Kissinger was a foreign-policy realist toward global affairs

A few years ago, I attended a lecture where historian Niall Ferguson explained how Henry Kissinger approached him at a cocktail reception to ask if Ferguson would be interested in writing a biography of the former secretary of state and national security adviser.

Ferguson is prolific, but he initially demurred saying he had too many projects ongoing to take on another one.

"What a shame," said Kissinger. "I have just finished putting together a couple of hundred boxes of private papers, diaries, and notes. I guess they will have to go into storage." Of course, Ferguson capitulated.

The question is, why would Kissinger want another biography at that point? He wrote his own three volumes - "The White House Years," "The Years of Upheaval," and "The Years of Renewal" - and there have been others by authors such as Walter Isaacson and Christopher Hitchens that Kissinger, whose vanity was legendary, definitely did not like.

Kissinger clearly believed that, given Ferguson's more conservative leanings, this new bio might cast him in a more positive light. Kissinger still cared very much about his controversial legacy, and he could not have been disappointed when Ferguson's first volume came out in 2015 with the title: "Kissinger - 1923-1968 The Idealist."

"The Idealist"? Henry Kissinger? That caused quite a stir.

Even though my own diplomatic career came after Kissinger had left government, I still found myself dealing with his legacy. I served twice in Cyprus, and a vast number of Greek Cypriots believe to this day that Kissinger was the "evil genius" behind the 1974 coup against Archbishop Makarios by the Greek junta that precipitated the Turkish invasion and the splitting of the island.

The reality is that Kissinger was rather ill-informed about events in Cyprus and distracted by Watergate and the impending resignation of President Nixon. Still, the impression lingers nearly 50 years on.

Kissinger will always be seen as the dispassionate practitioner of realpolitik and balance of power diplomacy. Although he took great credit for inserting language into the 1975 Helsinki Accords on human rights, it was clear he saw that language not as an idealistic goal but as a useful club with which to beat the Soviets.

If Kissinger were secretary of state or national security adviser today, I suspect he would not be all that bothered by the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and, despite his own Jewish heritage, would not have reacted emotionally to the events of Oct 7. What he would care about would be restoring order and keeping our adversaries from opportunistically exploiting the chaos.

I am not sure where one would find the idealism in that.

President Biden is spending an inordinate amount of time right now on foreign crises even though foreign policy is never near the top of the American voters' concerns.

Yet the death of Henry Kissinger provides and opportunity for American citizens to think about the realist foreign policy Kissinger championed - as cold-blooded as it sometimes was - and the more idealistic foreign policy that gives more weight to human rights and the furthering of democracy. American foreign policy has always been a mixture of both. Only the balance changes.

The goal of our policy has always been to make America more secure and, in the bargain, more prosperous. I believe that America cannot be the America envisioned by our founders if it does not champion human rights and democracy, and I also believe those things are not at odds with those fundamental goals.

Henry Kissinger was not inherently evil or virtuous. Many of his achievements made America and the world safer, including detente and arms control with the Soviets and opening the way for more realistic relations with China.

Now it is for politicians and scholars to dissect his legacy and voluminous writings to decide if their lessons can be applied to a world that Kissinger admitted is vastly more complex than the Cold War era he shaped.

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.