American Foreign Policy

“The test of the statesman is the permanence of the international structure under stress.” These words from the opening essay in this volume announce a recurrent theme in the pages that follow. For while some of Henry Kissinger’s papers gathered here explore conceptual issues that world leaders often overlook during periods of international tension, and others display the global range of his policy initiatives while Secretary of State, all testify to his overriding concern with the necessity of building a stable framework of world order.