ok Professor, you want to test my geopolitics? Not sure you can be the one to do so. I am here to explain and to provide my opinions just like you have yours.
I think you should make a distinction between scholarship, logical form or structure, and opinions because you are garbling them.
I have developed my own views but I do agree with a lot of what Mersheimer has said on Ukraine and on Israel, and with some of Friedman’s analysis.
an excerpt from Friedman:
On Kissinger, I think he is a great figure. Many think he is an ultimate realist but no so. He took the constraints and dynamics of a real world to shape his vision for a world of peace. The historian Niall Ferguson even calls him an idealist.
On balance history has passed its judgement on the man.
Have you read Kissinger’s biography by Ferguson? the 2nd part will be out shortly I think.
Ferguson is an apologist who worships the British Empire. Of course he’s going to downplay the failures and celebrate the successes.
I prefer one by someone with a more balanced realpolitik worldview. I could not struggle through his own view of himself (and gave up), but Isaacson did a creditable job. I’d like to read Hitchen’s take, but I don’t want to walk a path that dark at the moment. And any real world view of Kissinger is going to be dark verging on black.
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You might consider Ferguson an apologist for the British Empire and, to an even further extent, for Western civilization. I wouldn’t. He speaks of the West as it sees itself. That’s all he could have done.
However, Ferguson is a serious historian, and his body of work is compelling. Unlike Isaacson, who is more of a journalist and commentator, Ferguson takes a scholarly approach. With his understanding of history he can form a clearer picture of who Kissinger was in the world he acted on. As Kissinger’s official biographer, he had access to a wealth of documents that no one else had, making his book a thoroughly researched and well-documented biography. You should read it.
I haven’t read what Issacson wrote about Kissinger but his Job and Musk bio are quite a fun read.
Yes, Hitchens wasn’t a fan of Kissinger—nor of Mother Teresa. But I liked his debates. He was a brilliant polemicist and a gifted writer.
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