How Henry A. Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy Moved Away from History and Back into an Unstable Nuclear Age

Henry A. Kissinger arguably remains a force in strategic thinking circles. On 27–28 October 2025, a two-part documentary on his life was released by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The biography presents a case of lived experiences in Nazi Germany shaping the diplomat’s realpolitik outlook.1 In this backdrop of renewed conversations around Kissinger, resumption of nuclear testing,2 and what is being termed as the Third Nuclear Age,3 it is of much consequence to re-visit Kissinger’s classic work on nuclear weapon use, his book titled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, published in 1957. Tracing the statesman’s strategic thinking on nuclear use reveals much about policy and implementation, and bears much to offer future policy-making for states, especially, de facto nuclear weapon states.