>> host: you write both the united states and china believe they represent unique values. and you say the united states believes it has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world were as china acts on the basis of its singularity. and that it has expanded through what you call cultural ask moses. tell us what you mean. >> guest: d. america believes

its values apply everywhere, that everybody can adopt, that our institute can be spread everywhere. the chinese believe that they represent a unique civilization. you can't really become a chinese, you have to grow up in its cultural environment. you can't really naturalize as a chinese. so, as a result, americans have thought of the world as composed of more or less equal societies. the concept of sovereignty to go with it. and chinese until the end of the 19th century, saw the world as tributaries to what they call the celestial empire. tributaries didn't mean that they had to pay tribute. they had to bring, a respective

they bring some gifts, but they're also given bigger gifts in return. but what he did mean is that they indicated respect for the nature of chinese society and chinese supremacy in its region. so, chinese relations with other nations are based more on mutual respect than on a concept of equality. but the chinese, as we do, believe that their values are unique, and it makes them even more sensitive that we would be to outside pressures telling them how to redo their society. >> host: is it a superiority? do the chinese when you say --

>> guest: is not necessary a sense of personal superiority. >> host: you also write that when europe entered the modern age it had a tremendous expense with diversity. and you had these princes and can't pick your cities across europe that govern themselves and you had an entire medical philosophy built on that concept, that liberalization, right? you also said when china entered the modern age it had been a fully functioning improve bureaucracy for over 1000 years. tell us what you mean. >> guest: china, the modern china, developed about 2000 years ago. and when china was unified, and then it was governed by a bureaucracy that was elected by competitive examination. so in that sense it was more modern than europe was at that

period. china had a governing philosophy which was confucianism, and a governing bureaucracy which operated on a national basis. and, therefore, when others have said occasionally china was conquered by its neighbors, but they didn't know how to govern it, and they needed the chinese bureaucracy. so in at least two occasions in china's history, foreigners came in, conquered the country, use the chinese bureaucracy to govern it and became by itself. so china expanded sometimes by the opposite, not by conquest, but by being conquered and then siding by the congress.

the mongols in one occasion in the manchus from the north in another. >> host: much more efficient way. >> guest: painful way. >> host: you also say that because china was never forced to engage with larger civilizations in the world, it remained basically insular, but because of that it also considered itself the center of the world. does that still hold true? >> guest: in a way it still is held true when nixon and i went to china. the conduct of mao in the first revolutionary leaders in china steel was subconsciously influenced by the chinese patterns. for example, you never had an appointment with mao. you were summoned to see mao.

and i was also the same of any in the previous millennium. there was a british come at the end of the 18th century, the british sent an envoy to beijing, and he was supposed to have trade and diplomatic relations and everything that europeans were familiar with. he was marvelously received but he couldn't get an audience with the emperor. and it took him three months before he was summoned. and then they said you have nothing we want, and we have nothing you should watch. trade was not possible. and we don't receive ambassadors because anyone who lives in beijing has to wear chinese close, live in a chinese house, and can never leave china.

so, your question is do they still think this. of course not. that's a -- that's exactly this way. and with the globalization of the economy and its daily contact, but there's still a tendency to think in central kingdom terms, though it's much attenuated in the modern period of. >> host: you mention massey time, of course the father of the chinese congress revolution. you knew him? you work with him? >> guest: i met him five times. three times of the. >> host: what were your impressions of him both as a strategic leader and as a movement leader? >> guest: first as a movement leader, one has to understand that, the tens of minds of people were killed under his

rule. and the reason for that was in part because he wanted to complete the congress revolution in his lifetime. he knew that in chinese history the leader he respected most was an emperor and unified china, and then 20 years after his death all vestiges of its rule had disappeared except for the unification. so he, for example, organized what was called the great leap forward in which china was about to move from total under development to a steel production at the level of great britain, in three years, and in order to do that they had to get resources from the countryside and they melted down all the

steel implements. the result was a famine in which as many as 40 million people may have been killed, then 10 years later he started the cultural revolution which was another reduced another huge quantities of casualties, of the moral ground and on the leader movement ground. he was enormous cruelties. at the same time, as ruler of china, he had to maneuver china among a whole host of other countries. and a china that was poor, underdeveloped, not very strong militarily, and had just emerged from a century and a half of colonial depredations. so, on that strategic, he was a

