Includes bibliographical references (pages 534-539) and index.

Online version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

"In the Flawed Architect, the first major reassessment of Kissinger in over a decade, historian Jussi Hanhimaki paints a subtle, carefully composed portrait of America's most famous and infamous statesman. Drawing on extensive research from newly declassified files, the author follows Kissinger from his beginnings in the Nixon administration up to the current controversy over whether Kissinger is a war criminal. Hanhimaki guides the reader through White House power struggles and debates behind the Cambodia and Laos invasions, the search for a strategy in Vietnam, the breakthrough with China, and the unfolding of Soviet-American detente. Here, too, are many other international crises of the period - the Indo-Pakistani War, the Yom Kippur War, the Angolan civil war - all set against the backdrop of Watergate.

Along the way, Hanhimaki sheds light on Kissinger's personal flaws - he was obsessed with secrecy and bureaucratic infighting in an administration that self-destructed in its abuse of power - as well as his great strengths as a diplomat. We see Kissinger negotiating, threatening and joking with virtually all of the key foreign leaders of the 1970s, from Mao to Brezhnev and Anwar Sadat to Golda Meir."--Jacket.

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