Kissinger Henry: World Order, New York: Penguin Press, 2014 (original) (raw)

2015, Journal of Regional Security

At the age of 91, prominent realist and former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger has demonstrated the lasting ability to provoke vigorous academic-and, for that matter, practical-debate on important international issues. Some of his famous works include a rewrite of his doctoral thesis entitled A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822, seminal Diplomacy, three-volume memoirs (The White House Years, Years of Upheaval, Years of Renewal), as well as the recent study On China (2011). His most recent, seventeenth book, with a concise albeit somewhat pretentious title World Order, has been the subject of several dozen academic and journalistic reviews, ranging from harsh critique (Anne-Marie Slaughter in The New Republic) to favorable endorsement (Kissinger's biographer Walter Isaacson in Time). Various points of the book have caught the attention of different discussants, depending on their respective interests and opinions of the depth of Kissinger's analysis. Packed with history and theory alike, as well as descriptive and prescriptive passages and pages, the book stands as yet another, perhaps more systematic, statement of Kissinger's well-known creed on the laws and principles of international politics.