Jussi M. Hanhimäki

Conservative goals, revolutionary outcomes: the paradox of détente: Détente: a three-way discussion

This essay maintains that détente, rather than stabilizing the international situation as many of its architects had hoped for, fundamentally altered the Cold War international system. Détente did not end the Cold War nor provide a clear road map towards 1989 (or 1991). But by bringing about an era of East-West engagement, détente was instrumental in setting in motion the many processes that ultimately caused the collapse of the international system that it was supposed to have stabilized.

The (really) good war? Cold War nostalgia and American foreign policy

This article argues that the Cold War nostalgia of the present in the United States is ultimately based upon a poor – instrumentalist – reading of history. If anything, Cold War nostalgia shows the malleability of our present-day understanding of the past.

Selling the 'Decent interval': Kissinger, triangular diplomacy, and the end of the Vietnam war, 1971-73

With the help of recently declassified documents, this article examines the link between triangular diplomacy and the Vietnam War. It argues that from the summer of 1971 to the conclusion of the Paris Agreements in January 1973 Kissinger tried to sell a peace agreement to his Soviet and Chinese inter locutors by stressing the American willingness to accept a decent interval solution: that is, the United States would not reenter the war provided that the collapse of the South Vietnamese goverment did not occur immediately after the last US ground troops returned home. While such a posture played a significant role in increasing Sino-Soviet pressure towards a negotiated settlement, Kissingers policy also served to bolster the subsequent competition between Moscow and Beijing over influence in Indochina.With the help of recently declassified documents, this article examines the link between triangular diplomacy and the Vietnam War. It argues that from the summer of 1971 to the conclusion of the Paris Agreements in January 1973 Kissinger tried to sell a peace agreement to his Soviet and Chinese inter locutors by stressing the American willingness to accept a decent interval solution: that is, the United States would not reenter the war provided that the collapse of the South Vietnamese goverment did not occur immediately after the last US ground troops returned home. While such a posture played a significant role in increasing Sino-Soviet pressure towards a negotiated settlement, Kissingers policy also served to bolster the subsequent competition between Moscow and Beijing over influence in Indochina.

Détente in Europe, 1962–1975

The main purpose of this chapter is to argue that European detente was, first and foremost, a European project. While there is no denying the significance of the United States and the Soviet Union in the shaping of Europe’s fortunes in the 1960s and 1970s, detente actually began (and continued far longer) in Europe. In some ways this should be no surprise to any student of the Cold War: after all, the Cold War had commenced to a large extent in the Old World and would, in the late 1980s, wither away there as well. So, why should the “middle cold war” have been any different? In fact, one can push the argument slightly further: while the division of Germany lay at the heart of the Cold War division of Europe and the unification of that country marked the end of that era, then something profound took place in the status of Germany as a result of the Ostpolitik practiced, in particular, by West German chancellor Willy Brandt (1969–74). It was ultimately his policy of multiple “openings” – most significantly to the USSR, Poland, and East Germany – that ushered in an era of detente in Europe. More precisely, the basic argument in this chapter is that the relaxation of East–West tensions in Europe was a result of a European challenge to the excesses of bipolarity. Some of these challenges came in the form of nationalistic needs – be it Charles de Gaulle’s effort to lift France’s international status or, most significantly, Willy Brandt’s pursuit of Ostpolitik . There was, as Henry Kissinger observed, no obvious unity among Europeans beyond their general resentment of being treated as pawns by the United States and the Soviet Union in a game of global geopolitics. Yet, as such agreements as the Harmel Report of 1967 and the Davignon Report of 1970 would indicate, most Europeans agreed with each other on the general need for improved East–West relations and better interallied cooperation. The most evident culmination of the new era in European politics during the period discussed in this volume was the conclusion of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in 1975. It was there that Europe’s postwar erafinally came to an end.

Kissinger, vol. 1: 1923–1968: The Idealist and Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman

Whatever one may think of Henry Kissinger’s record, his longevity as a subject for historians is remarkable. Ever since he joined the Nixon White House as the National Security Advisor in 1969, the former Harvard professor has been the subject of intense scrutiny that shows no sign of ebbing away. He is undoubtedly, as Greg Grandin’s subtitle puts it, ‘America’s most controversial statesman’. Irrespective of his achievements or misdemeanours (or ‘crimes’) Kissinger remains – if measured by the sheer number of pages written about him – in a class of his own. He continues to attract controversy in ways that none of his successors at Foggy Bottom (Hilary Clinton perhaps excepted) can match. Each in their own way, the two books under review feed on this unmatched notoriety of America’s 56th Secretary of State. The inevitable question – repeated each time a new tome on any aspect of Henry Kissinger’s career appears – is whether a new book on the subject is needed. Perhaps surprisingly, the case for each of these volumes is relatively strong. On the one hand, despite the abundance of Kissingerology no one has had access to Kissinger’s personal papers similar to Niall Ferguson’s. There is, hence, a potential for a truly ground-breaking re-evaluation, or at least the prospect of the yet-to-be-seen authorised biography, a high profile and lengthy defence of the Kissinger record. On the other hand, the absence of a full-scale evaluation of the post-1977 influence of Kissinger on American foreign policy – something that is generally assumed to have been noticeable – makes space for a work like Grandin’s. Add to this the simple fact that both authors are known for their ability to make provocative arguments and the stage is set for potentially delightful reading. And in this regard readers should not feel cheated: Ferguson and Grandin succeed in inserting something new into the abundant field sometimes referred to as Kissingerology.1 Ferguson’s opening volume of his Kissinger biography announces in its very title that the man usually thought of as a Machiavellian realist is, in fact, ‘the idealist’ (or at least was an idealist until the 1968 presidential election, where this volume concludes). In contrast to conventional wisdom, Ferguson’s central thesis – propagated in five ‘books’ – is that the pre-1968 Kissinger was an idealist, albeit of the Kantian variety. He makes this argument as a result of seemingly painstaking research that has unearthed much new information from the 100-plus archives that Ferguson, or those assisting him, have visited. Among other things, readers will learn much about the travails of a Jewish family in interwar Bavaria, about the life of a young immigrant in New York’s east side, and about Kissinger’s return to Germany during World War II. Indeed, the young Kissinger we read about in The Idealist bears little resemblance to the super star (or super villain) most of us have become accustomed to. From ‘book 2’ onwards, the Kissinger story – a ‘true bildungsroman’ (p. 865) – moves to more familiar and inevitably contested terrain. Ferguson charts Kissinger’s years at Harvard and his rise to the position of a well-regarded, if sometimes controversial, public intellectual in the 1950s and 1960s. The book then builds towards the real turning points of Kissinger’s early career: his relationship with New York Governor and perennial presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller and, ultimately, the 1968 presidential election that was followed by president-elect Richard Nixon’s decision to

World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

Westphalia for the twenty-first century world. This essentially sums up the message of Henry Kissingers latest – some have unkindly suggested (given that the author turns 92 in 2015) last – book. ...