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The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.

Henry Kissinger

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.
HENRY KISSINGER

Decision Seek Victory
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
HENRY KISSINGER

Book Mistake Myself
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
HENRY KISSINGER

Difficult Problem Success
Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.
HENRY KISSINGER

Intellectual Politics
Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.
HENRY KISSINGER

Learning Myself Necessary
What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.
HENRY KISSINGER

Strategy Writing
A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security
HENRY KISSINGER

Moral Perfection Policy Security
If Chinese exceptionalism represented the claims of a universal empire, Japanese exceptionalism sprang from the insecurities of an island nation borrowing heavily from its neighbor, but fearful of being dominated by it.
HENRY KISSINGER

Fear Insecurity Nation Represent
Politicians are like dogs, Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable
HENRY KISSINGER

Commitment Dog Expectation Growth Life Politics
A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.
HENRY KISSINGER

Growth Issue Live Strong Time Weakness Wonderful
I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
HENRY KISSINGER

Humble Impossible Myself Praise Stop Thankful Time
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests
HENRY KISSINGER

Enemy Friendship
It’s a pity both sides can’t lose (commenting on Iran-Iraq war, 1980 – 1988)
HENRY KISSINGER

Lose War
Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world
HENRY KISSINGER

Big World
Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.
HENRY KISSINGER

Perspective Problem Thinking
The war is just when the intention that causes it to be undertaken is just. The will is therefore the principle element that must be considered, not the means, He who intends to kill the guilty sometimes faultlessly shed the blood of the innocents
HENRY KISSINGER

Guilty Himself Kill Principle War Willing

The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.

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The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.

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Popular Authors

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