great leader. he had an enormous scale and strategic analysis. and he'd maneuver to china, of course the only major comments country that that survived the collapse of communism all over the world. and he managed to switch from the communist side to the winning side in the cold war. without missing a beat. so from that point of view, as a strategic analyst, which is how we got to know him first. he had extraordinary abilities, as you would expect from somebody who started and unified a huge society, and for the decade-long civil war. but one cannot forget the

suffering he caused. >> host: you mentioned you met with him five times, three times alone, one on one. what were your impressions of him as a man? >> guest: it was never totally one by one but i was the principal. mao in those contacts, and i didn't have to deal with him on a victim level, i think it's been written have these meetings came about. as i said, you were summoned. so chinese escorts would take off, almost always in chinese cars to where he lived. now he undoubtedly had many places, but the one they showed foreigners, he lived in soviet style houses. in which it was none of the majesty of, say, european

majesties. the first time i saw him, the room had a big round table in it, and he received one in the study in which books were scattered all over the place. and he sat in the middle of a semicircle. he had a very -- he did not as almost every leader i knew, that i met over the years, we do, most players would say i have five points to make. and here are my five points. mao wouldn't do this. mao would begin his conversati conversation, what is your consideration? and then he would pose an issue. then you would say whatever he wanted to say, and then he would

say, well, have you considered? and every once in a while he would make an interjection. at one point we were discussing big co-op, the contribution europe could make to the common defense. and he said, they remind me of swallows who fly up into the air at an approaching storm, and flap their wings. but you, professor, and i will know that the flapping of wings does not affect the coming of the storm. so he achieved in that sentence to things. one, he gave me equal status with him, sort of a philosopher,

you, professor and i. and then he had this metaphor, impotence. and this is how he would conduct a conversation. and sometimes it would get pointed but it was usually in an indirect way. but very forceful. when he spoke you knew. it wasn't that his voice, he vibrated physical, almost dominance. the last few times i saw him he had a stroke, and he had great difficulty speaking, and he had to croak out a sound, and china being a tonal language, interpreters had to hold up what they understood him to say before they could interpret it. but even then can he conducted a

meeting of over two hours with all his physical disabilities. so, he was, obviously he was a formidable person. >> host: let's talk about 1972 and that dramatic diplomatic breakthrough. conducted by you and president nixon of course. it's interesting because president nixon told in the 1990s that this thing that brought the two of you together, china and the united states, was a major strategic concern over the growing soviet power and the chinese lived across the border inside growing soviet assertiveness and they saw a nuclear buildup, very concerned. said they approach the united states. you approach china. you came together for strategic reasons. could you describe the strategic dynamics at the time that allowed the kind of triangular diplomacy that you and president nixon were trying to develop?

>> guest: as you say, we saw the growth of soviet power. and the soviet union had in this space of 10 years had occupied hungary, it had suffocated poland the second time, and had occupied czechoslovakia. now, in the summer of 69, the beginning of the buildup along the chinese border, and the military clashes along the river between the two sides. and we were sort of watching this. and then the soviets made a mistake that accelerated our consideration. the mistake was that they send their ambassadors to brief us periodically about fascist and a chinese. they did that probably because we were considering attacking china, and they wanted to prove

that they had a good reason for doing it. it had to practically -- i created a map for nixon, and the and our staff to look at, of the location of these incidents. and then recalled in an expert and said, if there are incidents in these places, what would that suggest to you? who is impacted? and that experts said, well, this is so close, the soviet supplies, and pretty far from chinese supply points you. so it's unlikely that the chinese want to attack would do it from such a position. then we picked up a few other signals. and then nixon made one of an unannounced but important, most

important decision, which was we discussed, assuming there's a war, what position does the united states take. and we concluded that it was against the american interest to have china defeated, even though we had no contact with them. and so, we decided that in case of war we would be technically neutral, but tilt towards china and try to give it as much ability to survive as we could. now, we didn't communicate that to the chinese because we had no way of communicating with them, but what we did do is to step up statements that we would not be

indifferent to such a war, and we had direct the cia to make a speech, i think it was typical science association, something that we knew would leak in a low-key way he made that point, and the deputy secretary. and then we began looking for channels into china at the same time. and we did a number of little things. for example, in retrospect it looks very miniscule. chinese -- nobody, no american could buy chinese goods anywhere. so, we lifted that restriction so that as a tourist you could buy $100 worth of chinese goods.

