Diplomacy

What lessons can the United States, or other contemporary powers, draw from Kissinger’s examples of entirely monarchical states (such as Richelieu and Metternich), who did not have to deal with either industrialization or democracy? How might industrialization and democracy complicate their approaches in the present day?

What, in Kissinger’s estimation, made the Congress of Vienna such a successful example of peacemaking? Does it contain lessons that might be applied to contemporary conflicts in the book’s view?

Evaluate Kissinger’s portrayal of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920. Why did it fail, and how much of that failure has to do with the structural realities of European politics, or the personal and ideological failings of Woodrow Wilson?

Why does Kissinger depict Stalin as a master of diplomacy, even as he blames him for unnecessarily causing the Cold War? Was he in fact a brilliant statesman who made one critical mistake, or does Kissinger inflate Stalin’s record in order to make a separate point?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a self-professed Wilsonian, and yet his democratic record was far more successful than that of his mentor. What allowed FDR to succeed where Wilson himself failed? What does this have to do with concepts of realpolitik?

Many historians argue that the United States deserves at least some of the blame for the Cold War, that its pursuit of economic and military dominance left the Soviet Union no choice but to clamp down on its sphere of influence. This is clearly not Kissinger’s position, but do you see any evidence of that interpretation in the events he describes? What does this have to do with Stalin’s approaches?

Kissinger describes Vietnam as an example of good intentions gone bad, American idealism wasted in a place with no room for its ideals. Do you find this account persuasive? How might this interpretation relate to Kissinger’s own key role in overseeing America’s Vietnam policy? How is this a problematic interpretation?

Kissinger depicts Nixon as a great realist statesman whose accomplishments were downplayed due to his legal troubles. Do you agree or disagree with this assessment? Do episodes that Kissinger does not mention, such as the sponsorship of the coup in Chile that brought the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet into power, challenge this perception, or would this simply be an example of power politics requiring amoral or even immoral means? How does Nixon represent a realpolitik approach?