Henry Kissinger: Hero of our Time

Abstract

Henry Kissinger the supreme scholar/statesman of the late 20th century has authored a comprehensive interpretation of world order that revises his earlier West-centric orientation. This essay review assesses Kissinger’s view that there is a need for a new consensual world order that enjoys the participation and real consent of such important non-Western political actors as China, India and the Islamic World (viewed as a totality). Implicitly, Kissinger realizes that in the post-colonial world purely European conceptions of world order will no longer provide stability, but he nevertheless believes that only by the pragmatic ‘reinvention’ of these conceptions by the whole world will it be possible to achieve a stable and legitimate world order.