Because it is written mainly by Europeans and from a European perspective, this book adds a significant dimension to standard American works on the subject by Thomas W. Wolfe, Richard Pipes and others. Not only does it point up where Western Europe's interests diverge from America's (for, though not a study of Western policy, it can hardly avoid that subject), but also, in most if not all of the chapters, it portrays Soviet strategy as the complex product of dilemmas, predicaments and priorities, rather than as the expression of fixed aims and a unilinear guide to policy decisions.