As of 10/8/2003

## Reviews of CRISIS

*The New York Times, " 'Henry, What's New': Kissinger in Action" by G. John Ikenherry* Aug. 27, 2003

*International Herald Tribune, "CRISIS" [same review that ran in *NYT*]* Sept. 4, 2003

*Tampa Tribune, "Kissinger in Action" [same review that ran in *NYT*]* Sept. 7, 2003

*Richmond Times-Dispatch, "Kissinger's Calls Reveal Tensions" by Robert A. Lincoln* Sept. 14, 2003

*The Washington Post - Book World* "In Brief - Exit Strategies", by Dennis Drabelle Sept. 28, 2003

*National Review, "Bring Down the Walls" by Michael Potemra* Sept. 29, 2003

A WELLESHIRE (SCHOLAR) AND CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLICAN
epistemology, in a way that no other writer in
english can claim.

More than that, he was a man half in love
with the pre-1914 Edwardian English idyll,
and a product of a colonial and class-conscious
education. He admired the traditional Victori-
nian virtues of manliness, grit, honesty and
right, tending to despise or suspect such affec-
tions as feminism, and to be positively hos-
le to such manifestations of "identity" poli-
cies as homosexuality or Zionism. How does it
come about, then, that such a young corradu-
cion finds himself fighting in the Spanish Ci-
war trenches with a Trotskyist militia? Or
sising the language and metaphors of Marxism
to write the two novels that did most to dis-
credit the monolithic communist system?

Taylor considers Orwell in his capacity as
schoolboy, colonial policeman, socialist mili-
tiaman and polymathic freelance writer, as
well as in the role of amateur tramp, inept se-
lucer and impoverished writer. But he never
loses his hold on the connecting thread, which
was Orwell's conviction that a post-religious
world would need some solid morality with
which to combat the realization that the heav-
ens are empty. Orwell himself was contem-
nous of religious belief at the same time that he
was respectful of ethical Christianity (at least
in its Protestant form), and this was a struggle
with the greatest contradiction of them all.

Taylor's awareness of the English literary
tradition is of the greatest use to him here (he
is the author of a celebrated biography of
Thackeray), and he understands where Or-
well "fits." He also shares his subject's facility
for quotation and cross-reference. But better

still is his instinct for the telling detail. I have
been reading and writing about Orwell all my
life (and here is the place to confess that Tay-
lor makes two references to my stuff, neither
of them disobliging), but I found myself wish-
ing that I had been able to read this book dec-
ades ago. There is an insight or a connection
in every chapter. And, interleaved with the
main sections, there are short interpolated
sections that take up a range of subjects: Or-
well on paranoia, Orwell's face, Orwell on rats
and Orwell's shortcomings. These mini-seg-
ments are alive with intelligence, and the one
in which Taylor plays devil's advocate and ar-
gues that his hero was a wilful, self-pitying,
selfish poseur is one of the deftest pieces of

contrarianism I have ever read.

On the other hand—and to show Taylor de-
fending Orwell with great skill and aplomb—I
would cite a moment in his discussion of the
famous "list." As all of Orwell's enemies are
(and of pointing out, he did keep a register of
intellectual fellow travelers and other moral
idiot, and did hand this list to Celia Paget, a
woman he had once loved who graduated to
the "information" section of the British For-
eign Office. Great tirades have recently been
written about Orwell's mention of the sexual
and other proclivities of the people he named.
But Paget was looking for people who could
attack Stalin from the Left, and needed to
know who was who. And before she ap-

ing tortured. This is not a quibble: Orwell was
interested above all not in the rationalizations
of the dominant, but in the excuses and whim-
perings of the submissive. Hence his fascina-
tion with the role of religion, in both confirm-
ing and denying the role of the autonomous,
defiant individual. If there is one thing that
binds Orwell's fiction to his essays and pur-
nalism, it is the emphasis on defeat, despair
and negation. This same trope recurs, carefully
teased out by Taylor, in all his autobiograph-
ical and memoiristic writing, disfigured as it is
by a continual stress upon the note of failure.
Yet he was able to convert habitual pessimism
into a stoical form of resistance.

I had not known until I read Taylor that Or-
well's notes on a street-fighting plan for last-
ditch tactics in London had survived (they
were a part of his activity in the British (para-
military anti-Nazi LDV, or Local Defense Vol-
unteers). Nor had I known that he narrowly
missed getting a job in wartime public rela-
tions, which would have landed him a post as
spin doctor for Bomber Command. I life to
think that he was thought unsuitable for the
second job, and qualified for the first one. Will-
ing to fight Hitler ruthlessly as he was, it's not
easy to imagine him doing the "collateral dam-
age" report on Dresden, and part of the tribute
that we pay him is that we now scorn all such
nasty euphemisms as being "Orwellian." ■

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for
Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal
studies at New School University in New
York. His book "Why Orwell Matters" has just
been published in paperback.

BET PHOTO

George Orwell in 1943

IN BRIEF | Exit Strategies

In Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major
Foreign Policy Crises (Simon & Schuster,
$30), Henry Kissinger introduces edited ver-
sions of the transcripts of his telephone calls
during two pivotal episodes of his tenure as
U.S. secretary of state: the Yom Kippur War
of 1973 and the fall of Saigon at the end of
the Vietnam War, in 1975. For the latter, Kis-
singer sets the scene in part as follows: "The
war was . . . over, and the sole remaining is-
sue was whether the denouement could be
postponed by diplomatic maneuvers to per-
mit the evacuation of the largest possible
number of Vietnamese, who, having cooper-

ated with the United States, faced death or
concentration camps." That evacuation, Kis-
singer explains, was thwarted by panic
among the Vietnamese, who "swarmed over
runways, and in effect stopped the airlift."
The evacuation continued from the American
Embassy, by helicopter. At the end of this ep-
isode, Kissinger sums up his feelings about
the war with which his name will always be
linked: "On the day the last helicopter left the
roof of the Embassy, only a feeling of empti-
ness remained."

