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Henry Kissinger with President Gerald Ford on the train to Vladivostok, Russia, in 1974
Wikimedia
GRAHAM ALLISON
9:00 AM ET | GLOBAL
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RELATED STORY
The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
How did Kissinger prepare for his first major job in the U.S. government as
national security advisor to President Richard Nixon? In his words, When
I entered office, I brought with me a philosophy formed by two decades of
the study of history. Ferguson uncovered a fascinating fragment from
one of Kissingers contemporaries when they were both first-year graduate
students at Harvard. John Stoessinger recalled Kissinger arguing
forcefully for the abiding importance of history. In these conversations,
Stoessinger said, Kissinger would cite the assertion by the ancient Greek
historian Thucydides that The present, while never repeating the past
exactly, must inevitably resemble it. Hence, so must the future.
More than ever, Kissinger urged, one should study history in order to
see why nations and men succeeded and why they failed.
Ferguson has crafted his biography of Kissinger not only as the definitive
account of an incredible personal and intellectual odyssey, but also as an
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How does Kissinger apply history? Subtly and cautiously, recognizing that
its proper application requires both imagination and judgment. As
Kissinger put it, History is not a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It
teaches by analogy, not by maxims. History can illuminate the
consequences of actions in comparable situations. Butand here is the
keyfor it to do so, each generation must discover for itself what
situations are in fact comparable.
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self-interested but reasonable leader whom the United States could deal
with, at a time when many were ready to write de Gaulle off as a
communist sympathizer for being the first Western leader to recognize
Maoist China in 1964.
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Ferguson calls this concept the problem of conjecture: acting before one
is certain to avoid potential but uncertain consequences. This is the
challenge policymakers face constantlywhether dealing with Vladimir
Putin or the threat of nuclear terrorism from ISIS or al-Qaeda. What price
are we willing to pay for greater certainty of an adversarys intentions and
capabilities? In the case of terrorist groups, if we dont defeat them today,
in their incipient phases, we risk allowing them to mature to the point
where they can conduct Paris-style attacksor even another 9/11
tomorrow.
GRAHAM ALLISON is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at
the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable
Catastrophe and the co-author of Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Masters Insights on China, the
United States, and the World.
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