The Key to Henry Kissinger’s Success

The Key to Henry Kissinger’s Success
The statesman understood something most diplomats don’t: history—and how to apply it.

The Atlantic Magazine | http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/kissinger-ferguson-applied-history/417846/

Graham Allison  |  November 27, 2015

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 America’s greatest living statesman, he discovered not only the essence of Kissinger’s 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 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.”http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/kissinger-ferguson-applied-history/417846/