the chinese in turn released some people that had -- there was a yacht that had strayed into chinese waters and the occupants -- anyway, had been captured and they were released. so we had these signals, but we found it hard to establish contact because, for example, we sent it message through romania, or rather we told the romanians what they might tell the chinese. we chose the romanian channel because nixon had been in romania, and the romanians had been the most independent of the european communist countries. so, we thought they might have most ability in beijing. the problem was that the chinese

communists didn't trust any one, so they were reluctant to be very specific through romania. and finally again on a trip around the world, nixon talked to the pakistan president, and that established a contact which we then used. >> host: let me ask you about the immediate backdrop to what you were doing with the opening to china, which was the vietnam war. we talked about the strategic dynamics between the united states and soviet union which was growing, at least in strategic terms, and china. talk a little bit if you would about how you expected the opening to china to affect the war in vietnam. >> guest: one has to remember that nixon didn't start the war. nixon inherited the war in vietnam. we nixon handed off there were

545,000 americans in the non, -- vietnam. which was a major attack by the vietnamese. we had riots in the streets in this country against the war in vietnam. at the same time we were the country on which security of almost every region of the world affected. and nixon felt that even though he had not made the original commitment, he would not abandon the people whose reliance on american promises had staked their future on cooperating with us. so, we nixon decided to withdraw from vietnam, but to do it in a way which people in south

vietnam would be given the opportunity to develop, to choose their own fate. one condition he would not need is to turn over the vietnamese population to the communists. he wanted a free political process. and the people said he couldn't ended the war more quickly. they never tell you how, because if you look at the record of negotiations you would see that every other condition we were willing to make, except that one. now, the vietnamese approach negotiating with us was to try to -- i went every weekend to paris to negotiate on behalf of of nixon and of the united states. and their strategy was to

outweigh us. by opening to china, we had to follow. first of all, it changes the debate. it showed that nixon he was being vilified as being opposed to peace in vietnam had actually large, almost grandiose conception which include the whole world. and so, at the same time it isolated the vietnamese because it meant that the closest, or at least their nearby allies, was willing to deal with the united states without informing them, and to some extent to their disadvantage, because it ended up the psychological reason, they thought they had established. so that was an important aspect.

>> any national security and foreign policy calculus there's always american domestic opinion. which any great leader knows how to change, how to persuade, how to move. now, when you think about the opening to china, and they help with the soviet in which you conduct it as well, was that part of a strategy to stay but to the american people that why we're fighting this hot war in vietnam that the signatures was also seeking longer-term peace with china rex. >> guest: it was not done as a political maneuver. it was done because he believed it to be, and we believed. it had to practicality of telling the american people, the events in one part of the world that we had in fact inherited

and we try to liquidate, and to look at the overall design which put china, soviet union, europe into a pattern that could be, at times, by public opinion. >> host: taiwan, the united states and china have, still have wild divergent views about taiwan. how did president nixon and mao zedong move past that? >> guest: for 20 years the negotiation between china and the united states took different courses. the chinese negotiated, they would say we won't do anything else until you have turned taiwan over to us. when we turned that down, the american negotiator would say we won't do anything else until you give us a pledge of peaceful

attitudes towards taiwan. so, there was an absolute deadlock. even before i got to beijing, and in their first communicate to us, the chinese invited us in order to discuss to turn over taiwan, to china. we replied that we were willing to talk about the issue of taiwan, but only in relation to all other issues of asia. and the chinese accepted that. so that was already a huge concession before we ever got there. one has to remember the united states under president roosevelt

in the cairo declaration of 1943 had declared that the united states considered taiwan to be a part of china. so the fact that taiwan belongs to china have never been revoked by any american president. the only condition except with the american presence made to take over with the union would be peaceful. so, we got around this problem by signing a communiqué in which each side stated its own views. we stated in our view that the chinese people on both sides of the taiwan strait, pursuant there is only one china.

the united states said it does not challenge that proposition. so, that was a way of accepting one china. but we still did not recognize beijing as the government of china, and nixon was in the capital of a country that he did not recognize as the capital of that country. so, if you look at the 40 years that has happened since then, old sides had in a way finished the taiwan problem, on the pages of really three principles. that the united states accepts the principle of one china. that the united states strongly insists on the terms the need for a peaceful solution. and that the united states warned each side, plus the

taiwanese, not to take precipitous action. and to consider that this has been carried out for 40 years. it's quite remarkable. now today there are many heroes of retrospective diplomacy who say what nixon might have done, and what nixon might have extracted. we didn't hear from any of them at that time. >> host: of course not. the framework that you put in place in 1972 has been remarkably durable to this very day. >> guest: on both parties. so it's one of the most continuous american foreign policies. >> host: dr. kissinger, please stand by. we will take a short break. when we come back i would like to move into more current affairs and the united states relationship with china.

