2006, ISBN: 9788822062956

Simon & Schuster. Very Good. 6.13 x 1.6 x 9.25 inches. Paperback. 1995. 912 pages. <br>A brilliant, sweeping history of diplomacy that in cludes personal stories from the noted … Altro …

Simon & Schuster. Very Good. 6.13 x 1.6 x 9.25 inches. Paperback. 1995. 912 pages. <br>A brilliant, sweeping history of diplomacy that in cludes personal stories from the noted former Secretary of State, including his stunning reopening of relations with China. The s eminal work on foreign policy and the art of diplomacy. Moving f rom a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of hi s negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America's approach to foreign affairs has always differed vas tly from that of other nations. Brilliant, controversial, and pr ofoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifet ime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is vital reading fo r anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world tod ay and will impact upon it tomorrow. Editorial Reviews From Pub lishers Weekly Former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Kissinger discusses the art of diplomacy and the American a pproach to foreign affairs. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Informa tion, Inc. Review Michiko Kakutani The New York Times An elegant ly written study of Western diplomacy....Shrewd, often vexing, an d consistently absorbing. Simon Schama The New Yorker Kissinger' s absorbing book tackles head-on some of the toughest questions o f our time....Its pages sparkle with insight. George P. Shultz T his is a great book....Brilliant in its analysis and masterly in its sweep. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. This rich and absorbing work is both a brilliant study of the international crises that have s haped the modern world and a provocative meditation on the Americ an style in foreign affairs. Walter Laqueur Chairman, Internatio nal Research Council, Center for Strategic and International Stud ies The most important work on diplomacy for thirty years. About the Author Henry Kissinger was the fifty-sixth Secretary of Stat e. Born in Germany, Dr. Kissinger came to the United States in 19 38 and was naturalized a US citizen in 1943. He served in the US Army and attended Harvard University, where he later became a mem ber of the faculty. Among the awards he has received are the Nobe l Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal o f Liberty. Dr. Kissinger is currently Chairman of Kissinger Assoc iates, Inc., an international consulting firm. Excerpt. ® Reprin ted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER ONE The New Worl d Order Almost as if according to some natural law, in every cen tury there seems to emerge a country with the power, the will, an d the intellectual and moral impetus to shape the entire internat ional system in accordance with its own values. In the seventeent h century, France under Cardinal Richelieu introduced the modern approach to international relations, based on the nation-state an d motivated by national interest as its ultimate purpose. In the eighteenth century, Great Britain elaborated the concept of the b alance of power, which dominated European diplomacy for the next 200 years. In the nineteenth century, Metternich's Austria recons tructed the Concert of Europe and Bismarck's Germany dismantled i t, reshaping European diplomacy into a cold-blooded game of power politics. In the twentieth century, no country has influenced i nternational relations as decisively and at the same time as ambi valently as the United States. No society has more firmly insiste d on the inadmissibility of intervention in the domestic affairs of other states, or more passionately asserted that its own value s were universally applicable. No nation has been more pragmatic in the day-to-day conduct of its diplomacy, or more ideological i n the pursuit of its historic moral convictions. No country has b een more reluctant to engage itself abroad even while undertaking alliances and commitments of unprecedented reach and scope. The singularities that America has ascribed to itself throughout its history have produced two contradictory attitudes toward foreign policy. The first is that America serves its values best by perf ecting democracy at home, thereby acting as a beacon for the rest of mankind; the second, that America's values impose on it an ob ligation to crusade for them around the world. Torn between nosta lgia for a pristine past and yearning for a perfect future, Ameri can thought has oscillated between isolationism and commitment, t hough, since the end of the Second World War, the realities of in terdependence have predominated. Both schools of thought -- of A merica as beacon and of America as crusader -- envision as normal a global international order based on democracy, free commerce, and international law. Since no such system has ever existed, its evocation often appears to other societies as utopian, if not na ïve. Still, foreign skepticism never dimmed the idealism of Woodr ow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, or indeed of all other twentieth-century American presidents. If anything, it has spurred America's faith that history can be overcome and that