Out of the Cold: The Cold War and its Legacy.

• Author: Smith, Anthony
• Position: Book review

OUT OF THE COLD: The Cold War and its Legacy

Editors: Michael R. Fitzgerald and Allen Packwood

Published by: Bloomsbury, New York, 2013, 199pp, US$30.99.

This volume is a collection of papers from a large number of officials and academics who attended a landmark 2009 conference at the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University. The officials involved were primarily close to three main decision-makers when the Cold War ended: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. As with most edited volumes, the contributions are varied, but much of this assessment of the Cold War is quite thought provoking. The reader is immersed in competing perspectives, including those of former adversaries.

There are a lot of themes that emerge from the multiple contributors to this book. Starting with one of the most frequent, who actually 'won' the Cold War? Grigoriy Karasin, deputy foreign minister of Russia, has a view on this, and the answer is decidedly not President Reagan. Alexander Likhotal, former adviser to Gorbachev, is keen to note that Gorbachev had a choice, and he chose reform, yet he could have chosen to continue with a broken system. Susan Eisenhower (granddaughter of President Eisenhower and noted Russia expert) is also inclined to dismiss the pressure that a programme like the Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star Wars' in the press) really had on the Soviet system. Former Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a key figure in Capitol Hill Cold War policy-making, sees it very differently and credits the Strategic Defense Initiative and other arms buildups as bringing the Soviet Union to the table. Other British and US commentators are more inclined to give credit to Reagan (and Thatcher) for standing up to and bankrupting the Soviet Union. Or perhaps more dispassionate observers will see that both sets of factors were at play, including giving substantial credit to President Gorbachev for withholding Soviet intervention in Eastern

Europe in stark contrast to his predecessors. It is hard, though, to give Gorbachev credit for foresight, as his attempts at recasting the communist system resulted in the (unwitting) demise of the Soviet Union. Doubling back to Karasin, Western 'triumphalist' views have not been helpful from his point of view, nor are notions of who 'won' or 'lost'. One will infer that this sense of prestige (or loss of it) runs deeply for Russia. Conversely, for Britain's Sir Anthony Brenton (prominent British diplomat)...