Rope As a Decoupling of Transatlantic Security. Increasingly Norstad Was
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Book Reviews rope as a decoupling of transatlantic security.Increasingly Norstad was marginalized, as Kennedy, in sharp contrast to Eisenhower, turned more to his civilian aides than to the professional military for advice. Norstad’s problems with the Kennedy administration stemmed in part from the fact that, as Jordan concludes, the general saw himself “as a NATO commander ªrst, and an American commander second; as for Kennedy, he regarded Norstad as an American commander ªrst, and a NATO commander second” (p.199).Although SACEUR is responsible to the members of NATO, his authority derives from the role played by the United States, the country from which all SACEURs have come.In this sense every SACEUR has a difªcult task, as Norstad had seen in the nuclear issues that he faced with de Gaulle.Under Eisenhower, Norstad enjoyed the conªdence and sup - port of his patron in dealing with the prickly persona of de Gaulle and his aspirations for French grandeur and independence.In 1961 Norstad sought on behalf of the Eu - ropean members of NATO to explain why the Kennedy administration’s policies might lead to a de facto decoupling of European and North American security.This was an unwelcome message in Washington that contributed to Kennedy’s decision to replace Norstad. Throughout his eventful career Norstad seized opportunities for authority and responsibility.Except for the early 1960s, he had managed to be in the right place at the right time.His World War II and Cold War contributions were extensive and im- portant, as Robert Jordan amply discusses and documents in this impressive volume. ✣✣✣ Günter Bischof and Saki Dockrill, eds., Cold War Respite: The Geneva Summit of 1955. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. 319 pp. $60.00. Reviewed by John Van Oudenaren, European Division, Library of Congress In July 1945, midway through the Potsdam Conference, British prime minister Winston Churchill was swept from ofªce by a war-weary British electorate.Six years of postwar Labour Party rule began when Clement Attlee replaced Churchill at Potsdam.Upon returning to power in the fall of 1951, Churchill called for a meeting that in a sense would take up where Potsdam had left off.He believed that a summit with Josif Stalin and Harry Truman would recapture some of Britain’s faded wartime prestige and help to resolve the outstanding issues between East and West, most of which had roots in the failed peacemaking efforts of 1945. But Churchill was not to have his summit.The ªrst postwar meeting of Soviet and Western leaders did not take place until July 1955, more than two years after Tru- man had left ofªce and Stalin had died.The meeting came some three months after Churchill himself had relinquished his post to Anthony Eden. Cold War Respite chronicles the tortuous diplomatic path that the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the United States took from Churchill’s initial proposal to the Geneva meeting.It dis - sects the key issues covered at the summit and examines the importance of Geneva as a 144 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2002.4.3.144 by guest on 23 September 2021 Book Reviews respite marking, as Ernest R.May puts it in his chapter, “the midpoint of the high cold war.” The book consists of papers presented at a conference sponsored by the Eisen- hower Center of the University of New Orleans in 1995.Its great strength is its de - tailed treatment, in chapters by historians working with newly available archival mate- rials, of the approaches adopted by the four participating states as well as West Germany and Austria.Other chapters cover the issues on the Geneva agenda—Euro - pean security and German reuniªcation, disarmament, and East-West trade and con- tacts—as well as the special role of John Foster Dulles and the follow-up to the sum- mit in the October–November 1955 Geneva conference of foreign ministers. The years from 1953 to 1955 witnessed great ºuidity in the domestic politics of all of the protagonists.As Vladislav Zubok convincingly demonstrates in his chapter, the Soviet road to Geneva was connected with the post-Stalin struggle for power in the Kremlin.Limited détente with the West was both a result and an instrument of Nikita Khrushchev’s struggle with Vyacheslav Molotov for control over Soviet foreign policy.In the United States the political situation was less volatile, but Dwight Eisen - hower had to steer a careful path between, on the one hand, the lingering effects of McCarthyism and the fears within his own party about another Yalta and, on the other hand, his own sense that the public was weary of the Cold War stalemate, fearful of nuclear war, and eager for an East-West thaw that would offer hope for the future. In Britain and France governments struggling with economic challenges and dimin- ished postwar status were seeking to bolster their positions through