Henry Kissinger saw his world fall apart

The leading advocate of world order died at a time when it all appeared to be coming undone. Henry Kissinger spent the last months of his century-long life travelling to China to temper escalating tensions with the United States, pushing for negotiations to end a war begun by Russia in Ukraine (he made his first intervention on this war in The Spectator last year), and watching as Israel and Hamas entered a new death struggle. Even more discouraging, isolationist tendencies were ascendant again in the US, and American democracy seemed crippled by divisions that shut down Congress repeatedly. Kissinger’s last book, co-authored with Google’s Erich Schmidt, warned that artificial intelligence was on the verge of supplanting human control of the planet – a challenge to consciousness ‘not experienced since the start of the Enlightenment.’

But all was not lost. Kissinger remained convinced that the leaders of the biggest states could hold it together.