By the time that the US and the Soviet Union had groped their way through to d?nte a

By the time that the US and the Soviet Union had groped their way through to d?nte, a dowdy compromise that left too much unsaid, the idea of a global balance of power between them had become a diplomatic commonplace.Its implications were bizarre. Right-wing dictatorships were shored up by the US to prevent the emergence of left-wing regimes. Soviet tanks might crush the fledgling democratic movements of central Europe without international opposition, but US aid and arms were reserved for recipients like Saddam’s Iraq and Pinochet’s Chile. Even Mutual Assured Destruction, the doctrine that insured that neither side would launch an all-out nuclear strike for fear of annihilation, implied a threat to civilian populations worldwide It was, as Gaddis asserts, a time of “moral amnesia…

Once it became clear that everybody was in the same lifeboat, hardly anyone wanted to rock it.”For Gaddis, morality and straight-talking revived with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Vaclav Havel and John Paul II. His description of communism’s collapse is trenchant, and readers in search of the main facts will find it helpful But brevity does have a price. Here, as elsewhere in the book, Gaddis is better when he deals with the US than when he has to disentangle Soviet affairs.We get the idea, rightly, that the Soviets were hard to bargain with, but beyond that (and a sketchy overview of Marxism-Leninism), we are given little sense of what Russia was like. The omission is especially striking where personalities are discussed.

For Gaddis, Gorbachev is a largely passive figure, resembling “the eponymous hero of Woody Allen’s movie Zelig, who managed to be present at all the great events of his time, but only by taking on the character, even the appearance, of the stronger personalities who surrounded him” Oddly, Gaddis has this weak Gorbachev act out of “love”. By contrast, Reagan emerges as a genius, decisive and even prophetic in his diplomatic style: “as skillful a politician as the nation had seen for many years, and one of its sharpest grand strategists ever”.Whatever older readers may think of the praise, the contrasting dismissal of Gorbachev is unfair, and also symptomatic of two further problems with the book’s approach In the first place, leaders do not act alone. It is surprising, then, to follow an account of the Soviet Union’s collapse that never mentions Eduard Shevardnadze, Gorbachev’s adviser on international affairs and the man often credited with the most enlightened ideas about the region’s prospects. Beyond Shevardnadze were scores of other actors, to say nothing of whole populations with agendas of their own.Advisers, and the conflicts and pressures that influence decision-making, are absent on the American side as well, but Gaddis may assume that readers will understand the system in their own country.Here is the second problem, for this is definitely an insider’s textbook. Gaddis is not crude, and many of his judgements are wise, but this is history written by the victors.