Henry Kissinger , who turns 100 on May 27, has led a momentous and consequential life. His actions as a statesman and diplomat have earned him the implacable contempt of many critics. But those who examine his career more dispassionately would see that Kissinger’s unsparing realism, forged by his childhood experience in Nazi Germany and his adult belief in American possibility, was essential to averting a global calamity during the Cold War. As secretary of state to President Richard Nixon , he helped to fashion an international order underwritten by a constellation of competing states. Some found this attitude unacceptably...