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Oxford University Press, USA

The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

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Henry Kissinger dominated American foreign relations like no other figure in recent history. He negotiated an end to American involvement in the Vietnam War, opened relations with Communist China, and orchestrated détente with the Soviet Union. Yet he is also the man behind the secret bombing of Cambodia and policies leading to the overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende. Which is more accurate, the picture of Kissinger the skilled diplomat or Kissinger the war criminal?
In The Flawed Architect, the first major reassessment of Kissinger in over a decade, historian Jussi Hanhimaki paints a subtle, carefully composed portrait of America's most famous and infamous statesman. Drawing on extensive research from newly declassified files, the author follows Kissinger from his beginnings in the Nixon administration up to the current controversy fed by Christopher Hitchens over whether Kissinger is a war criminal. Hanhimaki guides the reader through White House power struggles and debates behind the Cambodia and Laos invasions, the search for a strategy in Vietnam, the breakthrough with China, and the unfolding of Soviet-American detente. Here, too, are many other international crises of the period--the Indo-Pakistani War, the Yom Kippur War, the Angolan civil war--all set against the backdrop of Watergate. Along the way, Hanhimaki sheds light on Kissinger's personal flaws--he was obsessed with secrecy and bureaucratic infighting in an administration that self-destructed in its abuse of power--as well as his great strengths as a diplomat. We see Kissinger negotiating, threatening and joking with virtually all of the key foreign leaders of the 1970s, from Mao to Brezhnev and Anwar Sadat to Golda Meir.
This well researched account brings to life the complex nature of American foreign policymaking during the Kissinger years. It will be the standard work on Kissinger for years to come.


Author: Jussi M. Hanhimaki
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 09/09/2004
Pages: 554
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.14lbs
Size: 9.62h x 6.38w x 1.76d
ISBN: 9780195172218

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2004 pg. 617
Publishers Weekly 08/09/2004 pg. 241
Library Journal 08/01/2004 pg. 99
New York Times 09/26/2004 pg. 30
Choice 02/01/2005 pg. 1098

About the Author

Jussi Hanhimaki is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. An editor of the journal Cold War History, he is the author or co-author of five books, and won the 2002 Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of
American Foreign Relations.

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