ABSTRACT
Dr Henry Kissinger is said to have made détente possible. A Harvard professor, who had been national security adviser to the President, then latterly his Secretary of State, was credited with having devised a new mode of negotiation which successfully transformed Nixon’s avowed objective to replace confrontation with co-operation into a living reality. Nor is it the American mass media alone which sings Kissinger’s praises, for he enjoys the esteem of many world leaders, including those most hostile to US policies. Sadat, for example, has repeatedly extolled the Secretary’s genius, and described him as a trustworthy intermediary. I remember one private discussion which I had in Moscow in September 1973 with Professor Arbatov, the head of the US Institute in the Soviet Union; he acknowledged the undeniable talents of Kissinger, though he opposed his political philosophy on security and upheld the notion of ‘collective security’. But the strangest judgement came from Chou en Lai, when he spoke to the Al-Ahram team in February 1973. ‘We are against Israel’, he remarked, ‘but not against the Jews. Many great men in history have been Jewish: Marx, Einstein — and Kissinger.’
