cold whistory 8.04_book reviews

Book reviews

The Cold War and after: capitalism, revolution and superpower politics, by Richard Saull,London, Oxford University Press, 2007, 257 pp.

Richard Saull is one of a number of historians who have taken advantage of the passageof time to re-conceptualize the Cold War. Perhaps the most prominent is John Lewis

Gaddis whoseThe ColdWar (2005) has been widely discussed in the general as well as theacademic press. Saull’s book could not be more different in content or style. For one

thing, Saull is much tougher going on the reader. This is partly a matter of his ratherlaboured writing style, though once you get used to his vocabulary, the parentheses, and

on occasions excessively long sentences, the meaning does generally come through.More important, though not unrelated, is the conceptual frame Saull adopts, which is

about as far from Gaddis’ as one could imagine. Gaddis, always essentially the diplomatic

historian, eschews explicit theory even if he offers a clear line of interpretation. Gaddisrepresents, for Saull, one important strand of ‘mainstream’ Cold War history, in

opposition to which Saull develops his own ‘theoretically informed historical survey’.The chief fault of mainstream Cold War history, Saull writes, is the ‘neglect of the socio-

economic dimensions of the Cold War’. His own approach is broadly Marxist, or at least‘Marxist-informed’. He sees the Cold War as essentially an ‘inter-systemic conflict’, but he

is concerned to distinguish himself from other leading advocates of this approach such asFred Halliday. Though managing to connect socio-economic factors to international

relations, Halliday still, so we are told, fails to integrate military power into his scheme.What then precisely was the relationship between the socio-economic character of eachsuperpower and global geopolitical conflict? The answer, Saull writes, in one of those

sentences you wish could have been given more air, ‘lies in the way in which the socio-economic constitution of each superpower was associated with or founded upon

institutions, structures and relations conditioned by coercive and military power, and thedegree to which such forms of power determined the international relations of each

superpower, and the international expansion of the socio-economic system of whicheach superpower was a part’ (p. 8).

What does his approach yield? Saull offers two challenges, besides the theoretical onereferred to above, to current understandings of the Cold War. Firstly, he argues that theCold War must be understood as ‘the short twentieth century’, 1917–91. Cold war

existed, Saull tells us, from the Bolshevik Revolution onwards in the form of diplomatichostility between the USSR and the capitalist powers, in crisis and social revolution in

Europe and beyond provoked by clashes between anti-capitalist forces and various

ISSN 1468-2745 print/ISSN 1743-7962 online

DOI: 10.1080/14682740802373644

http://www.informaworld.com

Cold War History

Vol. 8, No. 4, November 2008, pp. 547–567

capitalist powers, and also in the continuity in the character of the Soviet Union and itsrelations with the outside world. All that changed after 1945 was the form of the

conflict. A sceptic might say that the ‘form of the conflict’ is close to being everything.Saull’s approach, which is a new version of an old argument (see D. F. Fleming and

others), may be a useful reminder that communist–capitalist conflict was a factor ininternational relations from 1917 but is less useful in explaining why it came close to

being the factor after 1945. For that, the despised notion of ‘realism’, with its focus onnation-states and the global distribution of power, is a necessary tool.

A second and potentially valuable focus of Saull’s account is the global spread of theCold War to what at the time was called the Third World. Saull’s approach takes us wellbeyond the superpower focus of much writing on the Cold War – Gaddis included.

One wishes, though, that Saull was able to command the clarity of exposition which ismanifest in Odd Arne Westad’s recent book The Global Cold War. As it is, on this topic

as on the question of the end of the Cold War, Saull’s interpretation moves in and outof focus. It is doubtful whether this book will change minds, not because it lacks the

ambition to do so but because its conclusions are insufficiently realised.

Richard Crockatt

University of East [email protected]

q 2008, Richard Crockatt

The Cuban Missile Crisis: a concise history, by Don Munton and David A. Welch, Oxford andNew York, Oxford University of Press, 2007, xv þ119 pp.

In this brief account of the missile crisis, Don Munton and David Welch provide lucid,

sensible coverage of the background to the crisis, the October 1962 confrontationitself, and the aftermath of the crisis. The attention they pay to the origins of the crisis

is warranted in a historiographical sense, as during the course of the past two decadesscholars have explored this issue with the same rigour that they have brought to bear inexamining events in October 1962. Munton and Welch’s analysis of the motives behind

Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to deploy missiles in Cuba is commendably wide-ranging. Their salient argument on the pre-crisis period, that both John F. Kennedy

and Khrushchev stumbled into a major confrontation over Cuba because they lackedan empathetic understanding of the other’s concerns, provides the conceptual

framework that shapes the entire work. The ability of the two superpower leaders todefuse the missile crisis, they argue, was due principally to their sudden acquisition of

the empathy towards the other that had been so lacking prior to the crisis. It is to thegood that in a work of this sort the authors seek to develop an analytical frameworkrather than simply sustain a detailed narrative; and they do succeed in making their

argument on empathy in a cogent fashion.

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This account could have been strengthened in a number of ways. Firstly, JFK’s anti-Castro commitments in the 1960 presidential campaign are worth discussing as they

may in part explain the inimical policies carried out by Kennedy towards Cuba duringhis presidency. Secondly, CIA attempts to assassinate Castro needed to be discussed

fully; Kennedy might well have connected them to his decision to authorize the Bay ofPigs invasion. Thirdly, the importance attached by JFK to Operation Mongoose in the

autumn of 1962 prior to the crisis is underestimated. In an early October 1962 meetingRobert Kennedy made clear to other administration officials his brother’s

determination to intensify the operation. Fourthly, Adlai Stevenson’s views aremisrepresented: the position he came to adopt in the first week of the missile crisis wasstrong support for both a blockade around Cuba and the use of diplomacy, not just the

latter. Fifthly, on a point of fact, George Ball first used the Pearl Harbor analogy on thefirst day of the crisis, 16 October, not two days later. Finally, the Cordier ploy, at least in

some form, originated prior to 27 October.Overall, though, this is a sensible, able account of an event that continues to sustain

a vast scholarship. It is a useful addition to that literature.

Mark White

Queen Mary, University of [email protected]

q 2008, Mark White

The peace of illusions: American grand strategy from 1940 to the present, by ChristopherLayne, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2006, xi þ290 pp.

