Last Act in Rhodesia The Protracted Conflict

For more than three years beginning in 1969 Henry Kissinger labored and in January 1973 brought forth the Paris accords and protocols presented to us by President Nixon as “an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.” That document has sunk without a trace. When scholarly divers of the future bring it to the surface, they will stare incredulously at the intertangled provisions for everything imaginable, beginning with an 1,160-man International Commission and a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord to “end hatred and enmity . . . ensure the democratic liberties of the people . . . and organize the free and democratic general elections.”

The main criticism levied against Secretary Kissinger, especially by liberals, has been that he is too much a realpolitiker, too exclusively concerned with power to the neglect of moral factors. Perhaps this is the conclusion that can be drawn from his writings, but in Kissinger’s actual diplomatic practice his notable mistakes seem to come from an underestimation of the role of power in strategic and political equations.

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James Burnham

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For more than three years beginning in 1969 Henry Kissinger labored and in January 1973 brought forth the Paris accords and protocols presented to us by President Nixon as “an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.” That document has sunk without a trace. When scholarly divers of the future bring it to the surface, they will stare incredulously at the intertangled provisions for everything imaginable, beginning with an 1,160-man International Commission and a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord to “end hatred and enmity . . . ensure the democratic liberties of the people . . . and organize the free and democratic general elections.”

The main criticism levied against Secretary Kissinger, especially by liberals, has been that he is too much a realpolitiker, too exclusively concerned with power to the neglect of moral factors. Perhaps this is the conclusion that can be drawn from his writings, but in Kissinger’s actual diplomatic practice his notable mistakes seem to come from an underestimation of the role of power in strategic and political equations.