The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War: A Personal History of the Cold War [Hardcover]

This book is in many ways as good as I'd been expecting.

Witty, quirky and opinionated, it is Stone back close to his very best. Its particular strength is the colourful anecdote that makes a telling point about a much broader trend: not many historians can successfully illuminate 1960s America with a story about the pre-1914 Austro-Hungarian empire.

There is also a personal dimension that adds to the entertainment: few historians can offer insights into the peculiarities of "really existing socialism" in the old East by describing his own three-month incarceration in Slovakia in the mid-60s for trying to assist a couple of Hungarians to escape to the west.

On the downside, however, the book shows signs of having been written in a hurry. The copy-editing (if any) failed to eliminate redundancies and repetitions, which are sufficient in number to detract form the reader's experience. Worse, there are some stonkingly obvious errors of fact which bear all the hallmarks of Stone having worked from (erroneous) memory rather than checking his sources: for instance, from any historian his claim that in the 1980s the Tories were down to just a single MP in Scotland would be sloppy (they never fell below double figures in actuality), but from a Scot who boasts that he was at the time actually writing speeches for the Tory Prime Minister such wild inaccuracy is very striking.

Overall, the book is well worth reading, but if you don't know anything about the subject or period you should be aware that not everything Stone states as fact can be relied upon.

The key to understanding this book is in its subtitle: "A Personal History of the Cold War". The style and approach are reflective and conversational, rather like listening to an amiable tutorial, although the text is dense with facts and figures, especially on economics. The tone is one of worldliness, which could be mistaken for cynicism, were it not that at several places where the facts of human suffering are particularly grim, Stone makes clear his sympathy for the victims caught up in those events.

Stone begins his account of the Cold War period from 1945 to 1991 with an examination of the aftermath of the British Empire, what he calls the War of British Succession. The retreat of the European empires from Asia after the war created a vacuum that was filled by nationalist struggles in countries such as Burma, Vietnam and Indonesia. These nationalist forces looked for patronage from the Soviet Union and China, the communist side of the power struggle that had its origins in the inter- allied rivalries of the Second World War. Nationalist and great power forces came to a head in the Korean War, which underlined the limits of Western and specifically American power in ways that would be repeated in Vietnam and Afghanistan for the French and Soviets as well as Americans.

Stone emphasises the defining significance of American power in its role of safeguarding the West and containing communist expansion. The principle example of this was the Marshall Plan which created the foundations for freeing markets of protectionism and stimulating trade, economic development and political stability with the first steps of European cooperation. Later in the book there is an account of how the post- war economic settlement of Bretton Woods unravelled in the sixties and seventies, when President Johnston bypassed Congress to finance the Vietnam War by a scale of borrowing that created a huge national debt and weakened the dollar on world markets. In 1971 the dollar's convertibility to gold was ended.

The seventies were a time of apparent decline of Western power and a resurgence of the communist bloc. Events such as the Yom Kippur War, the rise of oil prices by OPEC, the Watergate scandal, American weaknesses exposed by the policy failures of the Carter presidency, and the Iranian Revolution all epitomised this decline. What was astonishing was the speed of the unexpected reversal of this decline in the eighties, with the rediscovery of a purposive ideology and self- belief in the USA and Britain, in tandem with an economic recovery (despite increased borrowing by Reagan). There is a particularly interesting chapter on "The British Disease" and the recovery from the stagnation and statism of the seventies. Stone's personal involvement as a newspaper columnist and historical adviser lends immediacy and pungency to his comments about the legacy of failure Mrs. Thatcher tackled.

Eventually the Cold War was won by the West as a result of Soviet economic exhaustion and ideological bankruptcy, when it became unable to compete with Star Wars and other American military spending. Particular political leaders such as Reagan and Thatcher, as well as Pope John Paul II had the strategic vision and determination to grasp the moment, and in Gorbachev they found a Soviet leader of equal stature. For that reason I find it difficult to understand Stone's portrayal of Gorbachev as a Chichikov figure (from Gogol), a kind of useful idiot who enabled the inevitable to happen whilst creating an impression of continuity. I find that chapter one of the weaker and less persuasive ones in the book. It was Gorbachev who made the strategic decision to allow a retreat of Soviet power from Eastern Europe into the USSR, influenced by the failure of Soviet power and policy in Afghanistan, and by the failure of the Soviet economy to provide a decent standard of living to its citizens and those under its domination, in stark contrast to the West. The climax of these pressures came in 1989 to 1991, and it pivoted on the central issue of Germany in Europe.

With the seeming resolution of the Cold War a new framework for understanding the "new world order" had to be thought out. Initial attempts such as the theme of the "end of history" (really a reformulation of Hegel after the Battle of Jena) unravelled when the hegemony of liberal democracy was challenged by a resurgence of ethnic, cultural and nationalist conflicts. Stone does not entirely succeed in drawing these themes together in the final chapter, and a proper conclusion is lacking.

On balance, this is a long but well written and readable account of the Cold War. It is especially strong on economic issues, although the recitation of financial statistics makes for hard reading for a non- specialist. The book can be somewhat uneven in its treatment of disparate topics. Its strengths include its analyses of the Marshall Plan, the development of European economic and political union, Western decline in the seventies and the reversal of fortunes in the eighties. Stone rightly emphasises the importance of the integration of China into the world's economic and political system which was under way by the nineties. There are some unnecessary repetitions in the text which could have been edited out. At some points Stone goes into inordinate detail, for example about Haiti, Chile and Turkey, without making sufficient links to the main themes of the book. His account of the process of decolonisation is a caricature. However, despite these reservations, this is a book to be recommended about a period the significance of which is still being worked out.

The Atlantic and Its Enemies is an interesting and well written book by a Historian who is not afraid of rattling cages and creating controversy. Norman Stone takes you on a journey of the History of the USA, USSR and Europe during the Cold War and
what I like about this book is Stone's pithy remarks about politicians like Kennedy, Khrushchev, Nixon, Reagan and Thatcher.
I particularly enjoyed Stone's writing on the Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War and there are plenty of amusing anecdotes and witty ripostes to keep the reader entertained. A highly ambitious book which is a bit long and labours in part, none the less an absorbing and engaging read.
4 stars-worth buying in paperback or borrowing from a library.