As for the earlier crisis, Kissinger reminds
the reader that the October War occurred at

a most distracting time for the United States,
as President Richard Nixon was preoccupied
with naming a new vice president (his run-
ning mate, Spiro Agnew, had recently re-
signed under fire) and lending off various
Watergate investigations. On Friday Oct. 19,
1973, Kissinger argued with White House
chief of staff Alexander Haig over Haig's in-
tention to link two presidential announce-
ments—that of Kissinger's own pending trip
to Moscow for negotiations related to the
war and Nixon's endorsement of the so-
called Stennis compromise, by which Missis-
sippi senator John Stennis would be desig-

nated a kind of referee to examine tran-
scripts of White House tapes. "My honest
opinion is that it is a cheap stunt . . . ," said
Kissinger. "I would not link foreign policy
with Watergate. You will regret it for the rest
of your life." Kissinger managed to win that
one—the announcements were made sepa-
rately. Nixon did not fare as well. The next
evening he put into effect what became
known as the Saturday Night Massacre. The
Stennis compromise fell through, and the fol-
lowing Monday the House Judiciary Commit-
tee started impeachment proceedings.

—Dennis Drabelle

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Copyright 2003 International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune

September 4, 2003 Thursday

**SECTION:** FEATURE; Pg. 18

**LENGTH:** 728 words

**HEADLINE:** CRISIS;

BOOKS / Nonfiction

**BYLINE:** G. John Ikenberry

**SOURCE:** The New York Times

**BODY:**

**CRISIS** The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises

By **Henry Kissinger.**

564 pages. $30. **Simon** & Schuster.

Reviewed by G. John Ikenberry

*

In a surprisingly gripping account of two foreign policy crises, this book brings together the recently declassified telephone transcripts of **Henry Kissinger**, the former secretary of state, as he orchestrated U.S. policy during the 1973 war in the Middle East and the 1975 evacuation of Saigon. It is history seen as the ticker-tape flow of urgent conversation. Most of it follows Kissinger through the nonstop telephone diplomacy of the war in the Middle East. What emerges is a vivid portrait of one of the 20th century's most influential statesmen operating at full tilt in rapid kaleidoscopic sequence and in various mixtures cajoling, reassuring, flattering, delaying, smoking out and threatening Soviet, Israeli, Egyptian, British and United Nations diplomats, soothing the concerns of senators, parrying bureaucratic intruders, and periodically updating a distracted and detached President Richard Nixon embroiled in Watergate.

The transcripts capture better than Kissinger's memoir the difficulty, yet utter necessity, of synchronizing his diplomatic strategy aimed at obtaining a cease-fire with the shifting tide of Arab-Israeli military operations. Kissinger's great accomplishment was in getting the war to end in a way that reduced Soviet influence in the region, maintained Israeli solidarity and strengthened Arab confidence in U.S.-led peace negotiations.

The transcripts that trace America's evacuation of Vietnam show a beleaguered Kissinger not shaping the flow of events but simply hanging on trying unsuccessfully to end America's disastrous Indochina experience with a measure of dignity. Kissinger finds himself caught between the looming collapse of Saigon under siege by advancing North Vietnamese troops, a Congress unresponsive to requests for emergency military assistance, and his own vision of a graceful exit.

Here Kissinger's problems are in Washington, and he talks mostly to journalists and congressmen. This **crisis** is of America's own making. As the situation in Vietnam deteriorated, Congress bares the brunt of Kissinger's growing bitterness. In a conversation

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with John Connally, the former secretary of the Treasury, the secretary of state remarks: "We started the panic, that's the hell of it. There would have been no offensive if it wasn't for congressional debates on help for our allies." Later, speaking to General Brent Scowcroft, Kissinger reports on his appearance before Congress: "Well, Indochina is gone but we will make them pay for it. In my whole testimony today, I said twenty-five times that it was Congress' fault."

The immediate **crisis** that Kissinger faced was to get the remaining Americans and as many political refugees as possible out of Saigon before it was too late. But the real drama was the national agony of the war itself. Even at the bitter end after the billions of dollars and thousands of lives were lost and the only issue was short-term emergency aid the anger and divisions over Vietnam continued to grip Washington and paralyze policy.

The Middle East war and the end of America's tragic involvement in Vietnam were great geopolitical dramas. But at the time, as these transcripts make clear, Kissinger and his colleagues spent most of their time not pondering its grand significance but simply trying to figure out what precisely was going on along the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights, at the Kremlin, in the Pentagon and at the Saigon airport. Incomplete information, mixed signals, garbled communication, all contributed to a confusing and ambiguous flow of events.

In the end, these transcripts are interesting less for what they reveal about the dynamics of **crisis** diplomacy than for their insightful detail about one of the most complex and controversial American diplomats and his times. To a sympathetic eye, the Kissinger in these pages is the only person who has a hand on the tiller of the ship of state, attempting to rescue some order from political disarray. But order is not the only virtue in world politics, and as Kissinger knows all too well, history will have the last word.

*

G. John Ikenberry is Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University.

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