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A review by gregbrown
Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman by Greg Grandin
4.0
American foreign policy may have many sins, but the most insidious and hard to stamp out is the cult of action: an overriding belief that we must "do something" about everything—usually a "kinetic" solution that involves bombs, bullets, or both. Kissinger's misdeeds are well-catalogued by this point, but the greatest contribution of Grandin's book is in documenting how he built the template for advocating military solutions to foreign policy, and tilted the field towards bombing, invasions, and more.
Sure, there are plenty of cases and appalling anecdotes here explicating just how serially and monumentally awful Kissinger was; secretly derailing Vietnam peace talks and building a factory of fraud to conceal a bombing campaign of Cambodia from most of the government rank among the worst. But it's in explaining Kissinger's ideology and prevarications that Grandin excels, delving deeper than the usual rap sheet treatment.
The one downside is that it took me a while to get through because the book does wander around some in exploring the main thrust, plus so many of the stuff here is jaw dropping that I kept looking back at the endnotes to add the source material to my reading list. As someone who doesn't know as much about the late-'60s, early-'70s as I'd like, the book was understandable and rad.
Sure, there are plenty of cases and appalling anecdotes here explicating just how serially and monumentally awful Kissinger was; secretly derailing Vietnam peace talks and building a factory of fraud to conceal a bombing campaign of Cambodia from most of the government rank among the worst. But it's in explaining Kissinger's ideology and prevarications that Grandin excels, delving deeper than the usual rap sheet treatment.
The one downside is that it took me a while to get through because the book does wander around some in exploring the main thrust, plus so many of the stuff here is jaw dropping that I kept looking back at the endnotes to add the source material to my reading list. As someone who doesn't know as much about the late-'60s, early-'70s as I'd like, the book was understandable and rad.