Word: forde
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...been 17 years since Henry Kissinger published the second of his three volumes of memoirs, which took him through Richard Nixon's resignation, and some wondered whether he would ever really write this final volume. The Gerald Ford years, after all, were filled with events (communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia, the end of detente with Russia, arms-control stalemates) that weren't exactly ripe for recounting with relish...
...worth the wait. Kissinger again displays an intellectual ambition, provocativeness and mix of sweep and detail that make other memoirs seem pale. Of course that doesn't mean Years of Renewal (Simon & Schuster; $35) is a relaxing beach read. The narratives and character sketches (including those of Nixon and Ford, excerpted in this issue) are often vivid delights, but they are leavened by meticulous trudges through old battlegrounds (some repetitive of previous volumes) that make up in defensiveness what they lack in concision. To paraphrase a reviewer of one of his first books, 40 years ago: Kissinger...
...most painful failure was the collapse of the Vietnam peace accord. Kissinger's outrage that Congress would not go to the aid of South Vietnam in 1975 when the North launched its final offensive is sincere and understandable. But he glosses over any differences he may have had with Ford, who displayed a more sensitive feel for the wariness of Congress and the weariness of the public. And he never confronts the basic reality that his 1973 peace accord fudged rather than resolved the issue of whether the communists accepted South Vietnam as an independent country. He is right...
...enduring successes of the Ford years came not from merely pursuing the pragmatic calculations of the Nixon years. The 1975 Helsinki accord, for example, including its uber-idealistic declaration on human rights, will be "considered by posterity as a landmark in the West's victory over communism," as Kissinger points out. More broadly, the Ford years restored a sense of honesty, openness and morality to the conduct of foreign affairs. In portraying them as years of renewal, Kissinger conveys his appreciation of these values, perhaps even more fully than he did at the time...
...There was an agenda in the early 1970s," says Charn, a lecturer on law at HLS. "People were concerned about the lack of mentorship and real world experience in law school. So the Ford Foundation sponsored the first wave of these clinics, to inculcate responsibility in law students...