Most of us, in setting out to write a doctoral dissertation, the final great requirement on the path to a Ph.D., perhaps the first real step in a dreamed-of academic career, approach it narrowly. Most doctoral dissertations remain unpublished, except in the mandated form — in the old days — of availability on University Microfilms, or, today in some online form. Even those who find a publisher, usually one of the many university presses, can expect a print run just sufficient to reach a handful of other scholars and perhaps a few hundred university research libraries. Some may dream of reaching a broader audience, but few, surpassingly few, ever come even close.
Then there was Henry Kissinger, whose doctoral dissertation, later published as A World Restored, marked the first significant step in a world-changing life. Is “world-changing” too strong an accolade? I don’t think so. Consider that, having shown enough promise to become a Harvard faculty member immediately, back when it meant far more than it does today. Consider that, along with a simultaneously published work, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, it propelled him into the center of the most important national security issues of the era, bringing him a position of influence on the staff of Nelson Rockefeller and then, famously, into the orbit of Richard Nixon. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. (READ MORE: Reevaluating the Saturday Night Massacre)
There will be hundreds of other appreciations published today and in the days to come, appreciations that will nod toward the significant early events of Kissinger’s life before jumping to the Nixon years and everything that would follow in a richly lived 100-year lifespan. For my part, it seems that the most important aspect of Kissinger’s life was an inherent conservatism. No, I won’t try to argue that he fit neatly into this or that conservative camp, nor that he sometimes did things that outraged conservative opinion. His, and Nixon’s, outreach to China represents a spectacular example.
There will be those, viewing this and other Kissinger actions through the lens of hindsight, who will be horrified at calling him, in any sense, a true conservative. I beg to differ. In his doctoral dissertation he explored the efforts of key statesmen, notably Klemens von Metternich of Austria, to revivify the stable world order left in tatters by the wars of Napoleon. Kissinger’s graduate work came on the heels of his family’s escape from Hitler, his own military service in World War II, and the postwar emergence of the Soviet Union as an immensely powerful threat to international stability. One can’t, of course, go back and read the mind of this young Kissinger, but it’s hard not to believe that he saw in Metternich and his peers something important. They had been the agents of stability, of order, and, while they couldn’t have foreseen this result, the progenitors of nearly a century of relative peace between the Great Powers. But I suspect that Kissinger, even then, saw this as an eminently worthy enterprise, and it would become a leitmotif of his subsequent career in foreign policy at the highest level. (READ MORE: Gaza: What Would Nixon Do?)
As we look around ourselves at a world that seems quite literally hell-bent, with leaders either hostile or indifferent to the needs of ordinary people for a safe and orderly world, we should take at least a moment to reflect on how Kissinger approached this inherently conservative mission, a mission to conserve rather than overturn. He may not have gotten everything right, but his heart — and, above all, his brilliant mind — was in the right place.
R.I.P. Henry Kissinger.
James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. His doctoral dissertation on the early history of the Gestapo can be accessed online by searching “James H. McGee, III” and “The Political Police in Bavaria, 1919-1936.” Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.
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