Introduction

When Henry Kissinger died, recently, the obituaries hailed him as a master of Realpolitik, as its very personification. For the Financial Times: ‘For nearly a decade, Henry Kissinger, the US national security adviser and secretary of state who has died at 100, was able to put into practice what he had preached in his academic career. He argued that realpolitik diplomacy was rooted in the understanding that achieving a balance of power […] required taking the interests of all parties into consideration, but not necessarily the interests of those not holding power.’