A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963
The launch of the Euro, the potential deployment of U.S. troops in Kosovo, and NATO's 50th anniversary highlight the stability sweepstakes in Europe. Trachtenberg (history, Univ. of Pennsylvania), a premier U.S. scholar of international relations, tells how Europe, progenitor of global war and incendiary ideology, was tamed by the United States and Russia. Trachtenberg's work is an exhaustive, well-written study of statecraft at the highest levels. Despite the global U.S.-Soviet rivalry, Germany held (and still holds) the key to global peace. Exploiting print and archival sources, Trachtenberg argues that by 1963, at the beginning of the Vietnam War, a stable system of Cold War relations was in place. This system rested on the status quo in Central Europe, particularly in Berlin; nuclear deterrence (read a nonnuclear Germany); and U.S. troops in Europe. De facto d?tente existed well before Nixon and Kissinger made it policy. Despite the demise of the Soviet Union and the advent of a New Order, this Germany-centered system endures. We ignore it at our peril. Recommended.AJohn Raymond Walser, U.S. Dept. of State, Washington, DCCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.