Reading through these passages, one can sense how Kissinger admires all of them, and how he regards himself as one of their heirs. Kissinger’s other heroes are Austria’s shrewd Klemens von Metternich, who pulled the strings at the Congress of Vienna, Britain’s Lord Palmerston, the French diplomat Talleyrand and, of course, the scheming Otto von Bismarck, the latter of whom the author calls “a master manipulator of the balance of power”. Admittedly, he does so in an authoritative and engaging way, and his analysis is highly recommendable for International Relations students - say, for an introductory course on Realism (even though he barely cites primary sources or comments on previous analyses) - or newly minted diplomats.Īs in Diplomacy, Kissinger emphasizes the importance of 1648 when, with the end of the universal Church as the ultimate source of legitimacy, and the weakening of the Holy Roman Emperor, the ordering concept for Europe became the balance of power – which, by definition, involved ideological neutrality and adjustment to evolving circumstances.Īs would be expected, Kissinger enjoys focusing on realpolitikers like Cardinal Richelieu, who ruthlessly sided with the Protestants against Rome during the Thirty Years’ War, and who famously articulated the doctrine that “the state was an abstract and permanent entity existing in its own right”, holding interests peculiar to itself-raison d’état. European or Western Diplomacy would have been a more adequate title.įor those who have read Diplomacy, the first chapters of Kissinger’s latest book, called World Order, will be somewhat repetitive, as he merely reformulates - in a somewhat abbreviated fashion - his analysis of events from the Peace of Westphalia all the way to the present. Rightly so, for his analysis is intellectually rigorous and factual flaws are rare, even though the book’s title is misleading as Kissinger, in a classic Western-centric fashion, only writes about non-Western events when they were relevant to Western interests. Henry Kissinger’s book Diplomacy, published in 1994, has perhaps been the most widely read international affairs book over the past two decades, influencing both policy makers and scholars around the world. Book review: World Order, by Henry Kissinger.

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