Years of Upheaval

London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982. First U.K. Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 1283, illus., maps, appendix, chapter notes, index, some wear to DJ edges, small tear to top edge rear DJ, sticker residue rear DJ. Henry Alfred Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger; May 27, 1923) is an American politician and diplomat,who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He became National Security Advisor in 1969 and U.S. Secretary of State in 1973. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. A practitioner of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. He pioneered the policy of d�tente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, engaged in what became known as shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords. Kissinger has also been associated with such controversial policies as U.S. involvement in the 1973 Chilean military coup, a "green light" to Argentina's military junta for their Dirty War, and U.S. support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh War despite the genocide being perpetrated by his allies. He formed Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. He remains a controversial figure in U.S. politics, both condemned by many journalists and political activists as well as venerated as an effective Secretary of State by many prominent international relations scholars. Derived from a Kirkus review: Part two of the Kissinger memoirs begins with his appointment as Secretary of State, in September 1973, and ends with Nixon's resignation, in August 1974. Kissinger professes to have been surprised by the appointment, reasoning that Nixon would not want a powerful Secretary of State. His clout as National Security Adviser he attributes practically to chance. Nixon, he thinks, saw him prospectively as an innocuous ploy, meant to undercut State; but his key role in dramatic events-the secret Vietnam negotiations, setting up Nixon's historic trip to China-turned him into a celebrity. The travails of Watergate then compelled Nixon to cede power to a forceful Kissinger in order to safeguard the foreign policy successes he so cherished for his reputation. Indeed, the weakening of the president by Watergate-and the ensuing "Kafkaesque," "surrealistic" atmosphere-is one of the volume's leitmotifs. Kissinger resumes battle, though, over conflicts in the first volume. He is preoccupied with blaming Cambodia's ghastly fate on the North Vietnamese. The Lon Nol regime, he claims, consisted of the same personnel as Sihanouk's; and he compares Lon Nol's fall with that of Diem. Nonetheless he was negotiating with the Chinese to return Sihanouk to power when Congress undercut him by banning the further bombing of Cambodia-the only tool left him since Congress had also ruled out US military aid to the Cambodian government. The negotiations collapsed, and the fate of Cambodia was sealed. On Chile, Kissinger still maintains that the US had no hand in overthrowing Allende, "an avowed enemy of democracy as we know it"; but since Allende was a man of principle, it would also be an insult not to assume that he intended to make good on his radical proposals. The details of Kissinger's Middle East shuttle diplomacy are here-as well as of the Salt II negotiations: a victim of Watergate, in Kissinger's view, since only a weak president would have countenanced the wrecking tactics of Secretary of Defense Schlesinger. Watergate takes its final toll as Kissinger prays with Nixon on the last night-pondering the "biblical proportions" of his fate.