Statecraft and security : the Cold War and beyond /

Roughly half of this book is a Festschrift to Michael MccGwire, the British military analyst whose inductive method of threat assessment persuaded many that the Soviet Union did not intend to attack the West. The Festschrift includes pieces by Raymond Garthoff, Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, Booth, and others on the Cold War. The conclusions are familiar: the Soviets and Americans share the blame for the Cold War; Moscow had no offensive intentions; the struggle ended because of Gorbachev's "new thinking;" and neither side won. The other half of the book assesses and forecasts political developments in countries and regions after the Cold War. Included are John Steinbruner on American leadership; Oles Smolansky on Russia; Karen Dawisha on the former Soviet republics; Catherine McArdle Kelleher and Robert O'Neill on Europe; Geoffrey Hawthorn on Japan; Michael Cox on China; Ian Hopwood on Africa; and Denis Stairs on medium powers. Barry Blechman, Anthony Giddens, Philip Allott, and Booth round out the volume with predictions concerning international security and transnational politics. All told, the quality is uneven and some chapters are already dated. But Statecraft and Security affords readers easy access to a number of leading thinkers on where world politics has been and where it is going. Upper-division undergraduate and above. J. M. Owen University of Virginia