University of Wisconsin historian Suri (Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente
) endeavors to explore the philosophical roots of Henry Kissinger's actions as national security adviser and secretary of state under President Nixon, finding those roots in a Jewish boy's experiences of a weak Weimar regime's fall to genocidal Nazism. At the end of the day, in Suri's account, Kissinger's philosophy boiled down to the need to back democracy with muscle. “America, alone of the free countries,” said Kissinger, “was strong enough to assure global security against the forces of tyranny. Only America had both the power and the decency to inspire other peoples who struggled for identity, for progress and dignity.” But Kissinger's expressed idealism leads Suri to downplay the consequences of Kissinger's actions, including his role in subverting the democratically elected government of Chile's Salvador Allende. Kissinger did not support the brutality of the “regimes he supported in Chile, South Africa, and other parts of the Third World,” Suri writes. But, the author acknowledges, he did “nurture personal relations with their leaders as strongmen who could mobilize force effectively against threats to themselves and the United States.” At the close of that statement, Suri stumbles into the unpleasant truth of Kissinger's realpolitik. Illus. (July)
