78D443, Box 6 and Box 10.

Del Pero, Eccentric Realist ; David Allen, “Realism and Malarkey: Henry Kissinger’s State Department, Détente and Domestic Consensus.” Journal of Cold War Studies , 3, Summer 2015, 184–219.

Report by President Nixon to Congress, Washington February 18, 1970, FRUS, 1969–1976, Vol. 1 ( https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d60 , last accessed August 28, 2018). On the many contradictions of the alleged turn represented by the Nixon doctrine see Jeffrey Kimball, “The Nixon Doctrine: a Saga in Misunderstanding.” Presidential Studies Quarterly , 1, March 2006, 59–74.

For an introduction to the crisis of détente and the Second Cold War see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 288–362. See also Leopoldo Nuti (ed.), The Crisis of Détente in Europe. From Helsinki to Gorbachev, 1975–1985 (London: Routledge, 2009); and Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Détente in Europe, 1962–1975 in Melvin P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Vol. 2: Crises and Détente (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 198–218. For a recent, thorough examination of the transformation of US power and foreign policy in the 1970s see Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: the Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also Barbara Zanchetta, The Transformation of American International Power in the 1970s (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston (eds.), Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977 (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism. Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1996); Trevor McCrisken, American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003); Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: the Biography of a Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).

Richard Pipes, “Why the Soviet Union Thinks it Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War.” Commentary, 1, July 1977, 21–34. On this discussion see Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft. History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 2012, 104–133; Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Détente: the Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998); Giordana Pulcini, Sicurezza, equilibrio e vulnerabilità. Il controllo degli armanenti strategici negli Stati Uniti alla fine della distensione (Milan: Mondadori, 2018).

See for example Walter Z. Laqueur, The Political Psychology of Appeasement: Finlandization and Other Unpopular Essays (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1980) and Norman Podhoretz, The Present Danger: Do We Have the Will to Reverse the Decline of American Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980).

Richard J. Whalen, “A Foreign Policy Without a Country.” National Review , 14, September 1973, 1005. See also James Burnham, “How’s Your Ostpolitik?” National Review , January 1971 and Walter Z. Laqueur, “Kissinger and the Politics of Détente.” Commentary , December 1973 ( https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/kissinger-the-politics-of-detente/ , last accessed on September 2, 2018).

Fred Logevall and Kenneth Osgood, “The Ghost of Munich: America’s Appeasement Complex.”’ World Affairs , 2, July/August 2010, 13–26 and the classic Ernest R. May, “Lessons” of the Past. The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).

Moynihan cited in Abbot Gleason, Totalitarianism: the Inner History of the Cold War (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 193. See also Michael Franczak, Free Markets, Human Rights and Global Power: American Foreign Policy in the North–South Dialogue, 1971–1992, PhD dissertation, Boston College, 2018.

Statement by Henry M. Jackson on Kissinger’s attack on Alexander Solzhenitsyn , 16–17 July 1975, Henry M. Jackson Papers (HMJP), University of Washington Library (UWL), Manuscript Collections, accession no. 3560-6: Speeches and Writings, folder 11.

Allen, David. 2015. Realism and Malarkey: Henry Kissinger’s State Department, Détente and Domestic Consensus. Journal of Cold War Studies 3: 184–219.

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Andrianopolous, Argyris G. 1988. Western Europe in Kissinger’s Global Strategy . New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Burr, William (ed.). 1998. The Kissinger Transcripts: the Top Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow , 4. New York: Free Press.

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Cahn, Anne Hessing. 1998. Killing Détente: the Right Attacks the CIA . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Del Pero, Mario. 2010. When the High Seas Finally Reached Italian Shores. Italy’s Inclusion in the Atlantic Communitas. In Defining the Atlantic Community. Culture, Intellectuals and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century , ed. Marco Mariano, 161–173. London: Routledge.

Del Pero, Mario, and Federico Romero (eds.). 2007. Le Crisis Transatlantiche. Continuità e Trasformazioni . Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

Del Pero, Mario, Victor Gavìn, Fernando Guirao, and Antonio Varsori. 2010. Democrazie. L’Europa meridionale e la fine delle dittature . Florence: Le Monnier.

Dickson, Peter. 1987. Henry Kissinger and the Meaning of History . Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ehrman, John. 1996. The Rise of Neoconservatism. Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs . New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ferguson, Niall. 2015. Kissinger, 1923–1968. The Idealist . New York: Penguin.

Formigoni, Guido. 2016. Aldo Moro: lo statista e il suo dramma . Bologna: Il Mulino.

Franczak, Michael. 2018. Free Markets, Human Rights and Global Power: American Foreign Policy in the North-South Dialogue, 1971–1992. PhD dissertation, Boston College.

Gaddis, John L. 1994. Rescuing Choice From Circumstances: the Statecraft of Henry Kissinger. In The Diplomats, 1939–1979 , ed. Gordon A. Craig and Francis Loewenheim, 564–592. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Gaddis, John Lewis. 2005. Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War . 2nd ed. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Garthoff, Raymond L. 1994. Détente and Confrontation. American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan . 2nd ed. Washington: The Brookings Institution.

Gavin, Francis J. 2012. Nuclear Statecraft. History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age , 104–133. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Gleason, Abbot. 1995. Totalitarianism: the Inner History of the Cold War , 193. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grandin, Greg. 2015. Kissinger’s Shadow. The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman . New York: Metropolitan Books.

Hanhimäki, Jussi M. 2004. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy . New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Del Pero, M. Henry Kissinger’s Three Europes. J Transatl Stud 17 , 5–21 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s42738-019-00004-2

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History and Henry Kissinger

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Robert L. Beisner, History and Henry Kissinger, Diplomatic History , Volume 14, Issue 4, October 1990, Pages 511–528, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1990.tb00105.x

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In the fall of 1969, after Chinese and Soviet armies had clashed along their Ussuri River border, Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin bluntly asked National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger whether he expected the Russians to launch an all-out attack against China. President Nixon's aide answered “that as a historian, he had to allow for the possibility.” 1 Seven years later, in a kind of valedictory of his years in Washington, Kissinger remarked: “As a historian one has to be conscious of the possibility of tragedy. However, as a statesman, one has the duty to act as if one's country is immortal. I have acted on the assumption that our problems are soluble.” 2

Kissinger's historical consciousness went well beyond that of the average politician's concern about how the historians' textbooks would rank him. More than any chief foreign affairs policymaker in U.S. history, he decided on his actions and measured his accomplishments with his eye on the fit between history's long stream and his own brief moment. “The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office,” he has written, “are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.” 3 His own words supply standards that can be used to judge his record. And by those high standards it must be found wanting.

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