we will cover all of those issues are former secretary of state henry kissinger in his new book "on china" when we come back. >> host: we are regional by former secretary of state dr. henry kissinger who has a masterful new book out called quite simply "on china." dr. kissinger, let's talk about more current events, particularly as they relate to the united states relationship with china. it's very complicated now. i remember when it's working for president nixon in the early

1990s, he said it's interesting because when kissinger and i opened relations with china in the early '70s, it was all about strategic issues, which we talked about before the break. he said now in the early '90s he said now it's almost all about economics. i think now in the 21st century it's a combination of both, strategic and economic. when you look at china's incredibly rapid economic rise, are you stunned or are you surprised, or not at all? >> guest: i'm surprised, and so would nixon be in any of us who were in the original group that opened to china. when nixon -- when i had been to china but before nixon left, nixon invited the french who had been in china, to see what we

could learn from them. and he said china is such a desperately poor country. the most important thing you can do for them is to do a kind of model plan, give them economic eight. but mao didn't want economic eight and he didn't want to china to take it from the rest of the world at all. china was so poor at the time when nixon went there, they did not have telephone equipment to connect us with washington in a way appropriate to the president. so, we brought in material and sold to the chinese. at any rate, we would have been amazed at the rapid progress that is taking place, which really couldn't take place until mao had died and the group came

in. >> host: after mao he was succeeded by the late deng xiaoping which would revolutionize the chinese economy because he began reform through agriculture. he began agricultural reforms that lay the framework for what we see today. right? >> guest: right. for mao everything was ideology. but deng xiaoping said i don't know if it's black or gray, it's always that catches mice. so anything that works was acceptable. and he liberated the energy of the chinese people. one has to remember that over the last 2000 years, in 1800 of the last 2000 years, china had the largest growth domestic product in the world. it was just in the 19th century that they fell apart because of the impact of

colonialism. but chinese economic growth really take place until just about 30 years ago. >> host: how would you describe chinese capitalism? would you describe it as managed capitalism? >> guest: i would describe it, call it, what would they call it quits market economy with -- >> host: chinese characteristics? >> guest: what it is, it's market economics, but guided by strategic decisions from the center, which helped establish priorities. and so far it has worked, amazingly. you have a growth rate of eight

or 10% over a 30 year period. it's an extraordinary achievement in. >> host: even during times of global recession. >> guest: of course, they can do things that we can't even think of. i was in china in 2008. i talked to the mayor of a city, and he said they had about 5 million unemployed transients in that city. so, i asked him what he was going to do about that and he said, well, they all go home at chinese new year. and we will only let about a quarter of them come back. so they use the chinese family tradition of taking care of their people, of their family, as a social security network. but on a purely economic, it is

a combination of market principles and central management. it's not the plant economy in a soviet sense of. >> host: there's a major point of contention between the united states and beijing over the chinese of its currency. how is this training our relationship and how should the administration be dealing with it? >> guest: the argument that is made, is that the chinese aren't manipulating their currency and at artificially low level which gives them an advantage in exports. and, therefore, improves the balance of payment that gives them greater economic and financial leaves. my view is this. some of this deficit is caused by our own actions. some of it is caused by chinese

action. it is caused by our own action because as long as we are financially profiting, and as long as we get around huge deficits, deficits in our current account are inevitable, because we have to borrow from abroad to meet our deficit. so, we need to work at our own problems. first. and concurrently. where the chinese take unfair advantage, we have to raise the issue in defend our interests, but the way that is done is to arrange for it, a balance of penalties. >> host: it is striking to me

that just about every time the chinese leadership meet with the american leadership, whether it's president obama, sector state clinton, treasury secretary geithner, they never miss an opportunity to lecture us on this very critical issue. are spending levels, our deficits and our debt. it strikes me as about that we're chinese communists lecturing the american capitalists about that. >> guest: it is ironic. for the greatest part after the opening of the relationship in chinese, basic attitude was they thought that some of our political enthusiasms, adjective for it, some of them were immature and so forth. but they have huge respect for our economic competitiveness. and they thought we were on to the management of the world financial system from which they

could learn a great deal. so they sent students over your practicing capitalists over here to learn the banking systems and american investment banks and so forth. then in late 2007 and eight, they learned, or they think they learned, that the americans did know how to run the economy very well either. and that cause a tremendous loss of prestige, both for us but also for those chinese who had been associated with the reform program. and some of the difficulties that followed afterwards, in which it is claimed that correctly in some respects, that the chinese were too intuitive, go back to that period, that shock occurred. >> host: the chinese are our

