BOOKS: How The World Works

BOTH FANS AND FOES OF HENRY Kissinger, whose ranks rival each other in fervor, have long agreed on one thing: he is brilliant at analyzing national interests and balances of power. If only he would step back from his corporate consulting and fashion-set socializing, they say, he might produce the grand tome that secures his place alongside George Kennan among the great diplomatic thinkers of our century.

Now he has, and it will. In Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster; 912 pages; $35), a sweeping portrayal of historical forces that begins with Cardinal Richelieu and ends with the challenges facing the world today, Kissinger makes the most forceful case by any American statesman since Theodore Roosevelt for the role of realism and its Prussian-accented cousin realpolitik in international affairs. Just as Kennan's odd admixture of romanticism and realism helped shape American attitudes at the outset of the cold war, Kissinger's emphasis on national interests rather than moral sentiments defines a framework for ^ dealing with the multipolar world now emerging. He has produced one of those rare books that are both exciting to read and destined to be a classic of their genre.

I should make it clear that I come to this book as an interested party. Two years ago, I wrote a biography of Kissinger, for the same publisher, which many of his detractors, and some of his putative friends, said pulled too many punches, and which his fervent defenders (himself among them) decried as too harsh. My conclusion was that Kissinger had a remarkable feel for the interplay of national interests but that he failed to appreciate the strength America derives from the openness of its democratic system. His strategic and tactical brilliance made possible the U.S.'s rapprochement with China, but his secretive style and disdain for the moralism that undergirds America's sense of mission led to a backlash from both the left and the right against detente with the Soviet Union. Diplomacy reaffirms both my respect for his brilliance as an analyst and my reservations about the low priority he places on the values that have made American democracy such a powerful international force.

The world, Kissinger writes, is entering an era when many states of comparable strength will compete and cooperate based on shifting national interests. America has never felt comfortable with such balance-of-power arrangements. So to understand what lessons history may hold for this new order, Kissinger maintains, we should study the diplomatic dances that began in Europe 350 years ago -- a topic that, perhaps not coincidentally, is Kissinger's area of academic expertise.

Cardinal Richelieu, the First Minister of France at the time, developed the concept of national interest while working to prevent the revival of the Holy Roman Empire, which he deemed a threat to France's security even though both were Catholic. No longer were national interests to be equated with religious or moral goals. During the 18th century, balance-of-power diplomacy was perfected by England, an island state with a security interest in preserving equilibrium on the European continent.