if the world truly wants peace, it needs to apply America's moral p rescriptions. Both schools of thought were products of the Ameri can experience. Though other republics have existed, none had bee n consciously created to vindicate the idea of liberty. No other country's population had chosen to head for a new continent and t ame its wilderness in the name of freedom and prosperity for all. Thus the two approaches, the isolationist and the missionary, so contradictory on the surface, reflected a common underlying fait h: that the United States possessed the world's best system of go vernment, and that the rest of mankind could attain peace and pro sperity by abandoning traditional diplomacy and adopting America' s reverence for international law and democracy. America's journ ey through international politics has been a triumph of faith ove r experience. Since the time America entered the arena of world p olitics in 1917, it has been so preponderant in strength and so c onvinced of the rightness of its ideals that this century's major international agreements have been embodiments of American value s -- from the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact to th e United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Act. The collapse of Soviet communism marked the intellectual vindication of Ameri can ideals and, ironically, brought America face to face with the kind of world it had been seeking to escape throughout its histo ry. In the emerging international order, nationalism has gained a new lease on life. Nations have pursued self-interest more frequ ently than high-minded principle, and have competed more than the y have cooperated. There is little evidence to suggest that this age-old mode of behavior has changed, or that it is likely to cha nge in the decades ahead. What is new about the emerging world o rder is that, for the first time, the United States can neither w ithdraw from the world nor dominate it. America cannot change the way it has perceived its role throughout its history, not should it want to. When America entered the international arena, it was young and robust and had the power to make the world conform to its vision of international relations. By the end of the Second W orld War in 1945, the United States was so powerful (at one point about 35 percent of the world's entire economic production was A merican) that it seemed as if it was destined to shape the world according to its preferences. John F. Kennedy declared confident ly in 1961 that America was strong enough to pay any price, bear any burden to ensure the success of liberty. Three decades later, the United States is in less of a position to insist on the imme diate realization of all its desires. Other countries have grown into Great Power status. The United States now faces the challeng e of reaching its goals in stages, each of which is an amalgam of American values and geopolitical necessities. One of the new nec essities is that a world comprising several states of comparable strength must base its order on some concept of equilibrium -- an idea with which the United States has never felt comfortable. W hen American thinking on foreign policy and European diplomatic t raditions encountered each other at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the differences in historical experience became dramatical ly evident. The European leaders sought to refurbish the existing system according to familiar methods; the American peacemakers b elieved that the Great War had resulted not from intractable geop olitical conflicts hut from flawed European practices. In his fam ous Fourteen Points, Woodrow Wilson told the Europeans that, henc eforth, the international system should be based not on the balan ce of power but on ethnic self-determination, that their security should depend not on military alliances but on collective securi ty, and that their diplomacy should no longer be conducted secret ly by experts but on the basis of open agreements, openly arrived at. Clearly, Wilson had come not so much to discuss the terms fo r ending a war or for restoring the existing international order, as he had to recast a whole system of international relations as it had been practiced for nearly three centuries. For as long a s Americans have been reflecting on foreign policy, they have asc ribed Europe's travails to the balance-of-power system. And since the time Europe first had to concern itself with American foreig n policy, its leaders have looked askance at America's self-appoi nted mission of global reform. Each side has behaved as if the ot her had freely chosen its mode of diplomatic behavior and could h ave, were it wiser or less bellicose, selected some other, more a greeable, method. In fact, both the American and the European ap proaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shiel ded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countr ies as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of be ing balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the chall enges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the b izarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe. The anguishing dilemmas of security that tormented European nations did not touch America f or nearly 150 