Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger By A. Wess Mitchell  Princeton, 2025, 352 pages, $27 “In history,” wrote Winston Churchill, “lies all the secrets of statecraft.” In his new and important book Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger, A. Wess Mitchell, who served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in the first Trump administration and is a principal at the Marathon Initiative, uses historical examples across two millennia to highlight the crucial role of diplomacy in great power politics. Mitchell’s purpose in writing this book is to overcome “the conceit that humankind is progressing toward an apotheosis in which brave new ideas and technology will free us from the age-old dictates of geography, history, and human nature.” Mitchell acknowledges that in great power politics, diplomacy unsupported by military power is little more than bluff. Much of history is made up of human tragedy, and the statesmen who have been most successful in advancing the interests of their countries have approached international politics with what Robert Kaplan calls a “tragic mind.” All of the advances of science, medicine, health, technology, and education have not altered human nature. What Hans Morgenthau called “power politics” still rules in international relations. Statecraft should not be a profession of idealists. Diplomacy is conducted not by the pious pronouncements of the Sermon on the Mount, but by the wily maneuverings counseled by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince. The statesmen profiled by Mitchell include the Byzantine Empire’s 5th century court chamberlain Chrysaphius whose wise diplomacy and appeasement of the Huns preserved Byzantine independence in the face of multi-front threats (the other threat being from Persia); Francesco Foscario, the Doge of Venice in the mid-15th century, who used diplomacy, trade, and what today we call geoeconomics to stave off the threat from other Italian states and gain time to prepare for defending against the Ottoman Empire; France’s Queen Regent Louise of Savoy and Cardinal Richelieu, who forged diplomatic alliances with Protestant powers to offset the threat of encirclement by Catholic Spain and Austria (ruled by the Hapsburgs); Austria’s Anton von Kaunitz-Rittberg and Klemens von Metternich, whose foreign policies Mitchell characterizes as “confederal diplomacy” where cunning was substituted for strength in providing for Austria’s security in the wake of the Napoleonic wars; German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who after waging war to unify Germany under Prussia’s leadership in the mid-1860s-early 1870s, used diplomacy to establish and maintain a general European peace for three decades; Great Britain’s foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne, who broke with Lord Salisbury’s policy of “splendid isolation” to gain continental allies in time to prepare for the outbreak of World War I; and U.S. President Richard Nixon and top foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger, who used diplomacy — détente with the Soviet Union, the opening to China, disengagement from the Vietnam War — to set the stage for America’s victory in the Cold War. Mitchell acknowledges that in great power politics, diplomacy unsupported by military power is little more than bluff. “Hard power,” in other words, is an essential ingredient in successful diplomacy. A nation’s particular circumstances dictate what diplomatic strategy is most appropriate. Mitchell divides strategy into three categories: strategies of conciliation (which include deflection, appeasement, and détente); strategies of enmeshment (involving nations with shared economic and political interests); and strategies of isolation (coalition-building to isolate a potential enemy). Sometimes these strategies overlap. The most successful diplomats, Mitchell notes, usually exhibited “patience, prudence, flexibility, indirection, and self-control.” In the post-Cold War world, history did not come to its Hegelian end. Nor did history reach the Kantian apogee of perpetual peace. All of the diplomatic achievements recounted in Mitchell’s book were temporary. The Byzantine and Venetian empires eventually fell. France exhausted itself in Louis XIV’s wars. The Habsburgs lost power as their empires faded. Germany, without Bismarck’s guiding hand, produced a coalition of enemies and led Europe on the road to a suicidal war. Great Britain exhausted itself in two world wars. The United States, in forging a de facto alliance with Communist China to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War, helped facilitate China’s rise as an opposing great power in the 21st century. Global politics do not lend themselves to permanent solutions. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: One Cheer for Ted Turner Winston Churchill and Donald Trump: The Elite’s Favorite Villains Trumpian Geoeconomics and Indo-Pacific Geopolitics