His prescriptions for Europe are uncharacteristically bland and uncontroversial. Following a run-through of the history of the nation-state, Kissinger explicates the details of a strategy whose main point is the avoidance of combinations of enemies.

Kissinger heightens anticipation by citing an increase in discord among our allies, but in the end only calls for more sensitive policies and rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic. The threat is that parties will be forced to act against their own long-term interest in dissolving the Atlantic alliance, and the medicine is the slow and well-considered expansion of NATO (gauged by geopolitical necessities), a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area, and continued engagement with the European Union.

Kissinger includes the required argument in favor of a national ballistic missile shield here, but it is not his best effort. His explanation of why he urged Nixon to sign the anti-ballistic missile treaty sounds fishy (he says he was against it but the administration was backed into the treaty by domestic pressure), and he does a far better job of outlining the arguments against a shield than in rebutting them.

He concludes that the shield will eventually work, does not contradict nuclear doctrine and will neither decouple the U.S. from Europe’s defense nor promote proliferation—but he fails to explain convincingly why the shield should be a top priority.

At one point he points out that even if a missile shield provoked a race with countries whose arsenal is at the limit of the shield’s capacity, it would be a race that the U.S would eventually win—but there’s no consideration of what the cost of such a race would be, and how that figures into the national interest.

Moving on to the Western Hemisphere, Kissinger says the overall question is how the U.S. can bring about a regime of free-trading, internally stable and externally sated powers while preventing the emergence of rival blocs. Kissinger takes a fairly detailed approach, but again while the prescriptions are coated in allusions to visionless American policy, they are themselves either vague or totally mired in the details.

Kissinger’s chapters on Asia, the Middle East and Africa follow a similar format, made repetitive by atrocious section titles (“Relations with China: The Historical Context,” followed by “Relations with China: The Strategic Context”)—sharp analysis of the historical moment the region finds itself in, explanations of how the concerns of balance of power and national interest apply, followed finally by his prescriptions.