Cold War the Great Powers & Their Allies

 J.P.D. Dunbabin

Reviews of the first edition:

'[This volume] represents quite a remarkable achievement, drawing together the results of a vast array of research on post-war international affairs in a readable and remarkably well-structured way'. history

'Dunbabin's comprehensive, very detailed, and well-analysed book may well become one of the standard textbooks on the Cold War'. The Slavonic Review

 The Cold War was an extraordinary struggle for strategic world domination between the world's two great superpowers, the USA and USSR. For four decades it divided the world, and during this time all other issues of international concern were sucked into its orbit.  No other global division was able to transcend the rift it created.

 In this fully revised second edition, J.P.D. Dunbabin, drawing on international scholarship and using much new material from communist sources, describes a world in which covert operations could be as important as outright diplomacy, 'soft' power as influential as 'hard', and in which competing ideologies ruled the hearts as much as the heads of the leaders in power.

 Dunbabin’s account is global in scope, taking into account the importance of players beyond the superpowers, and shedding light on the proxy conflicts such as those in Africa and the Middle East that, if not caused by the continuing stalemate between the great powers, were used as weapons within it.

 This new edition includes:

·         Primary source material from the former communist regimes of soviet Russia, eastern Europe and China.

·         New and detailed accounts of the Gorbachev era, the east European revolutions of 1989, the fall of the Berlin wall and German re-unification.

·         New chapters on the growth of the EU, on the wars of ex-Yugoslavia, and on the stabilisation of most east European states through their attraction towards and acceptance into the EU.

·         A final new chapter detailing current perceptions of the Cold War and its aftermath.

J.P.D. Dunbabin, formerly Reader in International Relations at Oxford University, has published over a wide range of topics including  British and international history, The League of Nations and the United Nations.

• Looks at the Cold War from both perspectives.

• Puts the Cold War into context.

• Looks to the future of the post Cold War world.

• Discusses the importance of domestic issues and how they influenced the course and outcome of the Cold War.

• Includes previously unseen material about the Stalin and post-Stalin era.

PART ONE: OVERVIEW

1. The Cold war: An Overview

2. The Strategic Dimension of East-West competition

PART TWO: EAST-WEST RELATIONS 1945-1991

3. The Start of the Cold War

4. The Nadir of the Cold War

5. The Kruschev Years – Detentes, Challenges, Crises

6. The Vietnam War and Other Proxy Conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s

7. Détente in Europe

8. The United States, China and the World

9. The rise and fall of Détente in the 1960s and 1970s

10. Tension and the ending of the Cold war in the 1980s

PART THREE: EUROPE WEST AND EAST AND THE SINO-SOCIET SPLIT

11. Western Europe I: The Political Order

12. Western Europe II: France, Germany, Britain, and the USA

13. Western Europe III: The European Union

14. Splits in the Communist World

15. Eastern Europe  since 1957

PART FOUR: CONCLUSION

16. Perspectives on the Cold War and its Aftermath