Customer Reviews

Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War

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This is an excellent survey of how activist scientists in East and West interacted, throughout the four decade Cold War, to advance arms control goals: the Test Ban, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, and nuclear disarmament especially. It details, in particular: the work of Bernard Lown in the 1980s (with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) on the test ban; the work of Thomas Cochran in the 1980s (With National Resources Defense Council) on private sector inspection of Russian activities; the work of Frank von Hippel (of Federation of American Scientists) in the 1980s in linking American activists to Russian activist scientists, and my own work in the 1960s to catalyze and promote an ABM Treaty and my subsequent work in the latter half of the 1980s (for Federaton of American Scientists) to prevent the Reagan Star Wars program from derailing disarmament. But this book details much heretofore unknown about the Russian reactions to these efforts and their own struggles, with Andre Sakharov and other participants, to advance arms control. And it contains interesting theories about how these interactions worked. (A more detailed and personal survey of my own work appears in "Every Man Should Try": Adventures of a Public Interest Activist, PublicAffairs, 1999)

Matthew Evangelista has written a unique and powerful book, one that stands out as the most plausible explanation for how and why the Cold War ended. Virtually no one else in journalism, the academy, or think tanks has developed the insights and the research displayed in UNARMED FORCES. That international civil society played a pivotal role in convincing the Soviet Union to stand down from the dangerous and wasteful competition of the Cold War is a remarkably perceptive understanding of a complex phenonomenon, and Evangelista argues this with the benefit of solid research in the U.S. and USSR. A truly remarkable achievement in every respect---intelligent, readable, and revolutionary.

CITATION FOR MARSHALL SHULMAN BOOK PRIZE for an outstanding monograph on the international behavior of the countries of the former Communist bloc funded by the Harriman Institute, Columbia University awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS)

By shedding new light on the Soviet system and how it made foreign policy, Matthew Evangelista's book Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War, published by Cornell University Press, illuminates the cold war and how it came to an end. Evangelista focuses on "transnational actors," particularly, prominent scientists and physicians in the Pugwash movement and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and their roles throughout the Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev eras in shaping Soviet and American attitudes toward nuclear testing, strategic defense, and conventional force reductions. These scientists and doctors labored for decades often against great odds in both countries to try to reduce the danger of nuclear war. While it has generally been thought that these scientists had little influence on Soviet foreign policy, Evangelista shows, on the basis of exhaustive research in Soviet archives, interviews with Russian and American activists, and a broad range of other primary and secondary sources, that neither the cold war nor its demise can be understood without taking into account the role of transnational groups. By supplying information and ideas to a closed decision-making structure, these groups were able to encourage moderate responses and provide technical expertise to strengthen the arguments of those within the political elite who favored an end to the arms race. The book will challenge those who feel that it was the Reagan policy of Star Wars that was primarily responsible for an end to the Cold War, by showing that decades of linkages amongst an international network of scientists had prepared the groundwork for moderation on the Soviet side and for a revision in American thinking about the Soviet threat. In this sense, Evangelista's topic and his extensive research into it offer both new insights into the past and grist for important future research. Additionally, those who argue for the importance of maintaining exchange agreements and cooperative relations across borders even amongst adversaries will also find support from this major and important study.

(The award was presented on November 11, 2000 at the AAASS 32nd National Convention in Denver, Colorado).

Sometimes I find it absolutely amazing that Western scholars still have the nerve to write books like these. Every single day the younger generation (with minimal knowledge of the Cold War) finds themselves surrounded by ignorant anti-Communist baby boomers telling them elaborate and fictitious stories of the Cold War through nonsense publications such as these. The amount of speculation and radical theories in this book presented as fact sickens me. Transnational actors provided crucial information to that "closed" society!? They "convinced" the Soviet Union to back down from the dangers of cold war!? Now, this book was published in 1999, and Evangelista seemed to forget that the Cold War is OVER! Can we please stop othering the former Eastern Bloc? Can we please consider that the Soviet Union was NOT as closed, backwards, "oriental", WHATEVER as this book, and thousands of other publications, claim it to be? Ok, Evangelista had some primary and secondary sources, but translation and interpretation is everything. I only wonder what Gorbachev would think if he read this book...