Word: landau
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Arthur Lubow's review of David Landau's Kissingers The Uses of Power (October 2) seems to credit Landau with discovering Henry Kissinger's role in a 1967 prenegotiation with North Vietnam...
...Landau's best tidbit, maybe. "Major disclosure." no. Details of the Kissinger-Marcovitch-Aubrac contact chain between Washington and Hanoi were reported by David Kraslow (N.F. '61-2) and Stuart Loory in a syndicated newspaper series in the spring of 1968. The Harvard Bulletin carried the story in its issue of April 27. 1968. John T. Bethell Editor, Harvard Bulletin (Although reports of the existence of the Marcovitchaubrac mission were published earlier, Landau was the first journalist to uncover the details of the affair...
Despite his clear belief that revolutionary movements are changing the shape of world politics. Landau mouths the old cliches out "bipolar world" Regarding developments since the nineteenth century, he writes uncategorically. Where multipolarity existed before, bipolarity between the Soviet Union and the United States is the central feature of current international relations." Landau is similarly two-faced in his distinctions between Kennedy and Nixon foreign policy. In a cogent passage, he recalls the "chauvinism" of the Kennedy Administration which pledged "it would fight anywhere and at any time to achieve its goals." The Nixon Administration is less idealistic: it will...
DEVELOPING THE METTERNICH analogy. Landau is so eager to prove that Kissinger is living in the past that he ignores the real similarities between the worlds of the two diplomats. In perhaps his most fatuous statement. Landau writes that in the early nineteenth century, "the movements for popular sovereignty and self-determination had not yet reared their threatening heads." But of course, without such movements, there would have been no Metternich as we know him. The Austrian diplomat was fighting to contain just those "movements for popular sovereignty and self-determination" which the French Revolution had ignited. And interestingly enough...
...Landau muddles the Metternich analogy (which Joseph Kraft first presented in the unacknowledged article) because he recognizes the importance of the historical example to Kissinger but fails to realize its actual relevance to the current situation. Landau is usually very good when he discusses the motivation behind Kissinger's policy directives. His knowledge of Vietnamese history helps him illuminate such ironies as a proposed American peace plan which reiterates the treacherous 1946 and 1954 agreements with the French that the Vietnamese accepted to their later regret. He appreciates the paradox of Kissinger's urge for personal, Congress of Vienna style...