American Realists are baffled by their nation’s foreign policy. According to Realism,

nations are programmed to value security above all else and should not (or, accordingto some structural Realists, will not) pursue policies that make them less secure. The

United States is separated from potential adversaries by vast oceans and possesses anadvantage in military power over them that is unmatched in recorded history. Simplyby maintaining its present position the United States could enjoy a long season of

territorial security at little expense – a kind of Realist utopia. Yet American leaders,especially during the last several years, have seemed almost perversely determined to

undermine this enviable situation. The United States has gone out of its way toantagonize both traditional friends and potential rivals, persisted with policies that

foment, rather than suppress, Islamic radicalism, and ratcheted up military spendingto the point that it now spends almost $1 trillion a year on its armed forces, intelligence

operations, and foreign policy-making. Epitomizing all of this, of course, is thecolossal fiasco in Iraq.

A central preoccupation of many American Realists today is to explain how things

have gone so badly wrong, and a leading member of this school, Christopher Layne of

Cold War History 549

the Bush (elder) School at Texas A & M University, has turned to the historiography ofAmerican foreign relations for an answer. It is his view that US foreign policy has long

been controlled by a power elite that seeks hegemony across the globe for the purposesof American capitalist expansion. This claim will be familiar to historians of American

foreign policy; it is the central argument of the revisionist, or ‘new left’ schoolassociated with William Appleman Williams of the University of Wisconsin and many

of his students, including Walter LaFeber, Lloyd Gardner, and Thomas McCormick.Revisionists argue that the dominating foreign policy of the United States, since at least

the last decade of the nineteenth century, has been the ‘open door’: the goal ofliberalising world trade, opening colonial and European markets up to Americaninterests, and, more recently, fostering a globalised world order along American lines.

While some revisionists have suggested that the open door came naturally, if notinevitably, to the United States, Layne agrees with early revisionists like Williams and,

especially, his predecessor Charles Beard that pursuing an open door foreign policywas a contingent, political decision that did not have to be made. The United States

could have maintained its tradition of staying away from global power politics andlooking after its own security in the safe western hemisphere; it could have ‘cultivated

its own garden’, as Beard once quoted Voltaire. Instead, Washington has been seized byan elite – Eisenhower’s ‘military–industrial complex’ is an apt moniker – that hastaken over the making of US foreign policy in order to advance its economic interests.

To substantiate his argument, Layne offers in chapters 2–5 an episodic historicalaccount of American foreign policy over the past 70 years or so, especially with respect

to western Europe. Layne advances the bold claims that American participation inboth world wars was ultimately driven by open-door interests and that the decision to

contain Soviet power in Europe after the Second World War was also primarily due tothe American desire to control European markets. He argues that European nations

such as Britain and France regarded the projection of American power in Europe as athreat to their sovereignty, rather than a welcome defence against Soviet predation,

and that the foreign policies of these two nations, at least for a time, were based deeplyon a desire to balance against American power and establish a third pole ofinternational politics in western Europe, an impulse that is re-emerging today.

In the second part of the book, Layne turns to contemporary foreign policy andtheoretical debates. He advocates a policy called ‘offshore balancing’. The United

States, he argues, should withdraw from Europe and Asia and instead deploysubstantial forces ‘on the horizon’, which would be used to project American power in

these regions if, and only if, a dangerous rival threatens to establish Eurasianpreponderance. By doing so, Layne maintains, the United States could avoid

entanglement in foreign conflicts, save trillions of dollars in military spending, arrestthe militarisation of American politics and society, and run less risk of antagonizingstates, like China and Russia, that are certain to emerge as rival great powers in the

foreseeable future. As a Realist, Layne posits that nations are certain to balance againstthe United States sooner or later, so it is best to provide them with as little reason to be

hostile to the United States as possible.

550 Book reviews

In advancing offshore balancing Layne contends with alternative visions ofAmerican foreign policy. He rejects forcefully the mainstream liberal view that the

United States must act as a ‘stabilizing hegemon’ responsible for regulating andpolicing the world economy, arguing persuasively that world trade does not require

the heavy-handed supervision of one state. He also takes issue with what I wouldregard as now the leading American Realist interpretation of international politics, the

Dartmouth School theory of power preponderance advanced by William Wohlforthand Stephen Brooks. Wohlforth, Brooks, and other scholars argue that potential rivals

to the United States will not balance against American power, for good Realist reasons,for a long time; Layne, on the other hand, regards the unipolar era simply as atransitional period between one balance-of-power system and the next. Finally, he

spars repeatedly throughout the book with John Mearsheimer, whose offensive realisttheory claims that states seek domination of their own regions but not global

hegemony because of the stopping power of water. Layne points to the evidence thatthe United States seems to be seeking precisely this domination, whatever offensive

Realists say. This can be explained, he states, by an alternative to offensive realism hecalls ‘extraregional hegemony theory’.

The Peace of Illusions provides a bold and clearly-argued case for Americanretrenchment. Nevertheless, there are weaknesses in both its historical and theoreticalargumentation. One clear flaw in Layne’s book is his equivocal rendering of the history

of American foreign policy, especially during the 1940s. Layne states regularly thatAmerican entry into the Second World War and its policy of Cold War containment in

Europe were based upon open door economic interests, but on occasion he backs awayfrom these explosive claims and allows that the United States had reason to regard Nazi

Germany and the Soviet Union as serious security threats (esp. pp. 56, 199–200).America’s entrance into World War II and its instigation of the Cold War were,

unarguably, the most important foreign policy decisions it made during the twentiethcentury. If Layne accepts that both of these decisions may have been driven by

insecurity rather than economic expansionism, then the salience of his argumentbecomes highly questionable. Any theoretical claim can fail to account for minordecisions or inactions, but if it does not explain world-changing events such as the

American decision to contend with Hitler and Stalin, if even the possibility is grantedthat other factors may have been more important, then it becomes implausible to

maintain that the open door totally and always drove American foreign policy.Historians, more comfortable with multi-causal explanations and change over time,

might argue that there have been periods during which the United States faced threatsto its security and others during which it did not. Layne seems at times to concur with

this, but returns nevertheless to his claim that American foreign policy has beendefined by the open door throughout the twentieth century and to the present day.Either the United States had reason to fear Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, or its

decisions to confront them were driven by elite economic interests, no different fromearlier or later episodes of American expansion. For Layne’s argument to stand up, he

cannot equivocate on this vital question.