biggest foreign creditors. how much of a threat to us is that? >> guest: it's a very complicated issue because i'm the one hand, you can say if they exploit their position, they could make life very difficult for us. the same time, it's been said if you '01 hundred thousand dollars to a bank in europe, if you will 100 million to the bank it's their problem. so the creditor suffers enormously. also if the 700 several trillion dollars their holding of american activities suddenly became relatively worthless, the result of their harassing us, that would be a huge blow to them. 's we have kind of a mutual suicide pact. >> host: there was a high level member of the chinese military who said last year he began talking about the united states in terms of economic

warfare, not military warfare but economic warfare. how big a concern should it be for the united states? states? >> guest: what i say in the book is this, we are the two most powerful countries in the world today. there's a whole series of issues that are new, environment, proliferation, energy. these are unique problems. it can only be solved on the global places. secondly, we got to learn from the europeans, and established britain had to do with each other and didn't manage to do it. and the result was world war i. and i've often asked myself, if the leaders that went to war in 1914 had known what the world would look like four years later when the war ended, would they ever have done it?

with one or the other have made an accommodation? so what i say in the book is, we out to approach foreign policy, vis-à-vis china with that in mind. we ought to look for opportunities of a cooperative relationship. at the same time, we will strenuously defend our interests. and if the chinese approach the problem in the same way, then i'm hopeful that the ingenuity on both sides will find a way through. but both sides have to have this attitude. the united states cannot do it by itself, and i think this is the greatest challenge to peace and the greatest test of whether progress is possible. >> host: let's talk about the strategic challenges facing us. i know american relationship, there's a lot of concern in the united states about chinese military buildup. i'd like for you to comment on

that, how worried should we be about that, about growing chinese assertiveness in asia, in the region, and globally as well and still project power? and should we be doing -- should we be doing anything to shore up our allies in the region who are increasingly worried about china? >> guest: as china grows economically, their military capacity is bound to grow. that's inherent in what is going on. what we have to watch is at what point that the chinese military capacity go from beyond defending his country to a capacity to intervene all over the world and challenge existing institutions.

at that point we are in a period of potential confrontation. and if there is not attention to, then it could slide into a confrontation. but they certainly are increasing their military capability. and we certainly have to be sure that we maintain the edge or the balance that have characterized the situation before then. now, we should have a clear notion of our national interest. when our national interest is challenged, we must take measures to protect it. and so, the chinese conduct

foreign policy with all my commitment to cooperation, i would have to say that american interests come first. if the chinese conduct and open-minded policy, then we should have a discussion of oppositions and see where progress can be made. but it is always necessary with any foreign country dealing with us should understand that we protect our interests. strengthen our relations with korea, india and japan. it is absolutely essential that america remain a major power and that america maintains its relationship in the asian world. we cannot do it the same way we

have done and your. in europe there was a threat so that relationship with europe took on a heavily military caste, and the relationships with japan, korea, the united states and india, the economic social factors play a huge role. the practical consequences are very similar. namely, to show that america is committed to the defense of key countries. but i wouldn't object on some of these projects if the chinese participated, so long as they are not the hegemonial power of a nation. >> host: talk if you would about china's role in nuclear proliferation. there's a bit concerned that china is working with rogue powers like north korea, even pakistan to some degree, to share nuclear technology with

the iranians could perhaps series, perhaps venezuelans, all opponents, enemies of the united states. what do we do to try to rein shine in on the proliferation area? >> guest: on all issues except north korea, i think the chinese interest is very parallel to ours. neither of us can interested in proliferation of nuclear weapons, because if nuclear weapons are spread to countries that cannot handle same technological pass us and they do not understand the nature of modern technology adequately, the nature of a catastrophic conflict, or even of an outburst of a terrorist, our overwhelming. so i am quite hopeful that with respect to that area, we can get actual chinese support.

