Book review: World Order, by Henry Kissinger
Love or loathe him, Henry Kissinger has amassed enormous experience. In his latest meditation, World Order, the 91-year-old American statesman argues that the United States must address mounting global tensions.
by Henry Kissinger
Penguin
3 stars
David Wilson
Love or loathe him, Henry Kissinger has amassed enormous experience. In his latest meditation, World Order, the 91-year-old American statesman argues that the United States must address mounting global tensions.
Despite its record of military quagmires in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the US cannot just coast, Kissinger writes in a thinly veiled jab at President Barack Obama.
The situation is just too perilous for the US to play a passive role, according to Kissinger, who highlights the threat posed by suicide terrorism and multiplying weapons of mass destruction.
"If order cannot be established, vast areas risk being opened to anarchy and to forms of extremism that will spread organically into other regions," Kissinger writes, while drawing a parallel.
The Middle East crises unfolding now apparently echo an epic old-world spat: Europe's Thirty Years' War. At the end, the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia established diplomatic tenets that governed relations between European states for 300 years.