Description

The first translation into English of Jérémie Gallon's prize-winning contemporary biography, Kissinger, the European draws lessons from Kissinger's life and actions and discusses how they might be used to create a more coherent and stronger European foreign policy. This new English edition includes an additional chapter to the French edition, detailing the author's meeting with Kissinger in Connecticut prior to Kissinger's death and ten days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chapters address themes, moments, and figures that shaped Kissinger's legacy, including subjects as diverse as Jewishness, football, his years at Harvard, and his close relationships with figures such as Lee Kuan Yew, Anwar Sadat, and Zhou Enlai. Gallon is as interested in the statesman as he is in the man himself, and the text reads more like a novel than an academic biography, including the most glamorous and intimate aspects of his like and making no secret of Kissinger's faults and the accusations levelled against him. At a time when Europe again faces dangerous and threatening times, Gallon argues that Europe must renew its sense of history and long-term strategic vision, and that Kissinger, whom he considers the direct heir of such European diplomats as Talleyrand, Metternich and Castlereagh, should be a principal source of inspiration.