Tracks of the Bear: Soviet Imprints in the Seventies
Edgar O'Ballance has written an impressive number of specialized books, some of them excellent, on the small and middle-sized wars which have punctuated the years since World War II. In this larger effort, a study of Soviet grand strategy in the 1970s and of the "imprint" made on a host of countries around the globe, as well as on the military balance and on international negotiations, he is less successful. His general argument-that the Soviets made extraordinary gains in their pursuit of global hegemony, aided by the West's inexcusable weakness and appeasement-has some foundation in fact; but the book merely brings together already familiar facts and at times is careless with them or overstates their meaning.
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