Furthermore, it is not clear why extra-regional hegemony theory is a theory at all,rather than a historical generalization. By definition, international relations theories

are meant to explain the behaviour of any nation, or at least any great power, and topredict their actions irrespective of foreign policy making. The dean of structural

realism, Kenneth Waltz, has called for the development of theories of foreign policy tocomplement his theory of international politics, but it is extremely difficult to see how

a theory of a particular nation’s foreign policy could derive from anything other thanthat nation’s own experiences and capabilities – from the attributes, as Waltz would

say, of the unit itself. Layne’s theorising illustrates this problem. He clearly states thatthe establishment of open door diplomacy was a contingent act attributable todomestic American politics, and he does not show anywhere that extraregional

hegemony theory could apply to any nation other than the United States. To be sure,he discusses structural factors such as geography and the composition of the

international system, but so have historians; Charles Beard, for one, put them at thecentre of his analysis in the late 1930s. To be sure, he uses his insights to contend with

contemporary theorists and offer predictions and policy recommendations, buthistorians are able to do this as well. His book shows that when it comes to analyzing

the nature of a specific nation’s foreign policy, rather than the general nature of theinternational system, theory and historiography become indistinguishable.

Finally, Layne provides an unclear prognosis for the future of international politics.

He predicts that a balance of power is certain to recur, but elements of his argumentgive us good reason to doubt this. The United States has only grown more powerful

relative to its adversaries in the 17 years since the end of the Cold War, despitepredictions by many Realists (including Layne himself) that unipolarity could not last

long. Layne rejects the ‘unipolar optimism’ of the Dartmouth school, but does notrespond persuasively to its central observation that potential rivals to the United States

are not balancing against it, in the way Realists have traditionally defined balancing,despite the heedlessness and aggressiveness of US foreign policy that Layne himself

laments. If American foreign policy makers have the ability to reject balance-of-powerlogic, a fact Layne acknowledges, then why do leaders of other states not have the sameability?

On the other hand, and even more important in my view, Layne offers insightsabout the nuclear revolution, i.e., the recognition by states that thermonuclear war is

self-defeating, that would seem to defeat balance-of-power Realism from the outset. Inhighlighting the benefits of offshore balancing (p. 182), Layne asserts that a Eurasian

hegemon could not really threaten the United States, as it would be deterred by the USnuclear arsenal, and that the cost to the United States of preventing the rise of a

hegemon, namely the risk of starting a nuclear war, is now exceptionally high. But ifthis is so, then what remains of balance-of-power politics? If balancing means buildingup military power in order to be able to wage major war, which it has normally meant,

then why would potential rivals to the United States even bother? By identifyingthe revolutionary effects of nuclear weapons upon contemporary international

politics, Layne provides an answer to the puzzle of unipolarity that does not require

552 Book reviews

endless redefinitions of balancing or an analysis of the foreign policies of particularnations – which is to say, a theoretical answer.

The Peace of Illusions is a critique of the economic bases of American foreign policy anda call for a neo-isolationist foreign policy that recalls the pre-war continentalism of

progressives like Charles Beard and William Jennings Bryan. It is a brilliant work in thisvein and resonates with increasing volume as George W. Bush’s wars disintegrate into a

multi-trillion dollar disaster. But Layne provides us with neither a usable theory ofAmerican foreign policy nor a coherent prediction as to its future orientation. Realism

demands that nations value their security above all else or suffer the consequences, but inan age of imperial preponderance and nuclear stasis America is not listening.

Campbell Craig

University of Southampton

[email protected] 2008, Campbell Craig

Dealing with dictators: dilemmas of U.S. diplomacy and intelligence analysis, 1945–1990,edited by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, London, MIT Press, 2007, 227 pp.

The contrasting images of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand in 1983

and then Saddam’s statue being pulled down in Baghdad 20 years later illustrate thecomplex shifts and turns in the United States’ relationship with foreign dictators.

Dealing with Dictators lays out the menu of options considered by Washington whenmanaging its relations with undemocratic states in the era of the Cold War – from

providing aid to regime change. Based on case studies used in Harvard University’sexecutive programme for senior managers in the US intelligence community, the bookfocuses on the relationship between intelligence analysis and policy choices.

In the introduction, May and Zelikow outline seven ‘precepts’ or core principles thatought to govern intelligence analysis, including the necessity to distinguish between

what is known and what is assumed and the requirement to test our beliefs about whatis occurring according to different paradigms of state behaviour.

The bulk of the book consists of six case studies, on US policy toward China1945–48, the Congo 1960–63, Nicaragua 1977–79, Iran 1978–79, the Philippines

1983–86, and Iraq 1988–90. These are strict narratives, which summarize theintelligence data available at the time and the decisions of actors. Any retrospective

comment, analysis, or judgement has been deliberately stripped away to reveal thestrategic, moral, and domestic political dilemmas facing policy-makers. Readers areprompted to think: ‘what would I have done given this information?’ Of course, it is

debatable whether anyone can produce ‘just the facts’ but, overall, the authors havedone a fine job here. The case studies are crisply written, clear, and coherent.

The audience for the book, however, is not entirely clear. The cases will reveal littlethat is new to the specialist. It is probably of most use as a teaching tool for students of


international politics and members of the intelligence community. The dilemmasfaced by George Marshall, Harry Truman, and their successors in managing US

relations with unsavoury regimes may well reoccur. The chapter on Iran, for example,has obvious contemporary relevance.

We certainly get a sense from Dealing with Dictators about the value of the executiveprogramme at Harvard. But can this classroom experience be replicated with the materials

provided here? May and Zelikow suggest that the six case studies are ‘a laboratory fortrying out and testing’ the precepts (p. 13). While this is hypothetically true, the precepts

are not actually tested or systematically examined in the cases – indeed these precepts arerarely referred to after the introduction. The authors themselves warn that the precepts‘are less than fully meaningful absent the opportunity to discuss them along with the case

studies, which serve to explain them and amplify them’ (p. xii). Again, such a discussiondoes not occur in the book, aside from a few comments in the conclusion. Therefore,

DealingwithDictatorsprovides for a fascinating course on US intelligence, policy-making,and dictators – but only, I suspect, if either Ernest May or Philip Zelikow were present to

offer the requisite additional analysis.

Dominic Tierney

Swarthmore [email protected]

q 2008, Dominic Tierney

Blind oracles: intellectuals and war from Kennan to Kissinger, by Bruce Kuklick, Princetonand Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2006, 241 pp.

