Are you trying to re-tilt history in his favor? You include Richard Nixon in a book of inspired leaders, and a lot of people will balk at this because of the way he left office. I tried to have some influence on the political thinking also, but not by being actively involved in politics. Yes, but more in the intellectual and conceptual field that in the actual political leadership field. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. (For coverage of the future of work, visit /charter and sign up for the free Charter newsletter. Kissinger, whose last book-a mere eight months ago-was co-authored with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, and computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher, says that because the internet provides such ready answers to so many questions, and can provoke so overwhelming and speedy a response among wide swaths of people, it discourages long term thinking and problem-solving, or what he calls “deep literacy.” He looks at the work of Konrad Adenauer, who helped Germans take stock of their actions after WWII, Charles de Gaulle, who restored confidence to France during the same period, Richard Nixon, who, in Kissinger’s telling, understood how to balance the delicate scales of world order, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who signed the first regional peace treaty with Israel, Lee Kuan Yew, who brought national cohesion to Singapore and Margaret Thatcher, who navigated the U.K.
In his new (and 19th) book, Leadership, Kissinger-widely admired and reviled for his management of world affairs under President Richard Nixon-uses a historian’s approach to examine six consequential world leaders who inherited difficult geopolitical situations, and in his view, overcame and improved them.
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