What Kissinger Really Thought

When he died on November 29, 2023, Henry Kissinger had been one of the dominant voices in American foreign policy and global politics for half a century. A Jewish immigrant to the United States, Kissinger served in the U.S. Army and on the faculty of Harvard, and then went on to a consequential career in public service. He was the national security advisor and then the secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, during which time he also won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the author of over a dozen books.

Soon after Kissinger died, Mosaic’s editor, Jonathan Silver, discussed his life and legacy with two incisive commentators on American foreign policy, each of whom knew Kissinger for many decades. His conversation with Norman Podhoretz is directly below, and his conversation with Elliott Abrams follows.

Norman Podhoretz