the major hesitation the chinese have is two or three outside forces can tell the country what they would internally, but i think within increased globalization, china will come to that point to that complicated issue. if north korea. because on the one hand it's not in the chinese interest for north korea to have nuclear weapons. on the other hand, the chinese believe that it's also not in their national interest to have north korea collapse and then face the prospect of a large country on its border which may even inherent the north korean nuclear capability. so i think china has been going back and forth and hasn't really made a decisive move. i think they would be delighted

if these weapons would go away, but they don't want to do what is required to make them go away. so, they bear responsibility for the consequences. now, they themselves have not been effective in the field of proliferation because it would hurt them more. but north korea has, because north korea has -- it's about the most repressive country in the world. and sooner or later the other countries have to face the issue of what happens when a rogue nuclear country continues to operate? and that's an issue before us because it's an issue also even more, in a more complex way with

north korea. and it can't really be solved as an isolated problem in which the security concept developed for all of northeast asia, that other nations can join. and maybe under that system, north korea is simply denuclearized. >> host: human rights. we should not be all that concerned with what goes on internally within a country, that we should only be concerned with their external behavior. and i got into american foreign policy for quite a while but over the last two decades i would say the united states has concerned itself with what goes on inside of china. there's a lot of talk now, a lot of we got chinese are now retrenching, and that has been an escalation of the detention of dissidents, of those who are out there arguing very publicly for democratization,

liberalization, journalists being detained, religious minorities, catholics and so on. what do you say to the chinese when you talk to them about their human rights record? >> guest: let me say a word about the rialto take, which is a term i never used. it's a term my critics use if you want to be able to say it's really a german and this is not an american concept. even though i lived in germany as a child as part of a persecuted minority. so that in schools to which, jewish school to which i had to go, they were not exactly studying impression every politics. but putting that issue aside, the mental necessity of a peaceful world, they've been

preaching that all my life. on the one hand, you need equilibrium, a balance of power. why? so that the strong cannot simply dominate the weak. at the same time you need legitimacy, whatever you want to call it, so that the existing arrangements appear just to most of the members, and most of the people so that they don't want to challenge it. first, they have to use capability. second one, use this with attitude. so it's about balance that has to be achieved. now, there are again two aspects. what are our convictions with respect to human rights? secondly what do we do about it? america has been founded on the

principles of human dignity, human liberty and human equality. we can never not only renounce these principles, we need to go further. and other countries should know that it makes a difference to us how they conduct themselves on the human rights issue. the more -- the next question is, what do we do beyond this? how many sanctions do you put on there? to what degree do you assert that you can tell other countries what domestic institutions they should have. and at that point, it's a difference of opinion. some people, i would be sure nixon for that matter, almost every american president i have

seen, that through the publishing of engagement one can move the chinese better than through a confrontation which you have all the memories, and which they have always resisted. when clinton was president in his first years, he adopted a policy of confrontation. and after three years of failure, he gave it up. when ever i am in china, and whenever nixon was in china, every president i've known, be aware of individual cases in which human rights have been violated. we often speak to the chinese on the private pages. and so, about two days notice agreement with regard human

rights, there's no disagreement about the role of america. there i is a disagreement on whether this should be done by public demonstrations or by diplomacy. >> host: we just have a few minutes left, dr. kissinger, and i want to ask you, when you look at the geopolitical landscape today, when you survey the world, what worries you most? what are the threats that are looming out there that continue the most? >> guest: well, what worries me is that you have a peoples in every part of the world, happening more or less simultaneously, without any real clear guiding principles of where they're going to go. it's one thing to say to be very enthusiastic, and, like, arab spring, but one knows that the revolutions, it's not the date on which they occur, but in a

period in which they are being sorted out. on the technical level what worries me is the spread of nuclear weapons. and in the way of nuclear technology, because as weapons spread, and any of them ever get used, the catalyst would be so unbelievable, that it would affect the human sense of security and of a political system. those are the key issues. >> host: dr. kissinger, it's been such a joy to talk to you. and a personal note here one of my personal heroes. i've known you for, oh, my goodness, 18 years now. i keep dating myself. it's been such an honor to get to know you. such a pleasure to talk to you today. and it's a real privilege to call you a friend as well as a mentor. >> guest: thank you very much.

i like your work over the years and have been impressed and amazed at the tremendous achievements on your part of. >> host: thank you. again, former secretary of state dr. henry kissinger whose masterful new book is called "on china." i met monica crowley. thank you so much for joining us today. >> you can find out about upcoming booktv we can programs like "after words" by using your mobile phone. simply text the workbook 299702 to receive a weekly e-mail about our schedule and sign-up now for chance to receive a signed copy of henry kissinger's new book "on china." standard message and data rates apply. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know.

>> send us a tweet at the booktv. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. we are here at the university of chicago to talk with several other professors about books they have written. we would show you some of those now. in the shadow of two boy, published by the university of harvard press. the author is university of chicago professor robert gooding williams. professor gooding williams, why thisl