"The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision"
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Two giants, over-armed and under-informed, groping through a dark room: Kissinger’s image is elegant because it flatters no one. It turns the Cold War’s grand ideological pageant into slapstick with stakes, a scene where catastrophe isn’t driven by evil genius so much as by misperception plus capability. The “blind men” aren’t innocent, though. They are “heavily armed,” which is the point: when destructive power is easy to deploy and hard to control, even small errors in reading the other side become existential.
The psychological precision is in the asymmetry of belief. Each “believing himself in mortal peril” captures how deterrence runs on fear, and how fear is self-authenticating: if you feel threatened, you behave threateningly, and the other side takes your behavior as proof. The extra twist - each assumes the other has “perfect vision” - is Kissinger’s quiet indictment of strategic mythmaking. Policymakers project coherence onto adversaries, imagining a master plan where there may be bureaucratic chaos, domestic politics, or plain uncertainty. That projection justifies worst-case planning, arms buildups, hair-trigger doctrines - the very conditions that make the room more dangerous to navigate.
Context matters. Kissinger is writing from the nuclear age’s central paradox: stability depends on convincing your opponent you are rational while preparing for the possibility that neither of you will be. The metaphor also reveals his broader intent as a statesman-scholar: to argue for managed rivalry - communication, signaling, and limits - not because either side is virtuous, but because neither side sees clearly enough to trust its own interpretations.
The psychological precision is in the asymmetry of belief. Each “believing himself in mortal peril” captures how deterrence runs on fear, and how fear is self-authenticating: if you feel threatened, you behave threateningly, and the other side takes your behavior as proof. The extra twist - each assumes the other has “perfect vision” - is Kissinger’s quiet indictment of strategic mythmaking. Policymakers project coherence onto adversaries, imagining a master plan where there may be bureaucratic chaos, domestic politics, or plain uncertainty. That projection justifies worst-case planning, arms buildups, hair-trigger doctrines - the very conditions that make the room more dangerous to navigate.
Context matters. Kissinger is writing from the nuclear age’s central paradox: stability depends on convincing your opponent you are rational while preparing for the possibility that neither of you will be. The metaphor also reveals his broader intent as a statesman-scholar: to argue for managed rivalry - communication, signaling, and limits - not because either side is virtuous, but because neither side sees clearly enough to trust its own interpretations.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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