This article was downloaded by: [North Dakota State University]On: 23 November 2014, At: 09:55Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Cambridge Review of InternationalAffairsPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccam20

America's Cold War: the politics ofinsecurityGiles Scott-Smith aa Leiden UniversityPublished online: 04 Jan 2013.

To cite this article: Giles Scott-Smith (2012) America's Cold War: the politics of insecurity,Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 25:4, 696-698, DOI: 10.1080/09557571.2012.735094

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2012.735094

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

cultural divide, Lizee seems to take for granted that while the ’internationalstudies canon’ is inappropriate for the ’rest’, it is perfectly adequate for describingthe ’West’. However, his attack on the generalizing aspects of liberalism andrealism may suggest that this theoretical canon is irrelevant not only to the ’non-West’, but to contemporary political reality as a whole. Finally, the book isscattered with short examples of the incompatibility between non-Western realityand Western theory, but does not point to any non-Western theory that may provean innovative addition to the current paradigms it seeks to preserve. As a whole,this study points to interesting questions on the limits of international studies andof political theory, which still await a novel and inspiring answer.

Or Rosenboim q 2012University of Cambridge

Notes on contributor

Or Rosenboim (MSt, University of Oxford) is a PhD candidate in politics andinternational studies at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Her research interestsinclude the history of international thought, theories of imperialism andinternational relations theory.

Craig Campbell and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: the politics of insecurity,Cambridge, Massachusetts, Belknap Press, 2009, ISBN10 0674035534, ISBN139780674035539 (hbk), 448 pp

The views of two prominent realists permeate this volume from beginning to end.One is Kenneth Waltz, a quote from whom begins the book: ‘Absence of threatpermits policy to become capricious.’ The other, and the more prominent in thetext, is George Kennan, who inspired both authors so much with a speech back in1984 that they eventually wrote this book. Of course, the structural realism ofWaltz and the classical realism of Kennan don’t really see eye to eye on key pointsof international relations. Neither is it clear whether the Waltz quote is used ascritique or is itself critiqued. But resolving theoretical disputes is definitely not thepurpose of this very readable, if somewhat simplistic, chronicle of America’s ColdWar trials and tribulations.

The main pitch is straight from Kennan: from the early 1950s onwards, UnitedStates (US) policy was consistently—one might say structurally, psychologicallyeven—distorted by domestic political and economic forces that desired a constantexistential threat. Containment of the Soviet Union had effectively been achievedby 1949 and US superiority could have justified a de-escalation of the growingEast–West divide. Instead of a possible ‘general political settlement’ (3) to resolvethe loose ends of World War II, endless escalation and perpetual doomsdayscenarios were the outcome. Partisan politics, electioneering and the militariza-tion of everyday life ensured that ‘dealing with the enemy’ was a decidedlyunwise thing to do.

This is a wholly US-centred book, as the authors unashamedly make very clearin the introduction. Merging Waltz’s levels of analysis, it takes an ‘inter-mestic’

696 Book reviews

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

th D

akot

a St

ate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

9:55

23

Nov

embe

r 20

14

approach to track how the dynamic intertwining of domestic and internationalfactors drove US policy through 40 years of nuclear stand-off. Internationalhistory is dismissed early on as inadequate: it downscales the US as just anotherinternational actor, it cannot cope with ‘immense subjects’ (5) such as the globalscope of US foreign relations and it produces more information than was availableto policy-makers at the time. The volume’s stance is summed up well on page 291:‘As long as the Cold War continued, the political culture in Washington wouldreward toughness and alarmism, and penalise equanimity and self-confidence,pretty much irrespective of what the Soviet Union was actually doing.’

Unfortunately, despite this strong statement of intent, the book takes a while toget going. The first chapter begins with Charles Beard’s argument that the US wasblessed with ‘free security’ due to its geographical position between two majoroceans, but then gives a fairly rudimentary run-through of the build-up andwaging of World War II. Domestic politics only makes the briefest of appearances,such as when Roosevelt refused to openly accept Soviet domination of Poland forelectoral reasons.

