This book offers an introductory guide for students to four centuries of diplomatic thought. Since diplomacy as we know it was created during the Renaissance in Italy, a number of major figures have reflected on the place of diplomacy in foreign affairs and the problems associated with its pursuit. These include statesmen, international lawyers and historians, most of whom had experience as diplomats of the first or second rank. This book examines the thought of some of the most important of them, from Niccolò Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century to Henry Kissinger in the late twentieth century.

History does not run in straight lines. Instead of inevitable progress, what we get is more often false starts, blind alleys, random events, good intentions that go wrong. Robert Cooper's incisive and elegant book is therefore not a continuous diplomatic history. Richelieu and Mazarin inhabited a 16th-century world we can hardly imagine today, but it is from their time that we can begin to see the outline of today's Europe. The Ambassadors includes a brilliant analysis of the people who built the Western side of the Cold War. Henry Kissinger is a pivotal figure in the post-war world, and his story is in some ways typical: he failed in his most important aims and succeeded in ways he never expected. Robert Cooper's pieces together history and considers the illuminating fragments it leaves behind.

Fully revised and updated, this comprehensive guide to diplomacy explores the art of negotiating international agreements and the channels through which such activities occur when states are in diplomatic relations, and when they are not. This new edition includes chapters on secret intelligence and economic and commercial diplomacy.

This book offers an introductory guide for students to four centuries of diplomatic thought. Since diplomacy as we know it was created during the Renaissance in Italy, a number of major figures have reflected on the place of diplomacy in foreign affairs and the problems associated with its pursuit. These include statesmen, international lawyers and historians, most of whom had experience as diplomats of the first or second rank. This book examines the thought of some of the most important of them, from Niccolò Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century to Henry Kissinger in the late twentieth century.

Kissinger's six leaders are Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher. All of them were formed in a period when established institutions collapsed all over Europe, colonial structures gave way to independent states in Asia and Africa, and a new international order had to be created from the vestiges of the old. Kissinger penetratingly analyses each of these leaders' careers through the highly individual strategies of statecraft which he presents them as embodying, to show how it is the combination of character and circumstance which creates history. Kissinger's public experience, personal knowledge and historical perceptions enrich the book with insights and judgements such as only he could make.

The former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon argues that a coherent foreign policy is essential and lays out his own plan for getting the nation's international affairs in order.