LONDON: It is far too early in the morning to be interviewing General Vernon A Walters and I am woefully under-prepared. The night before he had gone 10 tough rounds with Tim Sebastian on BBC World’s Hard Talk - he says he was “ambushed” - and must think this is a catchweight contest. As 84-year-old in wheelchairs go, he punches heavy.

Walters, ex-deputy director of the CIA, ex-US ambassador to the UN, ex-US ambassador at large, ex-US ambassador to Germany, ex-military attache just about everywhere, and the man alleged to have orchestrated coups in Iran in 1953, Brazil in 1964 and Chile in 1973, is the last of the cold war warriors, a rightwing American convinced he was always right.

He is in London to publicize his book, The Mighty and the Meek, an occasionally engaging series of portraits of the people he rubbed shoulders with in 50 years of war and diplomacy: Roosevelt, Reagan, Bush mark one, Thatcher, and above all Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The others, in truth, he knew only a little, but the 70s were the apogee of his power and he knew the last two intimately.

The memoir of Kissinger is the best in the book, especially his explanation of why the German-born former secretary of state spoke heavily accented English while his brother, who fled with him to the US in the 1930s, did not - “Henry never listens to anyone else”. Walters is far too kind about his subjects - even Nixon is portrayed as a hero - but he found Kissinger’s arrogance hard to take.

Walters, who joined the US army as a private in 1941 and ended up half a century later as a lieutenant-general, has a clever, incisive turn of phrase, a rasping voice and what might be called a clear-eyed world view - America is great; the world should be grateful. He has no qualms about US intervention in Afghanistan, or anywhere else. “I don’t want America to be a global policeman,” he says, “but I don’t want to live in a world where there are no police either. That’s the advantage of the UN. We didn’t go off and do it by ourselves. To the surprise of the Europeans, we did not react like angry children. We consulted with our allies, we talked to everybody else, then we did something, and we did it to a very strict plan.”

Does he understand the fear of American power? “Yes, I understand it all over the world,” he says. “It’s the same fear that there was of British power in the 19th century. Britain from Waterloo to the outbreak of the second world war had exactly the same kind of power. You don’t remember, but I do.”

After the stints in Iran and Brazil (he denies any involvement in overthrowing the governments) he moved to Paris as military attache, but insisted on going to Vietnam first. “I said if I go to Paris from the cocktail parties of Rio while the whole American army is involved in Vietnam I’ll be a laughing stock.” He flew 139 missions in helicopters; then he went to Paris.

Walters was not so much hawkish on Vietnam as raptorish. “I thought we should win the war by landing two divisions at Hy-Phong, going to Hanoi, and saying to the Vietcong, “OK, we’ve got Saigon. Hanoi, you wanna play in the woods, you play in the woods’. I’ve been to five wars and I’ve always believed that victory is the fruit of the maximum application of force in the minimum of space and time. We should have gone to the heart rather than the fingertips.”

What he did not get was the top job at the organization. Why not? “Congress was in a very anti-military mood because of Vietnam. They wouldn’t have confirmed a military officer for that.” —Dawn/The Guardian News Service