The Uses Of Adversity: Essays On The Fate Of Central Europe
Those who missed reading Carton Ash's articles over the past decade in The New York Review of Books, The Spectator and elsewhere now have the opportunity to read them together in one volume. Some are dated, but the commentary is always insightful, often brilliant, and as pertinent today as then.
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FIVE peace treaties were signed at Paris on February 10, 1947. These treaties -- with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland -- have aroused no strong opposition, and no noticeable enthusiasm, in the United States. The Senate ratified the Italian treaty by 79 votes to 10 and the others without a recorded vote. They were regarded as a necessary step in putting an end to armistice régimes and the military occupation of former enemy states.
The crisis over Cuba and the Chinese invasion of India have had their salutary lessons for many nations and many political leaders-for none perhaps more than the neutralists. They have spoken up positively, as before, for peace and negotiation, against blocs and power politics. But what they have seen has attested to their relative inability to influence the course of events, or even to maintain solidarity in their own ranks, when the big powers are taking crucial decisions and the global strategic balance is at stake. A more pertinent question is whether, and how, the neutrals can safeguard their own vital interests.
The fruits of détente in Europe are now being gathered. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt has completed his triad of treaties with former enemies in Moscow, Warsaw and East Berlin, The accord on West Berlin has confirmed that city's status and removed it, for the present at least, as a possible flashpoint of war. President Richard Nixon has made his voyage to Moscow to proclaim with the Soviet leaders a new era in Soviet-American relations, on which the return visit now sets its seal. Visions of sugarplums dance in the heads of Soviet planners and Western businessmen. Détente, of course, does not have the same purposes for all concerned, and some may find its fruits bitter or the sugarplums unripe. Nevertheless, as all prepare to sit down together in Helsinki at a conference on security and coöperation, the cold war seems far away.

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