/lit/ - Literature

>>12807119
Don't let the Peanut Farmer outlive the greatest statesman since Bismarck!

>>12803569

Is quite right that Kissinger represents one of a relatively small number of historical personalities: the statesman who not only has a great understanding of how the world works, but one who knows WHY it works as it does as well. Thucydides certainly, Richelieu, Metternich and possibly also Talleyrand and Castlreagh (a rare trio of matched opponents) and potentially Bismarck (though as the manuscripts of Kissinger's abandoned book on Bismarck show, for Bismarck world order was markedly different to its understanding by other 19th century statesmen, and Kissinger has some objections to him). Certainly some of his actions were morally unforgivable, but in everything there is a certain genius, and where his mistakes occurred they were never as malicious as feckless critics like that hack Hitchens suggest.