Reviews for The "Special relationship"

The average rating for The "Special relationship" based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-07-20 00:00:00 Robert Dangelo While Gaddis's early 80s account (and the revised version of this book published in 2005) is now "the" book on the subject it is not without its problems, especially for a critical reader familiar with the topics under consideration. Gaddis was the official biographer of George Kennan (author of the Long Telegram), handpicked by him for the purpose. That book, George Kennan: An American Life, won a Pulitzer in 2012. That is why Kennan plays such a central role in this book. Gaddis was a close friend and long time admirer of Kennan. That is the first, and maybe foremost, problem with this work. Gaddis's account of the varied forms containment policy took across each administration from Truman to Nixon, if you read the original 80s version, or Truman to Bush 43 if you read the revised version, is largely sound. For those unfamiliar with the Long Telegram, NSC-68, the New Look, Massive Retaliation, and Flexible Response, this is a great introduction, as it was when it was first published. Going first sets the terms of the argument, and Gaddis did that. His version of American Cold War history and containment is essentially the accepted view, though not without critics. Kennan's role is foremost among critics of the Gaddis/Kennan thesis. Kennan was out of policy making for all intents and purposes by the mid 1950s. It was NSC-68 that first established a containment policy for the Cold War, and that was written by Paul Nitze. Kennan loathed the military focus of NSC-68 and all subsequent policy, but he argued from an ivory tower. Reading the long telegram and his Mr. X article does not leave the reader with a clear strategy a government could implement. Further, the Soviet threat in 1948 and in 1950 were quite different. Kennan's argument for political containment ignored the immediate military threat, and while he was critical of the "symmetrical" model of NSC-68, his own pronouncements on Containment largely failed to differentiate between vital and peripheral interests. Paul Nitze, who was in the policy trenches from WWII to the end of the Cold War had a much more influential role in shaping American containment policy than Kennan, who while his friend, remained his intellectual foil for most of their lives. Gaddis barely makes mention of Nitze even when he notes the importance (in the revised edition) of the Reykjavik summit. One begins their examination of Cold War history, perhaps, with Kennan, but there his story ends. Nitze's continues. The dude abides, seriously. Nitze is the Forrest Gump of the Cold War, he pops up everywhere. He was one of the first into Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and was one of the last Cold War arms negotiators - alpha and omega. Kennan, he wrote a 19 page "telegram." Further, Kennan was not the sole father of containment, far from it. If anyone could lay credit to the theory, it was probably the Soviets themselves. But as far as American policy goes, Kennan's voice was not the sole one in 1948, and he was a relatively junior figure. While his telegram had impact, it was in a mileau where many of the ideas he expressed were already "in the mix," not least in the impetus behind the Marshall plan. One of the other major criticisms of Gaddis's work beyond his Kennan-centric focus is his lack of consistent methodology in evaluating the various permutations of containment policy. The only semi-consistent methodology is his constant relation back to Kennan. In his revised edition he takes this to the extreme in his examination of Reagan's policy, which was hardly containment, had little resemblance to Kennan (unlike Kissinger's), and was actually vociferously opposed at the time by Kennan himself. Kennan (post-Cold War) moderated his views on Reagan and Reagan policy, but it was reluctant and more than a little self-serving. At least Nitze was able to admit he might have missed the forest for the trees at Reykjavik. (Incidentally, Ken Adelman's Reagan at Reykjavik is the best account so far on that subject, though Nitze's own accounts are worthwhile). Gaddis's account makes it sound like the Cold War was full circle. From on high George Kennan descends with his policy of Containment. And the word was good. But then everyone misunderstood and did it wrong, until they didn't, and the Cold War ended. But it was all due to George Kennan's original version of the policy. Sorry, but that's just poppycock. Even Gaddis has to shade this argument some, acknowledging that Reagan's policy was arrived at independently, and uniquely his. Yet he just can't help but go back to Kennan anyway. Its like one of those professors that writes his PhD thesis and then never stops rewriting and teaching it from then on. This is not the best book on American Cold War policy, but it was one of the first, and is still a good one. As stated at the outset, it remains a good introduction. But it is vital for readers of Gaddis to take it with a grain of salt and dig deeper. Further, his analysis of Vietnam is especially superficial and not without it's own problems. Because this book mixes history with opinion, and that opinion is not always clear as to whether it is Gaddis's or Kennan's, it is best read with a focus on the history.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-09-24 00:00:00 Jacqueline Hedrick This is the best account of US foreign policy during the Cold War that I know of. It is also one of the best books about strategy I've ever read. Gaddis argues that USFP consistently and, ultimately, successfully pursued a policy of containment towards the USSR during the Cold War. However, there was a broad range of options and emphases within containment in terms of how to see and address the Soviet threat. Most of the books is devoted to explaining these shifts. Gaddis mainly argues that the US oscillated back and forth until the 1980's between asymmetrical and symmetrical containment. In asymmetrical containment (Kennan, New Look, Detente) the US tried to avoid playing to Soviet strengths (conventional arms, for instance) and defined American interests more narrowly, usually by focusing on threats that combined hostility, capability, and a vital area of the world. Rather, the US sought to compensate for Soviet strengths by working with other areas in which the US was stronger (economic power, appeal to allies, nuclear deterrence) and making stricter divisions between core and peripheral interests. Under symmetrical containment (NSC-68, flexible response, Reagan's early years), the US sought to meet Soviet strengths at all levels of conflict (nuclear weapons, conventional arms, unconventional warfare) and defined American interests very broadly under the basis of domino effect and credibility arguments. Gaddis seems to prefer asymmetrical containment, but he does a great job across the board in explaining how these different strategists saw the geopolity, US goals, US capabilities, and designed strategies. Unlike many if not most historians, Gaddis has a great sense of the weight and responsibility of national leadership. He realizes that these actors were trying to balance a number of priorities and achieve the means-ends balance that is so crucial in good strategy. He is, in short, a fair and mostly impartial judge of historical actors. These points especially come through in his discussion of Reagan, whom most academics and policy makers considered a neanderthal of strategy. I have long been perturbed by Reagan's moral Manicheanism, or his willingness to tolerate the most horrible abuses by American allies or proxies while calling out other states for their crimes. Nevertheless, Gaddis shows that Reagan's defense buildup and intense rhetoric pushed the already crisis-ridden and declining USSR to abandon geopolitical competition and embrace both domestic reform and . Reagan didn't cause the Soviet reorientation of policy, but he pushed it along at just the right time, and then adjusted towards a policy of cooperation with Gorbachev. It's hard to deny that for all of his faults, Reagan's overall strategy worked very well in bringing about a victorious and peaceful conclusion to the Cold War. Gaddis adds that Reagan's crucial insight was that in his consideration of the expenditure of resources, he focused more on the Soviet system than the American one because he understood that the US could set such a high bar that the Soviets would break their system in trying to reach it or just give in without trying. "Strategy" is one of the most overused words in our modern lexicon. People tend to throw it into sentences as a way of making them sound more focused or goal-oriented, but they would often have trouble clearly defining the word. Instead of reading an abstract text, I recommend that anyone interested in strategy check out Gaddis for an exploration of how historical actors in different contexts developed and deployed strategies. The historical lens is probably the most rewarding and nuanced way of approaching the defining and evaluation of strategies. This book is much more complicated than what I can get across in this review, but let me just end by saying that anyone who studies US foreign policy has to read it.