Customer Reviews

Crisis : The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises: Based on the Record of Henry Kissinger's Hitherto Secret Telephone Conversations

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After reading this book, the question looms large as to why Dr. Kissinger bothered to "write" it. It is essentially a selected collection of phone logs between Dr. Kissinger and his cohorts during the Yom Kippur War and the last days of the Vietnam War. If you are halfway interested in politics and history, there is nothing in this book that you don't already know, other than being able to glean through the actual words spoken by the policy makers of the time - what was "behind the scenes" was not startlingly different than what was on the TV screen.

I am disappointed with this book, not least because I am much impressed by Dr. Kissinger's other work, especially his defining tome: Diplomacy.

I am thankful for the tip given by the previous reviewer from Amsterdam, pointing out where to get the declassified information from the NSA. He was right. The account (of the Yom Kippur War) from the declassified NSA documents was more succinct, balanced and overall more informative.

Kissinger has done another book which reveals far less than was discussed in the contemporary press. His accounts are mainly inane and trivial. The transcripts on Vietnam are almost wholly on the evacuation of April 1975 and trivial details, well known. As for the Yom Kippur war, the National Security Archives has released crucial declassified documents and they are free at
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98. They are much more important and insightful than this exceedinly lame production.

Kissinger is great. "Kissinger On China" is the equivalent of being trapped in a first class carriage traveling by rail from Paris to Istanbul and discovering that your companion is brilliant, immersed in his subject, and the most agreeable, articulate and comprehensible person you will meet.
"Crisis" is not quite as good but nearly so. The 1973 war, the Yom Kippor War set so many diplomatic strategies at one another, much like an atomic collider. Kissinger recounts his efforts to rule in the quarks and neutrinos and emerge with a stabilized, longevous solution to the conflicting aspirations of the various sovereign states in the Middle East. In doing so the narrative is very gripping. It is the transcriptions of his various phone calls made over that week. In its background, Nixon is beleaguered by the Watergate crisis. It provides an unusually clear insight into the complications facing diplomacy and national interests that are nearly invisible at the time.

The end of the Viet Nam war is the second crisis, with a much sadder and disorganized outcome. Nixon is gone and Ford is struggling to effect diplomacy through Kissinger at a time when America, who used Viet Nam as an ally to contain Chinese expansion, ultimately abandons it. One cannot help but see the parallels arising from Bush's intervention Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It can be a tad creepy, still worth it.

Anyone who has read Kissinger extensively could predict what he would be saying in this book, and he did not disappoint. The same old story of the failure of the democrats, in the House and Senate, from 1973 until the Fall of Saigon, to provide the necessary resources, as Kissinger articulates them (primarily dollars), to support the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. What Kissinger does not address, nor has he in the volumes that he has written about himself, is the fact that Kissinger, the CIA, many of the diplomats on the ground in Saigon, as well as key members of the administration knew that the context of the war, in the "waning days" had dramatically changed. Through ports in Hanoi and Haiphong, the Russians provided the North Vietnamese Army(NVA) with sufficient military resources to support a massive build-up - in the form of artillery and armor - to ensure an NVA military victory. All the dollars Kissinger and the administration blamed the democrats for failing to appropriate, in order to shore up the Saigon government, would not have affected the war's outcome because the NVA had decided on a military victory and prepared for it. How, then, would increased dollars, given the American mood and cyncism of the time, from the democratically controlled Congress, made any difference, given the NVA military initiative? Kissinger reinforces his previously stated analyses, with more self-serving bias, as predicted.

Kissinger uses the method of transcribed telephone conversations to drive certain other points home -points to support a favorable image. When one reads a response to a Kissinger question, from Ambassador Martin, for example, the reader cannot deduce what Ambassador Martin really was thinking about the Kissinger question or even the man. The "response" is not telling. While admittedly, Kissinger and Ambassador Martin shared the same principles, for many reason, Martin was often sketpical of the arrogant, aloof Harvard professor.

Dennis W. Hallinan
Peninsula, Ohio
evaluation_dwh@yahoo.com

The book helps understand our current problems in the Middle East, in particular, our relation to Israel and the tensions and stresses between Israel, the Arab states and the United States.
The brilliance of Henry Kissinger is revealed. The intelligence and savy of Nixon was a supprise.

I don't know why I try to stomach reading books from a war criminal. I suppose we all must read and listen to the criminal mind so that we can understand why they become such monsters. I've read Hitler, Stalin, and Kissinger (and the rest). Don't buy this book...instead find yourself a copy of the book or documentary called "The Trial of Henry Kissinger".