A century of strategy

Lessons from Henry Kissinger on his 100th birthday

Henry Kissinger is 100. He did a round of interviews in the weeks and days leading up to his recent century-mark birthday, and so I rounded up some of those interviews to mine for the best insights into his thinking. I've brought them here to Strategy Notes.

Whatever you think of Mr. Kissinger—and I'm sure the opinions vary widely—he's experienced in a way that's rare. Very rare. In at least one way of thinking, at the intersection of longevity and placement, he may well be the most experienced strategically-minded person on the planet.

Of course his background is tilted toward statecraft, but much of what he says and thinks can be repackaged for far wider use. The quotations below from Mr. Kissinger come from two sources, the Economist (20-26 May edition), and the Wall Street Journal 27-28 May edition ("The Great Strategist Turns 100," interview with Tunku Varadarajan).

On the stakes in today's world:

"We live in a world of unprecedented destructiveness. If you look at military history, you can say, it has never been possible to destroy all your opponents, because of limitations of geography and of accuracy. [Now] there are no limitations. Every adversary is 100 percent vulnerable."