Review by Choice Review
Loth (University of Essen) contends that detente has made it possible to see the origins of the Cold War more clearly, and thus move toward greater relaxation of international tension. His postrevisionist reading of Cold War history is therefore not just an answer to traditionalists like George F. Kennan and Herbert Feis on the one hand, and revisionists like William A. Williams and Gabriel Kolko on the other. Loth contends that realists like Marshall Shulman and Adam Ulam, followed by postrevisionists like Gaddis and Yergin, have opened the way to political understanding impossible 30 years ago. Loth argues that the US misread the USSR's security moves in Eastern Europe as the first step toward threats to Western Europe and elsewhere. The Soviet Union misread US concerns about Eastern Europe and reconstruction of Western Europe as the opening wedge of market takeovers necessary to soak up wartime productive capacity. Realistic wartime agreements on spheres of influence gave way to ideological blocs centered on a divided Germany. The Europeans' failure to form a Third Force to bring about detente in the early 1950s left them no choice but balkanization and client state roles. The marshaling of evidence for this argument draws on the vast secondary literature, especially that of Gaddis and Yergin. Loth concludes that "there was thus nothing to fear in terms of Western' principles from an open' competition of systems--that is, a cooperative one making use of every chance for detente--but on the contrary everything to gain." This English edition will undoubtedly reinvigorate the controversy over whether, as Loth says, "the tragedy of the Cold War" lies in the fact that detente was possible from the beginning. College, university, and public libraries. -T. J. Knight, Colorado State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
