SOURCE: “What Makes God Laugh?,” in National Review, Vol. 51, No. 9, May 17, 1999, p. 56.

In the following review of Years of Renewal, O'Sullivan discusses Kissinger's foreign policies, specifically focusing on alliance with China, the conclusion of the Vietnam War, peace negotiations with the Middle East, the Cyprus dispute, and the Soviet arms control in the wake of Watergate.

Towards the end of his third volume of memoirs, Henry Kissinger indulges in some reflections on the changing nature of statesmanship. These are characteristically shrewd until he reaches the argument that information has largely removed the need for style as an instrument of diplomacy. Where once the statesman absorbed history and a sense of perspective by reading well-constructed and precisely phrased diplomatic analyses, runs the argument, he can now retrieve all the information on any given topic at the touch of a button on a computer keyboard.

At this point, the reader...