The successful statesman cannot simply be a chess player, viewing the world purely in terms of the costs and benefits to the next move. They must have a profound sense of right and wrong and the steely resolve to see it through. Henry Kissinger was the leading American chronicler of the intricacies of diplomacy, having taken part in so many complex, pivotal negotiations himself. The text thus reflects significantly on episodes that exemplify the real skill to diplomacy, such as Nixon facilitating an opening to China, which prompted the Soviet Union to pursue détente with the United States to avert too close a partnership between their two principal rivals.

In Kissinger’s account, however, life is not a game with a predetermined means of success. All leadership “must be transformational, especially in moments of crisis” (xxv), and only a moral vision can inform a sense of the world as it might be. Thus Nixon imagined a shift from the grim bipolar rivalry of the Cold War to an equilibrium among multiple powers, “each balancing the other, not one playing against the other, an even balance” (139). Most would not consider Richard Nixon a moral person, and even Kissinger admits to some of his personal failings, but Kissinger nonetheless saw Nixon’s elaborate diplomatic maneuverings as a way to not just bring about a better world but to change the way his people thought about that world.