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Book Review
| Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. By JEREMI SURI. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. 355 pp. $29.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).
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Power and Protest aims to provide a global perspective on the unrest of the 1960s and the origins of détente. Arguing that civil disruptions plagued all of the superpowers (the United States, the Soviet Union, Germany, France, and China) during the 1960s, Jeremi Suri argues that détente emerged as a conservative reaction to popular unrest and as a way for the superpowers to create what he calls a "balance of order"—to maintain the status quo and to bolster their international prestige in the face of domestic challenges. Suri combines a traditional diplomatic narrative with a study of the intellectual history of protest movements. He stresses that détente strengthened the superpower governments while burying domestic dissent and dissatisfaction within the rhetoric of international cooperation. |
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Suri finds the roots of a "common urge for stability" (p. 2) in both the nuclear arms stalemate and the growing domestic frustrations with Cold War policies beginning in the 1950s. U.S. president John F. Kennedy's vision of a "new frontier," for example, promised enlightened government and increased worldwide stability through economic incentives, foreign aid, and strategic nuclear advantage. These enthusiastic promises soon gave way to fears of nuclear war and, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, spurred cooperation, stability, and the preservation of the status quo, particularly between the Soviet Union and the United States. |
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