Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente
by Jeremi Suri
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeremi SuriEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-04-15
ISBN: 0674017633
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780674017634
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente
Book Review: Detente and the World
Summary: 4 Stars
Suri's book takes a perspective look at how power and protests around the globe contributed to détente in the world. Specifically, he centers his research on the 1960s and he is able to weave readers through with his narratives and arguments.
Chapter one is titled `The Strains of Nuclear Destruction.' Suri argues, like John L. Gaddis, that during the 1940s, possessing nuclear weapons showed the greatness of the superpowers, but by the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the beginnings of the 1950, major changes had set in. The nuclear weapons possessed by the superpowers became obsolete because the USSR and USA realized that they could not use them to secure political dominance. They couldn't use them against each other because of the devastating effects they had. With Eisenhower fearing the devastating effect of nuclear weapons, he called on his ideological rival, the Soviet Union, for cooperation in reducing the arms race, but the Soviets cautiously rejected the call only to launch their first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik.
The United States engaged in a psychological warfare with the Soviets not only to allay public insecurity but also to show off to the Soviets that they were also capable of manufacturing stockpiles of arms and ammunitions. Suri is of the view that the Kennedy administration changed what its predecessor sought to do; to limit a nuclear build-up. Instead, Kennedy thought that he could encourage the stockpile of nuclear weapons, although the American public did not agree much with him. He then also sought to challenge the Soviets in space exploration.
Inherently, the Kennedy administration, like the Eisenhower's, was afraid of the effects of the nuclear build up. Suri successfully argues that the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis almost brought the two superpowers close enough to use their nuclear arms. However, they saw the wisdom of not using them thus avoiding war at all cost.
The second chapter of the book focuses on `Political Constraints and Charisma.' He argues that Mao Zedong and Charles de Gaulle of China and France respectively "struggled to create "charismatic" sources of authority that escaped the contradictions between Cold War stalemate and national purpose.... they made a virtue of objecting to compromises that many perceived as necessary" (pp. 44-45). These two leaders formed an alliance where they "grew" independently of the political scuffle between the Soviets and Americans. The images they created of themselves, as a result attracted domestic followers. Suri spends much time in discussing the many political crises that went on in France and how de Gaulle came back to the political scene as a leader in May 1958 during the Algerian independent crisis. A few years after coming back as leader of France, de Gaulle, like Konrad Adenauer of the Federal Republic of Germany, called for a nuclear disarmament and reconciliation between the super powers. He urged Germany to form an alliance with France so that they could become a stronger Europe against the United States in particular. France, however, could not shape the geopolitics of Europe just by forming an alliance with Germany; it was much wider than this. The Franco-German alliance in 1963 eventually led Adenauer to be kicked out of office by his political party, The Christian Democratic Union, because of America's disengagement in Europe. France therefore had to find a new partner and it focused its attention of China.
The communist party leader Mao Zedong brought new ideas into the Chinese political and social scenes. He redistributed land, gave women rights and he won the hearts of many people in China. Still searching for grandeur, and with the aim of neutralizing the power of the superpowers, France aligned itself with China. Interestingly, China had contributed arms to the FLN forces that fought French soldiers in Algeria, but France overlooked that fact in its quest to neutralize the `potency' of the super powers by breaking the Cold War rivalry. In fact, both France and China pursued their own successive nuclear ambitions which challenged the international dominance of the super powers. Suri argued that "at home nuclear power symbolized strength and achievement-two associations at the core of the charismatic claims to leadership... [T]he French-Chinese opening provided a channel for resisting superpower nuclear control" (p.77). The two `new" powers also engaged in exchange in trading activities which neutralized the influence of the USSR and USA. France was probably more aggressive than China because it had left NATO and so did not need to consult with the United States in its military pursuits.
Suri argued that despite the charismatic nature of Mao and de Gaulle, by 1967 they had lost popular support to the extent that neither could attend commemorative events in each other's country. The two leaders concentrated too much on external relations at the detriment of national domestic issues, hence the major demonstrations in their countries. In the `Illiberal Consequences of Liberal Empire,' Suri argues that the US administration sought to contain communism while it focused on industrial development. For this reason, the US concentrated on Vietnam, but this was later to backfire since it came to no avail; there were no victors in its military engagement in Vietnam. The United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China all asserted their new frontier on Southeast Asia. At the end, it was the divided Vietnamese who suffered most. Having divided Vietnam into two along the Seventeenth parallel into North and South, the superpowers took sides to engage each other in ideological and guerilla warfare. While the communists took the North, the capitalists concentrated on the South. The US did not only want to contain communism but also to promote development. Unfortunately, the US puppet of the South, Diem, did not kowtow to US wishes and so was deposed in a CIA master-minded coup
Lyndon Baines Johnson inherited Vietnam from his predecessor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but he was known to stand for the downtrodden; he could not do more to lessen tension than to escalate the situation by sending more American troops to Vietnam. Johnson could probably have done more but he was caught up in other domestic tensions at home. There were civil rights demonstration in major cities in America and he really couldn't focus on many things he had initially planned to do. The growing tension on the home front rose when American viewers saw the atrocities being committed in Vietnam. The anger, thanks to the media, spread all over the world and it sparked demonstrations making LBJ a prisoner in the White House.
The Global Disruption of 1968 is the fifth chapter and probably the cusp of Suri's book. He sees the root cause of the disruption as the "nuclear stalements between the superpowers, unresolved alliance disputes and the increasing imperial nature of domestic institutions that alienated citizens from their governments" (164). He then takes readers through students' activities at the University of California at Berkeley; The Free University in Berlin, West Germany; Demonstrations in Washington DC; Paris; Prague, and Wuhan in China.
Although Suri believes all these demonstrations led to détente, he does not argue successfully to create a direct ink between the demonstrations or riots and détente.
In the last chapter of his book, Suri attention turns to The Diplomacy and Domestic Politics of Détente. For him, "Détente was... a direct reaction to the "global disruption" of 1968 "and he saw "détente as mechanism for domestic fortification" (213). He believed that while balance of power created a stable national equilibrium, balance of order emphasized stability over change and repression over reform (216). Yes, France and China neutralized the USA and USSR potencies but was it a necessary a balance of order? It is a difficult question.
Suri brings the historical narratives to an end by summarizing what détente meant for each of the nations that were engulfed in the turmoil. For the Germans, it meant Ostpolitik, which was a change through rapprochement which called for greater connections between the East and West. Despite the dangers inherent in Ostpolitik, secret meetings between Bonn and Moscow and the acknowledgement of France and Britain led to mutual respect.
China had three fronts to deal with: Germany, the United States and Russia. It established full diplomatic relationship with Germany in 1972 and that also brought peace to their front. The Nixon administration also had secret talks with China and eventually Nixon visited China and that also brought about détente. China's disagreement with the Soviets was also settled between their leaders. Ideological warfare made Soviet-American détente extremely difficult for them but secret meetings solved their problems which also ended the Vietnam War.
Suri has a superb ways of writing which makes reading easy and interesting. Each paragraph begins with a topic sentence upfront and that makes it easy to grasp the content of the paragraph. However, the historical and social context of the book is good for sociologists, historians, and political scientists. The documentation of sources is rich with many primary sources. I, however, do think that Suri wasted too much energy on what did not matter for instance, writing about Lyndon B. Johnson poor background and breaking diplomacy in Senegal to talk to fishermen.
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