In a typically scintillating review in an article originally published on 9 October 1986in The New York Review of Books, Conor Cruise O’Brien took aim at the American neo-

conservative guru, Norman Podhoretz. The latter had written a book entitled TheBloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet, and one underlying theme of the

work was that intellectuals matter. Take Henry Adams for example. Adams himselfthought that he was powerless as an individual thinker, but Podhoretz disagreed.

Despite the fact that Adams was ‘a malignant influence’, who encouraged ‘a bigotedcontempt for this country’ (America) and who subtly denigrated and devalued the life

of the mind, he had been ‘kept alive as an incitement to and justification of the hungerof the American intellectual class for power, and especially the political power that he

himself for all that he denigrated it, could never stop wanting and envying’.Intellectuals, according to Podhoretz, are in fact more influential even than successfulpoliticians. His proof: today we remember Adams, but nobody remembers Rutherford

B. Hayes or Chester Arthur. Hmm . . .

Podhoretz, of course, was no neutral observer. He claimed, for example, that the

neo-conservatives, of whom he remains a leading member, although still a ‘minoritywithin the intellectual community’ in 1980, were seen by many as responsible for the

554 Book reviews

election of Ronald Reagan as President. O’Brien finds this claim to be ratherimplausible: ‘could anyone outside the charmed circle of a few intellectual coteries and

counter-coteries ever have dreamed such a thing? How could a couple of magazinesand a couple of dozen individuals of whom most Americans, and most other people,

[had] never heard, possibly have exercised a determining influence over an Americannational election?’ For O’Brien it was all ‘a mite fanciful’, since in his view the only

intellectual who had had any influence on the 1980 election had been ‘that eminentpaleoconservative scholar, Imam Khomeini’.

If intellectuals want power, according to O’Brien, they should put aside theirintellectual passions and follow the advice of Talleyrand: ‘Above all, no zeal.’ Burkeafter all had spent most of his career in opposition and had only one brief period of

junior office. Machiavelli ended a generally dismal political career by leading adelegation to the Friars Minor at Capri and was glad to get that tiny job. Henry

Kissinger, one might add, ended up as Secretary of State, but like Talleyrand he had nozeal for principles and left behind, like Talleyrand, a reputation that is often held to be

tainted by failure and criminality – an ambiguous success at the most.Bruce Kuklick would most definitely side with O’Brien in his critique of Podhoretz.

His own book is a dismal testament to the ignorance, irrelevance, and naıvete of ‘defenseintellectuals’ and foreign policy thinkers: ‘Defense intellectuals were simplistic in theirassessment of Russian strength in Eastern Europe after the war’ (p. 14). A ‘lasting aspect

of the American approach’ was ‘the lack of complication in the imagination of men whocould make complex appraisals in other spheres’ (p. 14). These people overestimated

‘Soviet power around the world’ (p. 14) and the significance of the Soviet arsenal.Whether their thinking was ‘scientific’ (based on game theory or whatever) or

‘unscientific’ (based on history or historical analogy), Kuklick concludes with ‘theperceived failure of both scientific and non-scientific visions in the persons of Robert

MacNamara and Henry Kissinger’ (p. 15). Even the Vietnam experience brought nolessons, since ‘intellectuals found a new role for themselves conjuring up formulas of

expiation’ (p. 225). And Vietnam was ‘the test case’: ‘Politicians used ideas of varioussorts to legitimate activity engaged in on other grounds. These grounds were political,whereas the legitimating ideas were justificatory – at a level above the partisan clash.

After the war, intellectuals continued to find new ways of understanding Vietnam that,if they did not lead people from the truth, at least obscured the involvement of the

authors’ (p. 225).All in all, Kuklick is no enthusiast for intellectuals in politics: ‘It is difficult to see that

ideas from the university, from centers of strategic thought, or from social science weredistinctive in any way. Using them, moreover, did not mean that policy was better’

(p. 226). Again: ‘Kennedy’s policies of 1963 represent (by my subjective standards) thehigh point of American statesmanship in the period under study, even though theyproduced the space in which Vietnam was to take place. The lack of a fully conscious

strategic concept in this period of achievement intimates that success may nothinge on the imposition of articulated ideas on the world’ (p. 227). It would, in fact,

be rather tedious to list the faults of all the good and the great according to


Professor Kuklick – from Kennan, Nitze, RAND, Wohlstetter, Morgenthau, andNeustadt to MacNamara and Kissinger – but Kuklick does systematically analyse their

failures. The book becomes depressing, and Kuklick himself calls it ‘bitter medicine’:‘the defense intellectuals did not know very much. They frequently delivered obtuse

judgements when required to be matter of fact, or merely offered up self-justifying talkfor politicians . . . The strategists believed their know-how could turn the state system

in a better direction and their learning leverage interests into the empire of justice. Butpolitics was always the more powerful partner and dragged the erudite into the

dominion of partisanship, maneuver and advantage. Politicians outranked academyand politics seduced scholarship’ (p. 230).

How then are we to react to Kuklick’s pessimism? His final advice to defence

intellectuals is that they should cultivate modesty and humility. Yet he has just outlinedthe systematic failure of truth to speak to power for half a century. His real message is

that intellectuals do not matter, are usually wrong (sometimes disastrously so) anyway,and that professional politicians use them to justify their own false views of the world.

If he is anywhere near the mark, universities – or perhaps just IR departments –should shut up shop immediately.

Of course another way to look at things would be to suggest that Professor Kuklick isthe one who is naıve and who has got practically everything wrong. His own viewsmight be taken as wrong-headed and irrelevant, if not downright dangerous. Contrary

to his beliefs, it might be argued that the West after 1945 or 1949 was indeedchallenged by totalitarian communist states that in time murdered 100 million people.

One of these states (the USSR) possessed nuclear weapons, while another (China) wasled by a monster who was quite willing to use nuclear weapons, had he possessed

them, to murder hundreds of millions more human beings. US defence intellectualsmay have made mistakes (most notably over Vietnam), but they were surely right to

treat the communist challenge with the utmost seriousness. In the end – perhaps dueto neo-conservative influence – the weakness of the 1970s gave way to renewed US

self-confidence under Reagan, whose policies were designed to bring communism toan end, an objective which was accomplished in Russia and Eastern Europe. Kuklickends his book, however, before ‘the second Cold War’ starts. What he would make of

the neo-cons and the ‘test case’ of Iraq, one shudders to think. No doubt a secondvolume will bring us up to date sometime, if he does not either commit suicide or leave

the academy in disgust. More seriously, on the evidence of this volume, he certainlycannot explain how or why the US ever won the Cold War or why, given such poor

political and intellectual leadership, it was not defeated. Perhaps the communist threatin his mind was purely imaginary.

