Sublime

When Henry Kissinger became President Nixon’s national security adviser, he made sure that communication about foreign policy issues flowed only through him.

Henry Kissinger established his reputation as a foreign policy expert with the publication of Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy in 1957—an unrelenting critique of Eisenhower’s New Look strategy.34

‘Statesmen are not called upon only to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.’[1]

Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, “who hardly qualifies as a bleeding heart,” Schlesinger wrote a few days later, “… said to me, ‘We need someone who will take a big jump—not just improve on existing trends but produce a new frame of mind, a new national atmosphere. If Kennedy debates Nixon on who can best manage the status quo, he is lost. The is

he cautioned me ‘never to confuse energy with strength’.

Leadership is most essential during periods of transition, when values and institutions are losing their relevance, and the outlines of a worthy future are in controversy.