A World Restored

Author: Henry Kissinger
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1787204367
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 600

Book Description
Originally published in 1957—years before he was Secretary of State and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—, Henry Kissinger wrote A World Restored, to understand and explain one of history’s most important and dramatic periods; a time when Europe went from political chaos to a balanced peace that lasted for almost a hundred years. After the fall of Napoleon, European diplomats gathered in a festive Vienna with the task of restoring stability following the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The central figures at the Congress of Vienna were the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Viscount Castlereagh and the Foreign Minister of Austria Klemens Wenzel von Mettern Metternich. Castlereagh was primarily concerned with maintaining balanced powers, while Metternich based his diplomacy on the idea of legitimacy—that is, establishing and working with governments that citizens accept without force. The peace they brokered lasted until the outbreak of World War I. Through trenchant analysis of the history and forces that create stability, A World Restored gives insight into how to create long-lasting geopolitical peace-lessons that Kissinger saw as applicable to the period immediately following World War II, when he was writing this book. But the lessons don’t stop there. Like all good insights, the book’s wisdom transcends any single political period. Kissinger’s understanding of coalitions and balance of power can be applied to personal and professional situations, such as dealing with a tyrannical boss or co-worker or formulating business or organizational tactics. Regardless of his ideology, Henry Kissinger has had an important impact on modern politics and few would dispute his brilliance as a strategist. For anyone interested in Western history, the tactics of diplomacy, or political strategy, this volume will provide deep understanding of a pivotal time.

The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World

Author: Barry Gewen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004061
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Book Description
A new portrait of Henry Kissinger focusing on the fundamental ideas underlying his policies: Realism, balance of power, and national interest. Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries’ attempts at democracy. For this reason, many today on both the right and left dismiss him as a latter-day Machiavelli, ignoring the breadth and complexity of his thought. With The Inevitability of Tragedy, Barry Gewen corrects this shallow view, presenting the fascinating story of Kissinger’s development as both a strategist and an intellectual and examining his unique role in government through his ideas. It analyzes his contentious policies in Vietnam and Chile, guided by a fresh understanding of his definition of Realism, the belief that world politics is based on an inevitable, tragic competition for power. Crucially, Gewen places Kissinger’s pessimistic thought in a European context. He considers how Kissinger was deeply impacted by his experience as a refugee from Nazi Germany, and explores the links between his notions of power and those of his mentor, Hans Morgenthau—the father of Realism—as well as those of two other German-Jewish émigrés who shared his concerns about the weaknesses of democracy: Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. The Inevitability of Tragedy offers a thoughtful perspective on the origins of Kissinger’s sober worldview and argues that a reconsideration of his career is essential at a time when American foreign policy lacks direction.

Metternich

Author: Wolfram Siemann
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 067474392X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 929

Book Description
A compelling new biography that recasts the most important European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century, famous for his alleged archconservatism, as a friend of realpolitik and reform, pursuing international peace. Metternich has a reputation as the epitome of reactionary conservatism. Historians treat him as the archenemy of progress, a ruthless aristocrat who used his power as the dominant European statesman of the first half of the nineteenth century to stifle liberalism, suppress national independence, and oppose the dreams of social change that inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. Wolfram Siemann paints a fundamentally new image of the man who shaped Europe for over four decades. He reveals Metternich as more modern and his career much more forward-looking than we have ever recognized. Clemens von Metternich emerged from the horrors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Siemann shows, committed above all to the preservation of peace. That often required him, as the Austrian Empire’s foreign minister and chancellor, to back authority. He was, as Henry Kissinger has observed, the father of realpolitik. But short of compromising on his overarching goal Metternich aimed to accommodate liberalism and nationalism as much as possible. Siemann draws on previously unexamined archives to bring this multilayered and dazzling man to life. We meet him as a tradition-conscious imperial count, an early industrial entrepreneur, an admirer of Britain’s liberal constitution, a failing reformer in a fragile multiethnic state, and a man prone to sometimes scandalous relations with glamorous women. Hailed on its German publication as a masterpiece of historical writing, Metternich will endure as an essential guide to nineteenth-century Europe, indispensable for understanding the forces of revolution, reaction, and moderation that shaped the modern world.

