“Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist” by Niall Ferguson

This first volume of this complicated man’s life is the gold standard for biography. At almost 900 pages it better be. Besides public records and newly declassified archives, particularly from (North) Vietnam, Ferguson had access to a lifetime of private letters, memos, and notes, as well as interviews with Kissinger himself. And the tome still ends before the Nixon Presidency gets started, going heavy into the minutia of Kissinger’s early life. At the same time, it uses his personal life to retell the history of the world at large- a history that as Kissinger aged would turn him from observer, to participant, to molder. The book begins with Kissinger’s childhood in Germany and his move to New York City- how his life was shaped by his status as an immigrant fleeing Nazi Germany. Serving in the European theater during WWII further molded a man, who, thanks to his orthodox Jewish background and pensive manner, already leaned conservative. Ferguson goes on to recount Kissinger’s time at Harvard, his frustrations writing his phD and attaining a professorship, and how he gradually won his way into foreign policy debates shaping the post-war American posture regarding Korea, nuclear war, and relations with the USSR. His stance of deploying tactical nuclear weapons to shape a limited war with the USSR on the terms of America’s choosing was a novel idea (and welcomed within more hawkish policy circles). Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book are the parallels it reveals between the world of the 196o’s and 2016. In 1964 domestically, Goldwater was an insurgent candidate, who often got into trouble for speaking off the cuff, supported by a disaffected affluent white minority scared of foreign bogeymen and disloyal Americans. Goldwater was despised by the Republican establishment, not least because he seemed so cavalier about nuclear bombs. Kissinger voted for Johnson. Internationally, America was mired in the war in Vietnam against a guerrilla foe who controlled the night and the countryside, while America’s allies hunkered down in enclaves in Saigon. The South Vietnamese leaders fluctuated between inept, corrupt, and secretly allied with the Vietcong (and these were not mutually exclusive). The war, most analysts agreed, could never be one militarily, yet no one was willing to make the necessary compromises with the enemy to make negotiations possible. By the end of 1968 domestically, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated, there were race riots in multiple American cities, and a growing rift between the young urban elite and the blue-collar heartland. Internationally, the Tet offensive surprised every intelligence service, America’s alliances were fraying as DeGaulle quit NATO and West German leaders leaned towards amelioration with the East and unification at any price, and the Communist Bloc was destabilized with the Prague Spring and Sino-Soviet split. History might not repeat itself, but it does rhyme in funny ways.