Eisenhower comes out looking very good from this chronicle of misdeeds, hisdetermination to avoid nuclear war by raising the stakes with Mutual AssuredDestruction (MAD) and his facing down of the ‘military-industrial complex’—andIsrael, surely the first and last president to do so—contrasting well with JFK’simage-driven hard-line on the ‘missile gap’ and Cuba. Alternative paths wereabandoned—Kennedy’s success in securing a superpower deal on Laos wassubsequently jettisoned by Johnson in favour of a massive commitment inVietnam for no more than the credibility of US power.

The book seems to get caught midway between wanting to push its ‘inter-mestic’ argument (which is after all quite persuasive, but not all-encompassing)and wanting to provide another straightforward, clear-eyed chronicle of the ColdWar from the perspective of a US victory. The fact that the authors felt it necessaryto spell out what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is and what the‘Third World’ stands for indicates that this is a publication aiming for the widermarket. The sources used are all secondary and engagements with anycontroversy are minimal, down to a couple of passing references to BruceCumings’s alternative take on the Korean War. Standard fallacies are included,such as the European Recovery Program involving a massive grant (88)—itdidn’t—and de Gaulle’s 1966 withdrawal from NATO’s military commandcausing ‘consternation’ in Washington (245)—it didn’t. Some sections openlybetray an inability to explain US foreign policy according to domestic forces.Carter’s decision to grant full diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic ofChina in 1978 is given short shrift because there seems no way to explain it fromthis perspective. Neither can the authors offer any inter-mestic reasoning forReagan’s shift from his first to his second term, from ‘cold warrior’ to peacemaker.Instead this seems to illustrate, as with Ike—and as stated in the tenets of classicalrealism—that looking beyond the short-sighted negativity of domestic politicalinterests is one of the virtues of a true statesman.

On this note it is worth concluding with the point that the book demonstratesone of the central flaws of realist thinking: it downplays (or fails to recognize,even) the motivating force of ideology. The Soviet Union is only identified as anideological threat with NSC-68, the National Security Council’s hardline policydocument from 1950, and this fleeting acknowledgement thereafter disappears

Book reviews 697

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

th D

akot

a St

ate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

9:55

23

Nov

embe

r 20

14

from the narrative. It was Kennan himself who translated the ideological basis ofSoviet actions into terms that policy-making in Washington could respond to, butthat is nowhere to be found here. Equally, while Nixon and Kissinger are referredto as the two men who ‘embraced Realpolitik and sought to downplay ideology asa driving factor in American foreign relations’ (293), the same could be said for theauthors of this book. A misguided, virulent anti-communism led to the needlessmilitarization of US society (true) and the vapid merging of politics with policy(true), yet nowhere in the book is it considered what drove this anti-communism.What lay behind Foster Dulles’ conviction that the Cold War represented goodversus evil if not ideology (and religion—but if that can be regarded as a beliefsystem, the two are close anyway)? What lay behind the Committee on the PresentDanger, or Team B’s refusal to accept Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimatesof Soviet armaments if not ideology? There is no need to extend the list. It issomehow fitting in this respect that the person who enters the narrative toannounce the end of the Cold War in 1989 (341) is not Ronald Reagan, or MikhailGorbachov, or Lech Walesa . . . but John Lewis Gaddis.

Giles Scott-Smith q 2012Leiden University

Notes on contributor

Giles Scott-Smith (PhD, Lancaster University) holds the Ernst van der BeugelChair in the Diplomatic History of Transatlantic Relations since World War II atLeiden University and is a senior researcher at the Roosevelt Study Center inMiddelburg, the Netherlands. His latest publication is Western anti-communismand the Interdoc network: Cold War Internationale (2012).

698 Book reviews

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

th D

akot

a St

ate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

9:55

23

Nov

embe

r 20

14