The Congress of Vienna and its Legacy

Author: Mark Jarrett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857722344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book Description
Two centuries ago, Europe emerged from one of the greatest crises in its history. In September 1814, the rulers of Europe and their ministers descended upon Vienna to reconstruct Europe after two decades of revolution and war, with the major decisions made by the statesmen of the great powers. The territorial reconstruction of Europe, however, is only a part of this story. It was followed, in the years 1815 to 1822, by a bold experiment in international cooperation and counter-revolution, known as the 'Congress System'. The Congress of Vienna and subsequent Congresses constituted a major turning point - the first genuine attempt to forge an 'international order', to bring long-term peace to a troubled Europe, and to control the pace of political change through international supervision and intervention. In this book, Mark Jarrett argues that the decade of the European Congresses in fact marked the beginning of our modern era, with a profound impact upon the course of subsequent developments. Based upon extensive research, this book provides a fresh look at a pivotal but often neglected period.

Henry Kissinger and the American Approach to Foreign Policy

Author: Gregory D. Cleva
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838751473
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
This analysis of Henry Kissinger's historical philosophy, statecraft, and views on international politics reveals Kissinger to be a transitional figure who urged a conversion of American foreign policy from an insular to a continental approach.

Henry Kissinger

Author: Harvey Starr
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813186579
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
Henry Kissinger conducted American foreign policy with a distinctive assurance and panache that gave dramatic force to his tenure as secretary of state. His was the shaping hand in decisions that led to detente with the Soviet Union, to opening relations with the People's Republic of China, and to "shuttle" diplomacy in the Middle East and the disengagement of Egypt and Israel during the 1973 war. Taking a fresh look at the statecraft of Henry Kissinger, Harvey Starr brings to bear a variety of analytical methods on data drawn from different stages in Kissinger's career to define and explain the beliefs and perceptions that formed the ground of his policy decisions. Using psychohistory and content analysis, Starr defines Kissinger's perceptions of his adversaries—the Soviet Union and Red China—and draws revealing comparisons between Kissinger and John Foster Dulles. Henry Kissinger: Perceptions of International Politics is an illuminating view of an important era in American diplomacy.

Kissinger and Brzezinski

Author: Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349217417
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Book Description
Going beyond superficial comparisons of Kissinger and Brzezinski, this study, by comparing their views on world politics and on strategy and tactics for achieving national goals and examining the consistency of their beliefs and actions while in and out of office, finds that, despite Brzezinski's attacks on Kissinger, he shared many of his views and copied many of his actions while in office and that their policy-making behaviour was, indeed, strongly influenced by their shared beliefs.

New York Magazine

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

Orders of Exclusion

Author: Kyle M. Lascurettes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190068574
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
When and why do powerful countries seek to enact major changes to international order, the broad set of rules that guide behavior in world politics? This question is particularly important today given the Trump administration's clear disregard for the reigning liberal international order in the United States. Across the globe, there is also uncertainty over what China might seek to replace that order with as it continues to amass power and influence. Together, these developments mean that what motivates great powers to shape and change order will remain at the forefront of debates over the future of world politics. Prior studies have focused on how the origins of international orders have been consensus-driven and inclusive. By contrast, Kyle M. Lascurettes argues in Orders of Exclusion that the propelling motivation for great power order building has typically been exclusionary. Dominant powers pursue fundamental changes to order when they perceive a major new threat on the horizon. Moreover, they do so for the purpose of targeting this perceived threat, be it another powerful state or a foreboding ideological movement. The goal of foundational rule writing in international relations, then, is blocking that threatening entity from amassing further influence, a motive Lascurettes illustrates at work across more than three hundred years of history. Far from falling outside of the bounds of traditional statecraft, order building is the continuation of power politics by other means.

Byron

Author: Jonathan David Gross
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742511620
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Byron: The Erotic Liberal explores the relationship between Byron's erotic life and his political commitments, placing his poetry in the context of the work of other aristocratic liberals such as Madame de Stael.