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Untitled on China [Audio]
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About the Author

HENRY KISSINGER served as National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and has advised many other American presidents on foreign policy. He received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal of Liberty, among other awards. He is the author of numerous books on foreign policy and diplomacy and is currently the chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.

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In this canny, engaging historical study, the ex-secretary of state examines China's foreign policy for insights into its statecraft and soul. Kissinger (Crisis) recaps China's geo-strategic wei qi match-his ubiquitous metaphor for the subtle positioning characteristic of the national board game-from the Korean War to today's trade disputes, emphasizing the relationship with the U.S. as it moved from bitter enmity to cordial interdependence. He grounds his narrative in a penetrating analysis of age-old features of Chinese policy, emphasizing the Middle Kingdom's hauteur, wariness of encirclement-to the Chinese, he argues, America is just another barbarian horde to manipulate-and dread of domestic disorder. As an architect of Nixon's opening to China and a freelance go-between for later administrations, Kissinger is a major figure in the story, and the text often revolves around exegeses of his cryptic dialogues with Chinese leaders. The book therefore oozes Kissingerian realism, with its stress on great power machinations, international balance, and high-stakes summitry and its impatience with human rights strictures; a deadpan wit and cold-blooded candor flash out from clouds of diplomatic euphemism. Though it sometimes feels like a mind game between mandarins of many stripes, and Kissinger's generalizations about Chinese national character can also sound outmoded, this insider's account sheds a revealing light on the contours of Chinese-American relations. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kissinger, at the age of 88, presents a beguiling, penetrating, and indispensable survey of China's classical and modern relations with the world. It is not perfect. Specialists will fault the premodern chapters for accepting the myth of China's Middle Kingdom complex and disagree with particular points in later chapters. Still, the story of relations since the 1950s is at once full of insights into the leaders and their psychologies, epic in its sweep, and challenging in its underlying argument on the nature of diplomacy. Critics charge that Kissinger's realpolitik subordinated morality to great power hegemony and stability, but the narrative aims to show that America's foundational principles of freedom and human rights are not advanced by unilateral declarations and ritualistic denunciation. Because Chinese leaders have long since ceased to spread their ideology and perceive Americans as hypocritical in seeking to impose theirs, to hector China is to ignore genuine popular hypersensitivity to imperialism, undermine projects of mutual benefit, and discredit leaders who seek a "peaceful rise" as being in China's national interest. Verdict Essential for everyone with an interest in China. [See Prepub Alert, 11/29/10.]-Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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