It was not hard to entice Henry Kissinger to meet for lunch. Though he is 95, and moves very slowly, the grand consigliere of American diplomacy is keen to talk. He hops on and off planes to see the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping with as much zeal as when he played the global chess game as Richard Nixon’s diplomatic maestro. He loves to be in the thick of things. Persuading him to say what he actually thinks is another matter. Kissinger is to geopolitical clarity what Alan Greenspan was to monetary communication — an oracle whose insight is matched only by his indecipherability. It is my mission to push him out of his comfort zone. I want to know what he really thinks of Donald Trump.
邀請亨利•季辛吉(Henry Kissinger)共進午餐並不難。雖已95歲高齡，身體移動十分緩慢，但這位美國外交界的「大軍師」非常健談。曾爲理查•尼克森(Richard Nixon)總統在國際上縱橫捭闔的這位外交大師，如今仍以同樣的熱情頻頻飛赴海外，與俄羅斯總統弗拉迪米爾•普丁(Vladimir Putin)、中國國家主席習近平等大國領導人會晤。他喜歡置身於風口浪尖。但是，要說服他說出自己的心裏話是另一回事。季辛吉在地緣政治方面的清晰思維能力，就像艾倫•葛林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)在貨幣政策上的溝通——大師級的洞察力，但是要破譯他們的真知灼見並不容易。我的任務就是把他推出自己的舒適區。我想知道他對唐納•川普(Donald Trump)到底怎麼看。