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Trapped in the Cold War

The Cold War, Melvyn Leffler writes in his superb new book, "is about men and their ideas and their fears and their hopes." "[Officials in Washington and Moscow," Leffler argues, "intermittently grasped the consequences of the Cold War, glimpsed the possibilities of detente, and yearned for peace, but they could not escape their fears or relinquish their dreams. Around the globe peoples were struggling to define their future and disputing the benefits of alternative ways of life, so the Cold War was indeed a struggle for the soul of mankind" (p. 8). Leffler 's prior work especially his prizewinning book, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War set the standard for analyzing the intersection of threat perception, political economy, and military power in the postwar world. He famously described the combination of prudence and foolishness that led American leaders to seek global preponderance after the Second World War: "It meant creating a world environment hospitable to U.S. interests and values; it meant developing the capabilities to overcome threats and challenges; it meant mobilizing the strength to reduce Soviet influence on its periphery; it meant undermining the appeal of communism; it meant fashioning the institutional techniques and mechanisms to manage the free world; and it meant establishing a configuration of power and a military posture so that if war erupted, the United States would prevail. If adversaries saw the handwriting on the wall, they would defer to American wishes."1