Henry Kissinger: The Emotional Statesman*

Abstract

“That poor fellow is an emotional fellow,” a fretful Richard Nixon observed about Henry Kissinger on Christmas Eve 1971. The national security adviser had fallen into one of his typical postcrisis depressions, anguished over public criticism of his handling of the Indo-Pakistani War. In a long, meandering conversation with aide John Ehrlichman, Nixon covered many topics, but kept circling back to his “emotional” foreign policy adviser. “He's the kind of fellow that could have an emotional collapse,” he remarked. Ehrlichman agreed. “We just have to get him some psychotherapy,” he told the president. Referring to Kissinger as “our major problem,” the two men recalled earlier episodes of Kissinger's “impossible” behavior. They lamented his inability to shrug off criticism, his frequent mood swings, and his “emotional reactions.” Ehrlichman speculated that Nelson Rockefeller's team had “had all kind of problems with him,” too. Nixon marveled at how “ludicrous” it was that he, the president—beset with enormous problems on a global scale—had to spend so much time “propping up this guy.” No one else, Nixon said, would have put up with “his little tantrums.”1