Alan Sked

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

[email protected] 2008, Alan Sked

556 Book reviews

Calculating a natural world: scientists, engineers, and computers during the rise of U.S. ColdWar research, by Atsushi Akera, Cambridge, MA, and London, MIT Press, 2006, ix þ427 pp.

This book requires tenacity from any reader not well versed in the terminology of earlycomputing; thankfully, it rewards such tenacity too. Atsushi Akera has laboured hard to

make his work accessible to a broad audience. His argument develops through a series ofgenuinely fascinating case studies. Yet he probably assumes a little too much about thefamiliarity of those who come to his subject from fields other than the history of

computing, and habituated at best to the use of Windows PCs, with the technical languageof an era when mainframes were the only game in town: key terms like ‘stored program

concept’, ‘batch processing’, and ‘time-sharing systems’ are either not explained orexplained in a way that will likely leave some readers still staring blankly at the page.

There are riches here, nonetheless. Calculating a Natural World provides an extensivelyresearched study of the changing ‘ecologies of knowledge’ in which innovations in

computing occurred and were disseminated during the first two decades of the Cold War.Akera’s analysis adeptly connects the agency of individual actors – universityadministrators and IBM field representatives as well as scientists and engineers – to the

role of institutions: in the federal government, the National Bureau of Standards and thethree military services; in the corporate sector, IBM and its clients in the aviation industry

of southern California; and in higher education, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Michigan, andMIT. He offers important correctives not just to histories of innovation that dwell upon

the heroic pioneer and which tend to regard the point at which innovations areinstitutionalized as the moment where the interesting story ends, but also to accounts of

Cold War research that efface the complexity and mutability of America’s scientific andtechnological infrastructure through simplistic references to a ‘military–industrial

complex’. Certainly, the interest of the military services in devices that could quicklycalculate ballistics trajectories or simulate the behaviour of aircraft for training purposesresulted in much of the funding received by early computer science. But as important to

the outcomes of the research were the rivalries and tensions between and withininstitutions, the willingness of some institutions also to suspend the pursuit of their

immediate self-interest in order to allow experiment and free exchange of knowledge, andthe ambiguous relationship of computer science to established professional and

disciplinary boundaries. The fluidity of this environment was expressed in failures as wellas in successes. Indeed, the difficulty that some readers may experience with the

terminology of Akera’s book is itself probably a consequence of one of the developmentshe describes: the realisation by universities in the late 1960s that centralised mainframe-reliant time-sharing technology could not keep up with user demand and that it would be

more efficient to procure smaller computers for each department or school.

Kendrick Oliver

University of [email protected]

q 2008, Kendrick Oliver


Dean Acheson: a life in the ColdWar, by Robert L. Beisner, New York, Oxford University Press,2006, xiv þ800 pp.

Robert Beisner’s 800-page biography of Dean Acheson focuses primarily on his yearsin the State Department – when, as Acheson later put it, he was ‘present at the

creation’ of America’s enduring Cold War strategy. That this weighty tome focuses onthe Truman years alone indicates that this is a serious book: conscientious in itsprovision of narrative detail and scrupulous in surveying the historiography. It is thus

pleasing to discover that Beisner is a graceful and fluent writer. The book rarely drags,and the author’s keen eye for illuminating anecdotes keeps the pages turning. In 1967,

a self-pitying Lyndon Johnson asked Acheson why he was receiving criticism fromthose who should really ‘love’ him. Acheson replied, ‘Mr. President, it’s simple. You’re

not a very lovable person.’Beisner has no doubt about Acheson’s place in the pantheon of America’s most

distinguished diplomats. He concurs with Henry Kissinger’s opinion that Acheson wasthe greatest US Secretary of State of the twentieth century. In fact, Beisner can think offew that have surpassed his insight and sober judgement in American history – ‘only

John Quincy Adams and William H. Seward from earlier times might match him’. Thisis high praise indeed, and Beisner does an estimable job in justifying Acheson’s

ranking. This dandyish, martini-quaffing diplomat – whose hauteur and dress senseharked to a bygone era – helped transform Germany and Japan from enemies to loyal

friends, provided crucial impetus for the Marshall Plan, and set the US on anultimately triumphant path of vigilant opposition to Soviet expansionism.

Acheson was ferocious in debate, but his certitude in argument was also worryinglycomplete at times. Beisner applauds Acheson’s intellect and bureaucratic acumen, but

he does not skirt over his less edifying tendencies: his waspish impatience with thosewhose views contradicted his own. On the day that John Foster Dulles died, Achesonshocked a dinner party by announcing ‘Thank God Foster is underground’. Beisner is

never more interesting than when poring over Acheson’s strained relationship withGeorge Kennan, done with a wonderful eye for nuance. Kennan was intellectually

brilliant and similarly conservative, but his disavowal of Truman’s brand of expansivecontainment led Acheson to dismiss the man’s mettle in the most derogatory terms,

referring in private conversations to his ‘marshmallow mind’. Such mud-slingingmight have amused his audience – and Acheson’s wit matched his favourite tipple in

its dryness – but it was unnecessary for a man of his stature to make low blows.It is commonplace for people to turn to the right as they get older and Dean

Acheson was no exception. In his final years he gave free rein to his latent racism in a

series of inflammatory remarks that backed white minority rule in South Africa andRhodesia. This unfortunate final chapter has sullied Acheson’s shine in the eyes of

many historians. But Beisner cautions us to be careful when judging historical figuresby the standards of the present. It is certainly interesting that George Ball and George

Kennan – both as disparaging about sub-Saharan Africa as Acheson – have largelyescaped censure for their unpleasant views on the extra-European world. Unlike

558 Book reviews

Acheson, who supported President Johnson right up to the Tet Offensive, theirprescient opposition to the Vietnam War might have afforded them greater protective

kudos from the scholarly community.

David Milne

University of East [email protected]

q 2008, David Milne

Louis Johnson and the arming of America: the Roosevelt and Truman years, by KeithD. McFarland and David L. Roll, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005, xii þ452 pp.