years. When they did, America twice participated in the world wars which had been started by the nations of Europe. In each instance, by the time America got involved, the balance o f power had already failed to operate, producing this paradox: th at the balance of power, which most Americans disdained, in fact assured American security as long as it functioned as it was desi gned; and that it was its breakdown that drew America into intern ational politics. The nations of Europe did not choose the balan ce of power as the means for regulating their relations out of in nate quarrelsomeness or an Old World love of intrigue. If the emp hasis on democracy and international law was the product of Ameri ca's unique sense of security, European diplomacy had been forged in the school of hard knocks. Europe was thrown into balance-of -power politics when its first choice, the medieval dream of univ ersal empire, collapsed and a host of stares of more or less equa l strength arose from the ashes of that ancient aspiration. When a group of states so constituted are obliged to deal with one ano ther, there are only two possible outcomes: either one state beco mes so strong that it dominates all the others and creates an emp ire, or no stare is ever quite powerful enough to achieve that go al. In the latter case, the pretensions of the most aggressive me mber of the international community are kept in check by a combin ation of the others; in other words, by the operation of a balanc e of power. The balance-of-power system did not purport to avoid crises or even wars. When working properly, it was meant to limi t both the ability of states to dominate others and the scope of conflicts. Its goal was not peace so much as stability and modera tion. By definition, a balance-of-power arrangement cannot satisf y every member of the international system completely; it works b est when it keeps dissatisfaction below the level at which the ag grieved party will seek to overthrow the international order. Th eorists of the balance of power often leave the impression that i t is the natural form of international relations. In fact, balanc e-of-power systems have existed only rarely in human history. The Western Hemisphere has never known one, nor has the territory of contemporary China since the end of the period of the warring st ates, over 2,000 years ago. For the greatest part of humanity and the longest periods of history, empire has been the typical mode of government. Empires have no interest in operating within an i nternational system; they aspire to be the international system. Empires have no need for a balance of power. That is how the Unit ed States has conducted its foreign policy in the Americas, and C hina through most of its history in Asia. In the West, the only examples of functioning balance-of-power systems were among the c ity-states of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy, and the Europ ean state system which arose out of the Peace of Westphalia in 16 48. The distinguishing feature of these systems was to elevate a fact of life -- the existence of a number of states of substantia lly equal strength -- into a guiding principle of world order. I ntellectually, the concept of the balance of power reflected the convictions of all the major political thinkers of the Enlightenm ent. In their view, the universe, including the political sphere, operated according to rational principles which balanced each ot her. Seemingly random acts by reasonable men would, in their tota lity, tend toward the common good, though the proof of this propo sition was elusive in the century of almost constant conflict tha t followed the Thirty Years' War. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of N ations, maintained that an invisible hand would distill general e conomic well-being out of selfish individual economic actions. In The Federalist Papers, Madison argued that, in a large enough re public, the various political factions selfishly pursuing their o wn interests would, by a kind of automatic mechanism, forge a pro per domestic harmony. The concepts of the separation of powers an d of checks and balances, as conceived by Montesquieu and embodie d in the American Constitution, reflected an identical view. The purpose of the sepa, Simon & Schuster, 1995, 3, Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 2006. Traduzione di Maurutto E. Bari, 2006; br., pp. 112, ill., cm 14x21. (Nuova Biblioteca Dedalo. 295). Meno di cento anni fa, gli astronomi erano convinti che l'universo fosse costituito solamente dalle stelle della Via Lattea. Alla fine del XX secolo avevano ormai scoperto che la nostra è solo una delle centinaia di miliardi di galassie che si estendono per uno spazio di migliaia di miliardi di anni luce. Questa rivoluzione, nella comprensione del cosmo e del posto che l'uomo vi occupa, è avvenuta in meno di cento anni, grazie all'avvento di telescopi sempre più potenti e alla passione di un ristretto gruppo di pionieri ossessionati dal desiderio di misurare la scala delle distanze cosmiche. Questo libro narra la storia di questi scienziati, una storia che parla del fascino di un cielo stellato e del duro, ostinato lavoro di coloro che hanno dedicato la vita a carpirne i segreti., Edizioni Dedalo, 2006, 0<