“[T]he claims of the prophet,” he [Kissinger] writes, “are a counsel of perfection, and perfection implies uniformity. [But] utopias are not achieved except by a process of leveling and dislocation which must erode all patterns of obligation … [while] to rely entirely on the moral purity of an individual is to abandon the possibility of restraint.”
Against the prophet, Kissinger sides with the statesman, who “must remain forever suspicious of these efforts, not because he enjoys the pettiness of manipulation, but because he must be prepared for the worst contingency.”
Part of the statesman’s tragedy is that he will always be in the minority, for “it is not balance which inspires men but universality, not security but immortality.”80 People yearn for transcendence; that makes them susceptible to prophets. Moreover, people feel a strong attachment to their own national definition of “justice.”
from Niall Ferguson's biography of Kissinger
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1480522767/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_FolgAbGRKZ7HZ
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The politics of the stateman seems closer to an anarchist viewpoint, although with true anarchism there would be no government.
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