international di- plomacy.Nowhere was domestic ºuidity more pronounced—at least poten- tially—than in West Germany, where Chancellor Konrad Adenauer remained wary of Soviet and East German reuniªcation offers that would have been premised on the sacriªce of West Germany’s integration into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Taken together, the chapters demonstrate the complex interplay of politics at three levels during the preparations for and conduct of the summit: (1) domestically; (2) within the emerging Western and Communist-bloc structures; and (3) in East-West relations.The overriding goal in the West, articulated most clearly by Adenauer and U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles, was to consolidate West Ger- many’s place in NATO and only on that basis to engage with Moscow.Western lead - ers were unwilling to meet with their Soviet counterparts until all signatories had ratiªed the Paris agreements and until West Germany’s place in the West was secure. On the eastern side domestic and bloc consolidation also took priority.Although some observers saw Moscow’s readiness to conclude the Austrian State Treaty in May 1955 as a last-ditch effort to promote the neutralization of Germany, it was in fact a Soviet adjustment to what Nikita Khrushchev recognized as the new European order that was to last until the political upheavals of 1989.The key elements of this or - der—recognition of two sovereign German states (in all but the narrowest legal terms), the integration of West Germany into NATO and East Germany into the Warsaw Pact (established in May 1955), and international recognition of Austrian neutrality—all took shape in the run-up to Geneva. 145 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2002.4.3.144 by guest on 23 September 2021 Book Reviews Because the participants in the Geneva summit were concerned most of all with domestic and bloc consolidation, they came away from the meeting reasonably satisªed, even though the sessions yielded few concrete results and the post-Geneva agendas of the powers were largely incompatible.Soviet leaders were pleased that they had held their own with the stronger and more sophisticated Western powers.Despite the careful show of Western unity and the invocation of four-power rights and respon- sibilities going back to Potsdam, the shrewd Khrushchev could discern in Geneva the bipolar, arms control–centered U.S.-Soviet détente that would emerge in the 1960s and eventually push German unity off the political agenda until 1989.Dulles was re - lieved that the West had survived Geneva without falling prey to Soviet propaganda, and he was hopeful that the summit had initiated a diplomatic process that would gradually enable the West, proceeding from its “position of strength,” to secure Ger- man unity and the liberation of Eastern Europe.Britain and France were reasonably satisªed that they had bolstered their countries’ great-power status. Needless to say, these conºicting expectations about the post-Geneva world could not all come true.As John W.Young shows in his chapter on the conference of foreign ministers in the fall of 1955, the Soviet Union, having beneªted from the im- proved political climate in the wake of the summit, was not interested in revisiting the question of German uniªcation that the leaders had mandated to their foreign minis- ters.With “socialism” under construction in East Germany, the German question was closed—a position that the Soviet authorities held until the upheavals of 1989. Cold War Respite adds signiªcantly to our understanding of this key episode of the high Cold War, demonstrating how and why Geneva ultimately failed what Eisen- hower called the “acid test” of détente.If failure was already apparent at the foreign ministers’ conference, it was to become even more obvious a year later during the Suez and Hungarian crises, which highlighted the emergence of strategic bipolarity, shat- tered illusions about the great-power status of France and Britain, and ended any lin- gering hopes that Eastern Europe might be liberated or Germany united through the diplomacy initiated at Geneva.Ultimately the 1955 summit was indeed just a respite. Final resolution of the issues on the Geneva agenda—above all German unity and Eu- ropean security—had to wait another thirty-ªve years for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse from within of the entire Soviet system. ✣✣✣ Robert G.Darst, Smokestack Diplomacy: Cooperation and Conºict in East-West Envi- ronmental Politics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001. 300 pp. $22.95. Reviewed by Brent S. Steel, Oregon State University Well before the demise of Communism environmental problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had reached grave levels.Environmental disasters such as the nu - clear power plant accident in Chernobyl and the nuclear weapons production facility 146 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2002.4.3.144 by guest on 23 September 2021.