SOURCE: “The Revolutionist: How Henry Kissinger Won the Cold War, or So He Thinks,” in The New Republic, Vol. 220, No. 25, June 21, 1999, p. 38–48.

In the following review of Years of Renewal, Kagan negatively discusses Kissinger's analysis of Soviet foreign relations in the Nixon-Ford era as a revisionist, distorted version of historical events, asserting that Kissinger retrospectively attributes the demise of the Soviet system and the Cold War to Nixon's, Ford's, and his own policies of détente.

I.

Of the handful of American diplomats who achieved any real fame, Henry Kissinger may be unique in having earned renown for presiding over a period in American foreign policy widely regarded as disastrous. Especially miserable were the latter years of Kissinger's government career, from 1974 through 1976, which is the period that he covers in Years of Renewal, his third and concluding volume of memoirs. Before 1973, there had been some modest successes, and...