Two Interesting Books


Two very challenging books about foreign affairs caught my attention recently.

The first book is On China, by Henry Kissinger, about his assignments to China, starting with the monumental Nixon initiative .  I found it a readable and intelligent book even though not having much background except popular news accounts over the  years.  There is also a certain thrill of reading Henry Kissinger. He is, after all, supposed to be one of the greatest statesmen ever. So there is a sort of literary placebo effect here, too.The writing is from the horse's mouth.

What is nice is how well, how abstractly, how intimately in terms of attitude and nuance, Kissinger understood Mao. Indeed,  he admires Mao-- which gives a sort of odd undertow of feeling to the book, knowing that Mao changed China, I guess for the better, who knows, and was one of the greatest political leaders ever, but also practiced, nearly, genocide.

Many facts are new to me. Randomly speaking, I was  completely unaware of the relationship between China and Vietnam during the Vietnam war, and afterward, when China invaded Vietnam, with considerable loss, or really about most things happening in Asia during the seventies and eighties.  Its a bit  humbling to realize that gap.

Also interesting is that the diplomatic initiative to China took so long to develop. It probably could have occurred mid sixties had not the Johnson administration official misread some vital messages, and taken them to indicate potentially aggressive support of smaller communist states, such as Vietnam. Really, China really had small desire or ability to subsidize revolution away from home. If others wanted to revolt, fine, but they had to do it themselves. And Mao was not even averse to Americans stationed for the long run in Vietnam. Better that than have Vietnam a Soviet satellite to close to its borders.

 One of the nice things about the book is the way Kissinger gives overall reasons and rationales for the Chairman's thinking over a range of issues. For example, there was Mao's "ideological" side, but this was often countervened by his sense of immediate strategy, the need to exist in a hostile world. So, while Taiwan had great symbolic value, Mao was able to joke near the end of his life that Taiwan was better off independent, as an American ally.  Maybe in a hundred years it should belong to China, he said to Kissinger. In other words, there are more practical things to worry about at the moment.


The most satisfying component of On China is experiencing seeing Kissinger's mind in action. Kissinger's ability to examine the subtleties of language, communique, documents, and announcements--being able to read the nuances of communication in such a complex way truly impressed.

II

The second book is Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragi-Anglo American Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue.  The book describes the Persian statesman Muhammad Mossadegh, whose governmental position was usurped by the American and British coup in the early fifties, which placed the Shah in leadership. Mossadegh has an interesting Gandhi like appeal and simplicity, even though he did, at one point, probably sanction the death of a rival.  He is an interesting combination of progressivism, stubbornness, idealism, traditional values and, guessing from the description of his life, hypochondriasis or some phantom medical illness that caused repeated fainting spells.

He had devoted much of his later political career to nationalizing the Persian oil industry, though not overtly hostile to the west. Meanwhile, Britain wanted the oil money--reeling from the debts,  loss of influence, and drop in prestige after the second world war.  In addition to wanting the oil money, the British and American governments needed to shore up fear of independence seekers in other countries, and also suspected  that Mossadegh might be dallying with communism.

The coup of 1953, which subjected Iran to decades of rule by the imposed Shah, helps put in context Iran's attitudes towards the United States today.  Or at least, that is the cautionary tale many readers seem to take away from this book. One does not necessarily have to regard the events  as a cautionary tale, but rather in and of itself an interesting chapter of international relations in the early cold war. Who knows what Iran would be like if Mossadegh might have remained in power--impossible to predict. No doubt, though, the book does indicate that the coup was ill conceived, and the urbane Shah not a person Iranians could warm up to--and very punitive to those in the government his replaced.

Mossodegh was an interesting character. Born to an influential family, he was popular with his countrymen,  and very principled in his own particular beliefs, which, in my view, are not very easily translatable to a Western reader. We can admire him, though, as a nationalist who opposed domination or usurpation by other countries, as well as an individual who cultivated and tolerated his own eccentricities, such as holding briefings from his bed, or meeting with journalists behind a table with many vials of pills.

 The author seems to have good familiarity with the subject, the writing is interesting, and the material new and intriguing for someone interested in learning about   Iranian history in a book that is more challenging than most of what the casual reader gets to see very often.