Louis A. Johnson has not enjoyed a distinguished historiographical career. Between

1937 and 1950 he was one of America’s most colourful politicians, with the happyknack of occupying pivotal positions at key moments. Indeed, he was Roosevelt’s

Assistant Secretary of War in the tense period between Munich and the fall of France,the President’s personal envoy to India during Gandhi’s campaign against British

colonial rule, Truman’s campaign finance manager in the Democrats’ surprise electionvictory of 1948, and his Secretary of Defense during the turbulent months before andafter the Korean War. After he was forced to resign in September 1950, however,

Johnson quickly dropped out of sight. And in the large literature on the period he hasbeen sometimes ignored and frequently castigated.

Johnson’s mauling at the hands of numerous historians stemmed partly from thefact that those who wrote the first round of history in the 1950s and 1960s were his

former political antagonists in the 1940s, and they grasped every opportunity tocontinue their feud. Dean Acheson was the most prominent. In his Pulitzer prize

winning memoirs, Acheson wrote Johnson off as an egotistical self-publicist who wasprobably suffering from mental illness – and his verdict been widely repeated. At the

same time, Johnson did little to burnish his own legacy. After leaving office, he gave nointerviews to reporters. He also left a paltry number of documents in his privatepapers. As Bruce Cumings notes, ‘if one were to judge by the weight of his files, he paid

more attention to the annual gathering of bigwigs at Bohemian Grove, the ruling classretreat in California, than to East Asian policy’.1

This biography by McFarland and Roll is therefore a much-needed reassessment ofan important figure. Using numerous interviews to fill the documentary gap, the

authors convincingly undermine the allegation that Johnson was mentally unbalanced.They also have two broader goals. One is to spotlight American mobilisation policy in

two key periods: Johnson’s efforts to increase US defences in the wake of Axisexpansion between 1938 and 1940, and his campaign, in the opposite direction, to balancethe budget by slashing military expenditure during 1949 and 1950. For McFarland and

Roll, the conflicting nature of these two acts reveals the key to Johnson’s political career.


In their view he was ‘an instrument of confrontation’, utilised by Roosevelt and thenTruman to fight the powerful isolationists in the late 1930s and the equally powerful

military services a decade later. Johnson accepted this brutal role because of loyalty andambition. He was a man driven by politics rather than principle.

The book’s second goal is to reassess the differing presidential styles of Johnson’s twobosses. FDR, they argue, was far more successful in using Johnson because he had a

clear strategic vision. He also had the necessary ‘finesse and talent for evasion,deception and deniability’. Truman, by contrast, thought solely of balancing the budget

in the dangerous months before the outbreak of the Korean War. Despite hisreputation for decisiveness, he also failed to provide a clear lead on China policy,thereby allowing the damaging division between Johnson and Acheson to flourish.

Throughout, McFarland’s and Roll’s insights are invariably judicious, their insightsoften penetrating. Indeed, this is a fine biography of an important figure and it

deserves a wide audience.

Note

[1] Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, vol. II, pp. 158–9.

Reference

Cumings, Bruce. Origins of the Korean War, vol. II: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950.Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Steven Casey

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)[email protected]

q 2008, Steven Casey

At the dawn of the ColdWar: the Soviet–American crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 1941–1946,by Jamil Hasanli, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, xiii þ409 pp.

In dealing with the history of the Iranian crisis of 1945–46, Jamil Hasanli raises verysignificant and still disputable questions concerning the origins of the Cold War as well

as the motives and characteristics of Soviet foreign policy in the first years after the endof the Second World War. The book’s undoubted advantage is that the author

scrutinised and put into use unique documentary material from the archives of theAzerbaijan Republic, Georgia, and Russia.

Hasanli’s starting point is that the Cold War was initiated by the dramatic events inIranian Azerbaijan (p. xii). This is already stated in the title of the book, in which the

author prefers to apply the term ‘the Soviet–American crisis’ instead of the more

560 Book reviews

habitual definition ‘the Iranian crisis’. At the same time Hasanli focuses onthe analysis of little-known internal events in Iranian Azerbaijan in 1941–46, which

were considerably influenced by the USSR’s foreign policy, directed at strengtheningSoviet positions in the north of Iran, and a response to it by official Tehran. But in

speaking about the distinctive feature of Hasanli’s comprehensive examination of theautonomy movement in Iranian Azerbaijan, it should be noted that he places high

emphasis on the support which was provided to it by Soviet Azerbaijan and itsleadership.

The author’s approach not only fills a gap in the historiography of the Iranian crisis,it also gives an opportunity to understand to what extent the national factorinfluenced the Kremlin decision-making process toward Iranian Azerbaijan. So,

contrary to the author’s point of view, according to which the highest Soviet leadershipstrove for the annexing of Southern Azerbaijan to the USSR, the cited documents show

that it was Soviet Azerbaijan’s political figures who had such intentions and that theytried to put pressure on Stalin in this question. Hasanli also notes that S.J. Pishavari

and some other leaders of Iranian Azerbaijan examined the possibility of a transitionfrom the established national autonomy to the creation of an independent Azerbaijan

state with the perspective of joining Soviet Azerbaijan (pp. 160, 179–81, and 186).These options were discussed with the party leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR andfound their encouragement.

However, if the author’s assertion that the Stalin leadership planned territorialexpansion at the expense of Iranian Azerbaijan is a rather arguable point, then his

documentary analysis of the Soviet struggle with the US and Great Britain for Iran’s oilresources beginning in 1944 brings out clearly that the Soviet desire to get an oil

concession in northern Iran had the decisive influence on its policy in the Iranianquestion.

On the whole, Jamil Hasanli’s monograph is a novel and fundamental historicalstudy, notwithstanding the fact that it is difficult to agree with some of the author’s

theses, above all the idea that the crisis in Iran marked the beginning of the Cold War(pp. 225–6 and 386–7). In contrast to contradictions between the wartime allies onthe settlement of European issues, in which the ideological factor played a very

important role, the Iranian crisis was the most salient case of a traditional greatpower struggle for geopolitical interests inside the still existent anti-Hitler coalition.

At the same time Hasanli does not consider his concept ‘the final word’ in debates onthe issue (p. xiii). So the book under review spurs readers to engage in further

research.

Natalia Yegorova

Institute of World History, Russian Academy of [email protected]

q 2008, Natalia Yegorova


Collapse of an empire: lessons for modern Russia, by Yegor Gaidar, translated by AntoninaW. Louis, Washington, DC, Brookings Institution Press, 2007, xviii þ332 pp.

The causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have been ahotly debated topic for almost two decades. Yegor Gaidar’s Collapse of an Empire is a

valuable contribution to the literature. Although he states in the introduction that hispurpose is to help cure what he sees as the disease of ‘post imperial nostalgia’ amongRussia’s elite and its citizens (p. xiv), this book is far more than a simple polemic. Nor

is it simply a memoir – though Gaidar, a key economic adviser in the last years of theSoviet Union and Russia’s Prime Minister in the first years after its collapse, is well

placed to write one. Instead, the volume is a strongly researched account of theeconomic problems and political errors that brought about the Soviet Union’s

collapse.The first three chapters of the book set the problems faced by the Soviet Union in a

broad historical context. We are reminded that empires have a tendency to over-extend, as the ambitions of their leaders move far beyond their means. Authoritarianregimes, like that of the Soviet Union, are brittle and their legitimacy is all too easily

threatened during periods of upheaval. States that rely on natural resources usually doso at the expense of economic development in other spheres. Gaidar cites numerous

historical examples, including sixteenth century Spain, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,and Yugoslavia. It is an interesting section, although the reader may find Gaidar’s

tendency to jump from one historical example to another rather disorienting.The Soviet Union suffered from all three of the above problems. Gaidar traces Soviet

economic development, focusing on the post-World War II period, to show thatwithout the Stalinist enforcement apparatus the system soon stopped showing results.

The world oil crisis in the 1970s saved the state budget, allowing the Sovietgovernment to purchase grain and consumer goods while continuing to provide fundsfor Soviet allies abroad and continuing a defence build-up at home.

Gaidar argues, convincingly, that the seeds for the Soviet Union’s destruction weresown long before Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika. He shows that Gorbachev’s

initiatives only accelerated a developing crisis. The anti-alcohol campaign, rather thanrestoring discipline in the workplace, exacerbated a growing budget crisis. Difficult

decisions on fiscal and economic reforms were postponed until later. Part of theproblem was that Gorbachev and the leadership failed to grasp the extent of the crisis

when they first came to power; lack of political will was another. The government didnot even begin to curtail the military and foreign aid budgets until 1989. Over the nexttwo years, reform efforts lagged far behind the escalating crisis. Political decisions –

including key foreign policy ones, like support for the reunification of Germany –were now dictated by economic considerations.

Collapse of an Empire is, in part, a justification of the radical economic reforms thatGaidar initially supported under Gorbachev and then helped oversee under Yeltsin.

What will most impress historians is the extensive use of archival materials that areonly beginning to make their way into studies of the late Cold War period. Gaidar

562 Book reviews

quotes at length from economic data and planning documents stored in the StateArchive of the Economy (RGAE), papers prepared by economists advising Soviet

leaders, and meetings of the Council of Ministers. This gives readers an unprecedentedview of decision-making in the Soviet Empire’s last years.

Artemy Kalinovsky

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

[email protected] 2008, Artemy Kalinovsky

Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: the establishment of the Communist regime inHungary, 1944–1948, by Peter Kenez, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press,2006, ix þ312 pp.

The Hungarian revolution of 1956 takes centre-stage in historical publications onHungary. With the revolution hogging the limelight, its pre-history tends to be

forgotten. Kenez’s Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets sets the record straight. It is oneof the few books in English dealing with the decisive 1944–48 period. These were the

years when the communist takeover of Hungary was imminent, but, as Kenez rightlyargues, this was not always apparent to contemporaries.

Kenez starts with a description of the immense destruction in the country wrought bywar. Wholesale plunder of the economy and draconian reparation payments caused the

worst inflation the world had seen to date. Against this background of a society on thebrink of collapse Kenez presents an overview of the steady breakdown of Hungary’s flawedpost-war democracy and the growing power of the Hungarian communist party (MKP).

As a young Hungarian child Kenez lived through these bitter times. This is reflectedin poignant footnotes, such as Kenez’s personal memories of Soviet soldiers handing

out bread to children and dangling corpses from Budapest lamp posts. Despite hispersonal suffering, this is a balanced book. Kenez points out that some of the changes

introduced after 1945 were not the result of communist or Soviet scheming, but in factlong overdue social reforms. For all its flaws, the elections of 1945 were Hungary’s first

free elections based on universal suffrage. The 1945 land reform ended the power ofthe landed gentry and the status of the church as the country’s largest landowner. Thefiction that Hungary was still a monarchy was ended with the introduction of the

republic. Conservatives such as Cardinal Mindszenty still rejected these moves. Due tohis opposition to the communists he has often been presented as a figure of anti-Soviet

resistance. Due to his rejection of such democratic reforms he appears in Kenez’ bookas a tainted hero, out of touch with the times.

A key strength of the book is its broad approach. Kenez covers such topics as politics,economy, the position of the church, post-war retribution, foreign policy, communist

propaganda, Hungarian cinema, and anti-Semitism. Another strength is the relianceon new material from the former party archives. These sources add interesting detail to


what is already known and vastly improve our understanding of the communist post-war takeovers. The Hungarian communists, for instance, had a great deal of leeway to

shape policy. Often, as Kenez points out, they turned out to be more radical than theirSoviet masters, in which case they had to be reigned in.

Kenez gives a comprehensive overview of a crucial period in Hungarian history,covering politics, economics, society, and culture. He presents new sources and

research on a crucial period to a non-Hungarian audience. This makes Hungary fromthe Nazis to the Soviets highly interesting to anyone dealing with the post-war history

of Eastern Europe and the origins of the Cold War.

Martin Mevius

University of [email protected]

q 2008, Martin Mevius

Michael of Romania: the king and the country, by Ivor Porter, Stroud, Sutton, 2005, xxiþ328 pp.

The relevance of monarchies in modern South-East European history is a subject thatis very much underrated by the specialists on the region. The Balkan monarchs made

crucial contributions to the process of state and nation building and even today theirpre-eminence is conspicuous in countries such as Romania, where the former

sovereign is a public figure of highest moral integrity who saved the country fromdisaster in the Second World War, or in Bulgaria, where the heir to the throne became

one of the most successful prime ministers after the fall of communism.In this timely book Ivor Porter charts the life of King Michael of Romania with great skill

and in-depth understanding. Through eloquent personal accounts and historical records

from the king’s personal archive he shows how very much the life of the sovereign wasintertwined with the recent history of his country. The author knows Romania intimately,

being well known for his activity as a British special operations executive operative in thecountry and as a later member of the Allied Control Commission in Bucharest.

