Inside a Cold War Insider

H. W. Brands, Jr. Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918–1961 .     

Stalin and Togliatti: Italy and the Origins of the Cold War/Tito: A Biography

The 1956 Suez Crisis has attracted enormous attention and been widely seen as marking a sea change in Britain's position in the Middle East and within the Anglo-American special relationship. Yet in September 1951 the Attlee government had already signalled waning British power in pulling back from major unilateral military action to defend Britain's single most important overseas asset: the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and its huge operations in Iran. What this crisis revealed of British aspirations in the Middle East and within the special relationship has not received the attention it deserves. This article examines the Attlee government's decision to ‘scuttle’ from Abadan in September 1951. It first places the decision in the context of Anglo-American relations and great cumulative pressure in favour of British military action. It then weighs various considerations claimed in the extant literature to explain the British decision. In doing so it disagrees with suggestions that British military intervention was precluded by an understanding between Truman and Attlee that such action was acceptable only in a narrow range of circumstances for fear of retaliatory Soviet intervention in Iran. It also argues that accounts that correctly emphasise US opposition to the use of force as the key restraint on the Attlee government could and should have gone further. Specifically, it needs to be better appreciated just how the Truman administration actively undermined potential British recourse to military intervention, infused other potential constraints with extra weight and helped delay a Cabinet decision until a point when armed intervention was least likely to achieve British ends.     

Review Article: Cold War or Cold Peace

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS. The United States and the End of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. ix, 301. $34.95 (CDN);

MICHAEL J. HOGAN, ed. The End of the Cold War: Its Meanings and Implications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 294. $13.95 (us), paper;

JAMES CHACE. The Consequences of the Peace: The New Internationalism and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xii, 221. $32.50 (CDN).     

Towards the Cold War

ROBERT DALLEK. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. ix, 657; DANIEL YERGIN. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. Pp. x, 526; JOHN H. BACKER. The Decision to Divide Germany: American Foreign Policy in Transition. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1978. Pp. x, 212; ROBERT J. DONOVAN. Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977. Pp. xvii, 473; YONOSUKE NAGAI and AKIRA IRIYE, editors. The Origins of the Cold War in Asia. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1977. Pp. ix, 448; THOMAS G. PATERSON. On Every Front: The Making of the Cold War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979. Pp. xii, 210.     

Review Article: Hot War,Cold War,New War

STANLEY KARNOW. Vietnam, A History. New York: Penguin, 1984. Pp. xi, 752. $10.95 (US); GABRIEL KOLKO. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Pp. xvi, 628. $25.00 (US); TIMOTHY J. LOMPERIS. The War Everyone Lost-and Won: America's Intervention in Vietnam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 192. $22.50 (US); R.B. SMITH. An International History of the Vietnam War: The Kennedy Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Pp. xii, 429. $25.00 (US); HARRY O. SUMMERS, Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Dell, 1984. Pp. 288. $3.95 (US).