Strobe Talbott

Strobe Talbott's memoirs provide a richly detailed account of the U.S.-Russia relationship in the 1990s. They are an insider's chronicle of critical (and often overlooked) successes mixed with deeply regrettable lost chances.

Democracy makes good neighbors, and in an increasingly interconnected world the United States has both the means and the motive to promote the demo cratic process abroad. On the home front, Americans crave a foreign policy grounded, like their nation, in ideal politik as well as realpolitik. The administration has made support of nascent democracies a priority of its diplomacy from Latin America to East Asia, and the returns from South Africa, Haiti, Russia, even Bosnia seem positive. But democratization is a long, hard journey in which elections are only the first step. The United States should encourage new democratic governments through their most fragile phase.

The manner in which President Bush terminated US military action against Iraq, and the unsatisfactoriness of the residual situation in the Gulf region with Saddam Hussein still in place, served to erode that sense of purpose and self-confidence with which Americans were persuaded to embark on that action. "He left them in confusion over exactly what they had been fighting for in the Persian Gulf, hence over what America's role should be in the post-Cold War world".

Gives an account of problems encountered by START negotiators in 1988, as minor issues about particular types of weapons turned into major issues. Notes that these problems will persist post-Regan and concludes that "before a new administration can pick up where the old one leaves off in START" it should (1) impose some order in the chaos of US thinking about ICBMs (2) decide whether there is a militarily-sound mission for nuclear-armed SLCMs (3) develop a realistic plan for strategic defense R&D.

Charts the ups and downs of Soviet-US relations in the run-up to the Reykjavik summit (including the Daniloff affair), the arms control proposals discussed there, and the political fall-out. SDI is seen as central to President Reagan's policy, contrary to the views of his officials. The events of the latter half of 1986 prove that the strategic relationship between the superpowers is a tenuous one, but that it is not founded on the classic principles of international relations because of the nuclear question. Common security must be the target for the future. Sets out the limits for US-Soviet relationship -- limits to how good, and how bad, it can be.

All happy families are alike," wrote Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of Anna Karenina. "But an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion." A similar melancholy generalization applies to good and bad years in Soviet-American relations: the good ones are often alike in the deceptiveness of what seem to go right, while the bad ones are as varied as the possibilities for something going wrong in a relationship of such fundamental mistrust, misunderstanding and enmity. The future is not inclined to honor promises made in such a relationship, or so the past has shown.