The book is thus an important witness statement that throws new light on the onsetof the Cold War in Romania and South-East Europe. The author shows that the

communisation of the country started with direct Western approval, and also becauseof its unwarranted trust in the Soviets coupled with hesitation at every step, mirroring

in many aspects the behaviour toward Hitler before the war. Moscow did not displaysuch niceties and went straight for the jugular in order to achieve its objectives.In Romania there was room for manoeuvre against the Soviet plans in 1945–46, but

the opportunity was lost because of the West’s procrastination. The Russians, unlikethe Western Allies, expertly knew the problems of Romania and were able to exploit

them in full, as shown by the restoration of Transylvania to Romania as a powerfulbargaining argument securing the country’s cooperation.

564 Book reviews

King Michel stands apart as a moral beacon in the middle of his country’s tragedies.Even in 1943 he made a public call for the country to extricate itself from the war,

causing panic among the pro-German leadership. His greatest accomplishment wasthe coup of 23 August 1944, when with immense courage and vision he helped to

overthrow the pro-German dictatorship, with the effect that Romania immediatelyjoined the Allies’ cause. The country thus avoided an imminent catastrophe, and

according to western sources the king’s action shortened the war by six months. That isa most remarkable achievement, even more so for a 23-year-old monarch, revealed by

the fact that the army and administration followed their sovereign unwaveringly. Thisbrought him and Romania the esteem of the Allies, well expressed in Churchill’sinstruction to the British representatives in Bucharest: ‘stick to the boy’ (p. 130). The

Soviets were conscious of his popularity among the people and even decorated theking with the Order of Victory, the highest Soviet honour given to only five foreigners,

among them General Eisenhower. Uniquely in Cold War Europe, this resulted in threeyears of uneasy cohabitation between the king and a Soviet-imposed government led

by communists, with the Red Army present all over the country.A great merit of this book lies in confirming the continuity between the successive

dictatorships that plagued Romania in the twentieth century – beginning with the royaldictatorship of King Carol II, Michael’s father, continued by the wartime fascist-militaryone of Marshal Antonescu, and culminating in the communist totalitarianism. There was

not only continuity of methods and motives, but also of individuals involved at all levels inpropping up these successive dictatorships with equal zeal.

Through his actions King Michael interrupted that vicious cycle for a very brief period,and after his forced abdication he became a symbol of democracy and hope for most

Romanians in the decades to come. Even after 1989 the crypto-communists that came topower continued to put up obstacles to his definitive return home. He was allowed to

reside in Romania again and regain his citizenship only in 1996, once the country made adecisive break with the legacy of the Cold War when for the first time the opposition

gained power through democratic elections. The book thus makes it abundantly clear whywe need to investigate seriously the royal history of South-East Europe in order to enhanceour understanding of the Cold War problems in that region of the world.

Valentin Mandache


q 2008, Valentin Mandache

In from the cold: Latin America’s new encounter with the Cold War, edited by GilbertM. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press, 2008,ix þ439 pp.

Finally, with In From the Cold, we have an inspiring volume dedicated to bringing

‘Latin America more meaningfully and centrally into Cold War studies’. This is not a


view from Washington or a re-examination of ‘high-profile events, personalities, andcoups’ (p. viii). Rather, as Gilbert Joseph describes it in his excellent introductory

chapter, this collection reassesses ‘Latin America’s Cold War conflict from within’,focusing primarily on ‘the human beings caught up in the messy process of history’

(pp. 17 and 29).Seeing the world from as many perspectives as possible illuminates the Cold War’s

full dimensions, and this ‘multilayered and multivocal history’ certainly opens readers’eyes to a variety of them (p. vii). Among others, it incorporates views pertaining

to Argentines assigned to anti-communist crusades in Central America, Cubanrevolutionaries in Africa, Mexican union leaders and cinema producers, and Mexican-Americans in California. It also highlights female perspectives, from those of radical

Brazilian students who carried rocks underneath their skirts, to Mexican mothers whorisked repression to change a school’s name from ‘Henry Ford’ to ‘Emiliano Zapata’,

and women in rural Guatemala who experienced US theories of modernisation,revolutionary insurgency, and counter-revolutionary oppression first-hand.

What we learn from these viewpoints is as revealing as it is complex. Primarily wesee how intrusive the Cold War was for day-to-day lives. And if not always joined up,

these chapters demonstrate unequivocally how ultimately devastating this was. Therelationship between the Cultural Institute in Morelia and the Bay of Pigs or betweenCalifornia’s agricultural strikers, the Mexican revolution, and anti-Vietnam protests

are also glimpses of a bigger, as-yet untold story about the interconnectedness ofevents both within Latin America and between this region and other areas of the global

South.Ensuring these previously forgotten voices of the Cold War are heard is fascinating

and laudable. However, I was left with a slight feeling that we still have a lopsidedaccount of what I call the inter-American – as opposed to Latin America’s – Cold War.

On one side, we have the story of White House or State Department corridors, whileon the other side, we have factories, cultural institutes, and rural markets. Where is the

in-between layer – the view from presidential and foreign ministry corridors inMexico City, Brasilia, or Guatemala City? In fact, the historiography of the inter-American Cold War seems back to front; the diplomatic history that is outdated where

US–Soviet history is concerned is lacking when it comes to relations between LatinAmerican elites and states. The editors of this volume share this concern. Joseph calls

for ‘cross-fertilization’ between diplomatic history, area studies, and social andcultural history. However, the volume’s chapters largely stick to old patterns of

segregation, leaving it up to the reader to make comparative connections.One comparison I made is that this volume provides many, sometimes ambiguous,

definitions of ‘Latin America’s Cold War’. Clearly, it was violent and pervasive, and asDaniela Spenser notes, ‘the Cold War narrative reads differently when viewed througha local lens’ (p. 387). Only Carlota McAllister tackles head-on the question of whether

events are ‘part of the Cold War’ or something else (p. 351). We need more of this,especially if we want to answer what is perhaps the most provocative question the

volume raises: did Latin America’s Cold War ever end? (pp. 5 and 394)

566 Book reviews

Without a doubt, In FromtheColdwill spark interest and enthusiasm among scholars ofthe global Cold War as well as Latin Americanists. As Thomas Blanton argues, ‘the

opportunities for Cold War scholarship based on newly recovered archives in LatinAmerica and the United States are immense’ (p. 67). And as Spenser notes, the

opportunity is not just about new sources; it is about asking new questions (pp. 382–4).

Tanya Harmer


q 2008, Tanya Harmer


cold whistory 8.04_book reviews

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