A Homeric Age of Statesmanship

What does statecraft look like? It’s been decades since we’ve seen it consistently at the highest levels in Washington. Over the past two years, we have witnessed the hypocritical abuse of the Biden administration’s relationship with a historic ally, Saudi Arabia; his cavalier treatment of other Middle Eastern friends; and his misguided pro-democracy summit that banned de facto allies in favor of weak, anarchic states. Although the White House has switched violently of late – largely due to its need for allies against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine – its foreign policy assumptions have proven fundamentally unsound.

Contrasting with these misdeeds are the accounts of three major Republican secretaries of state who directed American diplomacy in the middle and late stages of the Cold War: Heinrich Kissinger, George Schulz and Jacob Baker III. Their achievements were inseparable from their understanding of America as a nation-state, a worldview that put US needs above all else.