Kissinger and the Westphalian State: Still Faithful After All These Years

Abstract

Despite seeming to express an openness towards the world, Henry Kissinger’s new book, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, is in fact deeply conservative in terms of his adherence to the Westphalian state as the desirable actor in International Relations, and almost as a normative condition of the world’s architecture. Kissinger sketches his views of different regions of the world, but these views are derived from his past experience more than a nuanced and forward-looking view of a rapidly changing world.