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The Key to Henry Kissingers Success

The statesman understood something most diplomats dont: historyand
how to apply it.

Henry Kissinger with President Gerald Ford on the train to Vladivostok, Russia, in 1974
Wikimedia
GRAHAM ALLISON
9:00 AM ET | GLOBAL

In his new biography of Henry Kissinger, the historian Niall Ferguson

recalls that halfway through what became an eight-year research project,
he had an epiphany. Tracing the story of how a young man from Nazi
Germany became Americas greatest living statesman, he discovered not
only the essence of Kissingers statecraft, but the missing gene in modern
American diplomacy: an understanding of history.

For Ferguson, it was a humbling revelation. As he confesses in the

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introduction to Kissinger: In researching the life and times of Henry

Kissinger, I have come to realize that my approach was unsubtle. In
particular, I had missed the crucial importance in American foreign policy
of the history deficit: The fact that key decision-makers know almost
nothing not just of other countries pasts but also of their own. Worse, they
often do not see what is wrong with their ignorance.

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Fergusons observation reminded me of an occasion three years ago when,

after an absence of four decades, Kissinger returned to Harvard. Asked by
a student what someone hoping for a career like his should study,
Kissinger answered: history and philosophytwo subjects notable for
their absence in most American schools of public policy.

How did Kissinger prepare for his first major job in the U.S. government as
national security advisor to President Richard Nixon? In his words, When
I entered office, I brought with me a philosophy formed by two decades of
the study of history. Ferguson uncovered a fascinating fragment from
one of Kissingers contemporaries when they were both first-year graduate
students at Harvard. John Stoessinger recalled Kissinger arguing
forcefully for the abiding importance of history. In these conversations,
Stoessinger said, Kissinger would cite the assertion by the ancient Greek
historian Thucydides that The present, while never repeating the past
exactly, must inevitably resemble it. Hence, so must the future.

More than ever, Kissinger urged, one should study history in order to
see why nations and men succeeded and why they failed.

Ferguson has crafted his biography of Kissinger not only as the definitive
account of an incredible personal and intellectual odyssey, but also as an

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opportunity to initiate a debate about the importance of history in

statecraft. The book plants a flag for a project in Applied History, which
he and I have been gestating at Harvard for several years. By Applied
History we mean the explicit attempt to illuminate current policy
challenges by analyzing historical precedents and analogues. Following in
the footsteps of the 1986 classic Thinking in Time by Ernest May and
Richard Neustadt, our goal is to revitalize Applied History both as a
discipline in the university and as an art in the practice of statecraft.

Asked by a student what someone hoping for a

career like his should study, Kissinger answered:
history and philosophy.

How does Kissinger apply history? Subtly and cautiously, recognizing that
its proper application requires both imagination and judgment. As
Kissinger put it, History is not a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It
teaches by analogy, not by maxims. History can illuminate the
consequences of actions in comparable situations. Butand here is the
keyfor it to do so, each generation must discover for itself what
situations are in fact comparable.

Fergusons biography offers an array of examples of when Kissinger drew

comparable analogues from history to illuminate contemporary issues and
choices. For clues in coping with the frequently frustrating behavior of
French President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, Kissinger suggested
thinking about German leader Otto von Bismarck. For instance,
responding to de Gaulles moves toward European confederation and
away from American influence, Kissinger noted that the French
presidents diplomacy is in the style of Bismarck, who strove ruthlessly to
achieve what he considered Prussias rightful place, but who then tried to
preserve the new equilibrium through prudence, restraint, and
moderation. This insight led Kissinger to conclude that de Gaulle was a

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self-interested but reasonable leader whom the United States could deal
with, at a time when many were ready to write de Gaulle off as a
communist sympathizer for being the first Western leader to recognize
Maoist China in 1964.

In the 1950s, when mainstream conservatives were ambivalent about

Senator Joseph McCarthys broadside against alleged communist
sympathizers in the State Department and across American society,
Kissinger sought to remind them of the complacency of Germans during
Adolf Hitlers early years. As he wrote, It took some of the best elements
in Germany six years after Hitler came to power to realize that a criminal
was running their country which they had been so proud of considering a
moral state. The challenge was to convince the conservative element
that true conservatism at the moment requires opposition to McCarthy.
Using an early version of what Applied Historians might recognize as the
May Method, in 1951 Kissinger wrote to the CIAs leading theorist of
psychological warfare to set out the similarities and, just as importantly,
the differences between 1951, when the United States, the Soviet Union,
and Western Europe were struggling to stabilize global order amid the
Cold War, and 1815, when European nations constructed an enduring
balance of power at the Congress of Vienna.

In reasoning from history, Ferguson explains, the counterfactualwhat

might be and might have beenis always alive in the mind of Kissingers
statesman. The peace he achieves is always by definition a disaster that
has been averted. Ferguson illustrates this point with a string of
counterfactual examples in Kissingers writingsnone more vivid than the
Wests response to Hitler: If the democracies had moved against Hitler in
1936, for instance, we wouldnt know today whether Hitler was a
misunderstood nationalist or whether he was in fact a maniac. The
democracies learned that he was in fact a maniac. They had certainty but
they had to pay for that with a few million lives.

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The democracies learned that Hitler was in fact a

maniac. They had certainty, but they had to pay for
that with a few million lives.

Ferguson calls this concept the problem of conjecture: acting before one
is certain to avoid potential but uncertain consequences. This is the
challenge policymakers face constantlywhether dealing with Vladimir
Putin or the threat of nuclear terrorism from ISIS or al-Qaeda. What price
are we willing to pay for greater certainty of an adversarys intentions and
capabilities? In the case of terrorist groups, if we dont defeat them today,
in their incipient phases, we risk allowing them to mature to the point
where they can conduct Paris-style attacksor even another 9/11
tomorrow.

Central to Kissingers statecraft, Fergusons masterful biography argues,

was his ability to bring a deep knowledge of history to bear on the policy
questions he confronted. In doing so, Kissinger demonstrated, as Winston
Churchill observed, that the longer you can look back, the farther you can
look forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GRAHAM ALLISON is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at
the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable
Catastrophe and the co-author of Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Masters Insights on China, the
United States, and the World.

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