The Eccentric Realist: Henry Kissinger and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy

During the 2008 election season, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates both aspired to be understood as foreign policy realists in the mold of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who is distrusted on the neoconservative right for his skepticism about American exceptionalism and on the liberal left for his amoral, realpolitik approach, once again stood as the sage of foreign relations and the wise man who rises above partisan politics. In The Eccentric Realist, Mario Del Pero questions this depiction of Kissinger. Lauded as the foreign policy realist par excellence, Kissinger, as Del Pero shows, has been far more ideological and inconsistent in his policy formulations than is commonly realized.Del Pero considers the rise and fall of Kissinger's foreign policy doctrine over the course of the 1970s--beginning with his role as National Security Advisor to Nixon and ending with the collapse of détente with the Soviet Union after Kissinger left the scene as Ford's outgoing Secretary of State. Del Pero shows that realism then (not unlike realism now) was as much a response to domestic politics as it was a cold, hard assessment of the facts of international relations. In the early 1970s, Americans were weary of ideological forays abroad; Kissinger provided them with a doctrine that translated that political weariness into foreign policy. Del Pero argues that Kissinger was keenly aware that realism could win elections and generate consensus. Moreover, over the course of the 1970s it became clear that realism, as practiced by Kissinger, was as rigid as the neoconservativism that came to replace it.In the end, the failure of the détente forged by the realists was not the defeat of cool reason at the hands of ideologically motivated and politically savvy neoconservatives. Rather, the force of American exceptionalism, the touchstone of the neocons, overcame Kissinger's political skills and ideological commitments. The fate of realism in the 1970s raises interesting questions regarding its prospects in the early years of the twenty-first century.

Author: Mario Del Pero
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 11/15/2009
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 9.18h x 6.40w x 0.73d
ISBN: 9780801447594

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/15/2009 pg. 94
Chronicle of Higher Education 12/04/2009 pg. 16
Choice 07/01/2010
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2010 pg. 72

About the Author

Mario Del Pero is Associate Professor of History at the University of Bologna.