LEADERSHIP

A middling attempt to argue the greatness of Margaret Thatcher, Charles de Gaulle, and, of course, Richard Nixon.

How many more times will Kissinger try to exonerate Nixon, and thereby himself? As many times as he can put out a book, evidently. In a constellation of political leaders, all known to him, he exalts six case studies—and he’s not shy of laying claim to some of their collective greatness. One figure will be little known to those outside Kissinger’s circles: Konrad Adenauer, who guided Germany out of its postwar devastation “by abandoning its decades-long quest for domination of Europe…and rebuilding it on a moral foundation which reflected his own Christian values and democratic convictions.” Lee Kuan Yew attempted to make a similar new world with the new state of Singapore. Thatcher and de Gaulle, though not quite contemporaries, brought different versions of a united Europe to the table, with de Gaulle leading a transformation of France from imperial and colonial power to stable democracy and Thatcher holding Europe at arm’s length in what might be seen as the first rumblings of Brexit. Kissinger, as always, tends to the long and sometimes bloodless, as when he writes of Anwar Sadat, “as a minister to Nasser, he had gravitated toward frameworks governed more by state sovereignty than by imperial hegemony or regional solidarity.” The author’s bid for Nixon to be seen as a moral leader falls flat. What elevates the book is the conclusion, which examines the distinctions between aristocratic and meritocratic leadership and the contributions of meritocracy and growing democracy to a political milieu that “enabled and institutionalized the rise of middle-class leaders.” Such middle-class leaders can, of course, go bad—witness Putin—but all the same, Kissinger calls for a revival of “humanistic education” and character in helping “guide the ship of state to an unknown, but more secure and peaceful, harbor.”

Of some interest to aspiring geopoliticians, but Kissinger’s conventional wisdom won’t surprise previous readers.