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Though denounced by many historians as a war-criminal during his eight years as President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford’s foreign policy executioner, Henry Kissinger began reinventing himself as a “wise man” as soon as the Republicans had to vacate the White House in January 1977. 

In November 1977, Kissinger allowed himself to express his understanding of the considerations that must inform the United States-Isreal relationships. The occasion was the felicitation of the former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on November 13, 1977, just a week before Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Jerusalem. It was a gathering of most consequential Jewish leaders in the United States.

When Kissinger spoke, there was no Islamic Republic of Iran. The Shah of Iran, assigned the role by the United States as the “Policeman of the Persian Gulf” was still presiding over a repressive regime in Tehran. The Soviet Union had not collapsed and the Cold War still was a chilling central theme of global tensions. “9/11” was light years away; the “clash of civilisations” had not yet begun. 

So, the formulations Kissinger had to make in November 1977 were profoundly realistic. Those principles and prescriptions remain contemporaneously useful templates, for any set of decision-makers who gather in the Oval Office, including those assigned for negotiations........

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