Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft From Attila the Hun to Kissinger

Mitchell makes the case for the importance of diplomacy as the world enters a dangerous new era of great-power competition. This richly researched book offers a series of detailed portraits of leaders who used the tools of diplomacy to fend off rival great powers. These figures include a Byzantine emperor who protected his realm from the Huns in the fifth century, the rulers of Renaissance-era Venice who faced the Ottomans, the Habsburg emperors who maneuvered against Frederick the Great in the eighteenth century, and Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who worked to avoid a two-front war with France and Russia. Diplomacy is not just the conveying of information to other states but an exercise in grand strategy: how states manage the gap between their limited capabilities and their need to deal with threats and dangers lurking beyond their borders. Leaders build alliances and assemble coalitions while undercutting the operating space of adversaries. They must play for time and integrate policy goals with their military and economic power. Mitchell offers a salutary survey of an increasingly necessary art in today’s fractured world.