Hendrickson, Ryan C.

English

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Eastern Illinois University
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Faculty Research and Creative Activity Political Science
January 2009
Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges
beyond Deterrence in the 1960s (review)
Ryan C. Hendrickson
Eastern Illinois University, rchendrickson@eiu.edu
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Hendrickson, Ryan C., "Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges beyond Deterrence in the 1960s (review)" (2009). Faculty
Research and Creative Activity. 8.
http://thekeep.eiu.edu/polisci_fac/8
proclaimed policy as well as with public perceptions. Even more troubling is the evi-
dence that policymakers in Washington, London, and Moscow were better informed
than their counterparts in Stockholm about some aspects of Sweden’s two-pronged
strategic thinking during the early Cold War. In this respect the lifeline was poten-
tially detrimental to Sweden’s security and defense interests.
Agius, toward the end of her book, reveals her own sympathies with the non-
belligerent stance of Sweden during the Cold War and attributes a “critical edge” and
“unique world vision” to Swedish neutrality (p. 201). These comments, coupled with
her earlier invocation of George W. Bush’s remark that “there can be no neutrality,”
suggest that her view of the past may be shaped in part by her unease about recent
world affairs (p. 1). She seems to be crediting Sweden with a moral authority and a ca-
pacity to resist taking sides, presumably in the war on terror or when developing
countries could beneªt from having an ally in the West.
Paradoxically, the normative lesson implicit in Dalsjö’s analysis is almost the re-
verse, though in his case the relevant political arena is the domestic one. Dalsjö sug-
gests that although Sweden maintained a high proªle on foreign and security policy in
Third World countries, an open-minded and frank debate about Sweden’s own for-
eign policy and security interests hardly ever took place. “Credible neutrality” required
that nobody question the possibility that a Warsaw Pact country would fail to respect
Sweden’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In signiªcant ways the dissonances between Agius’s and Dalsjö’s accounts of
Swedish neutrality reºect a lingering ideational divide in contemporary Sweden, with
some wishing to reinvigorate the “active” foreign policy of the 1970s and 1980s and
others calling for a “normalization” of the country’s stance along the lines of policies
pursued by most European Union partners. When charged with the reins of govern-
ment, however, political parties have almost invariably forged a pragmatic approach
that remains in step with popular expectations and sentiments. Symptomatically, in
recent years Swedish troops were promptly deployed in Kosovo and Afghanistan but
not even contemplated for Iraq. Sweden’s legacy of neutrality may have yielded a
somewhat broader range of choices regarding when and where to commit to interna-
tional engagement, but the menu of options is likely to shrink as the pace of European
integration in this ªeld increases.
✣ ✣ ✣
Andreas Wenger, Christian Nuenlist, and Anna Locher, eds., Transforming NATO in
the Cold War: Challenges beyond Deterrence in the 1960s. New York: Routledge, 2007.
251 pp. $120.00.
Reviewed by Ryan C. Hendrickson, Eastern Illinois University
Much of the existing scholarship on Cold War debates within the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) has focused on how the organization evolved to meet
challenges posed by the Soviet Union. The literature has mostly focused on American
157
Book Reviews
leadership of the alliance, using U.S.-Soviet developments to structure analysis of
NATO.
In contrast to this approach, Andreas Wenger, Christian Nuenlist, and Anna
Locher have compiled an impressive collection of chapters that identify intra-alliance
debates and contributions from many NATO members in the 1960s. Thanks to the
opening of the NATO archives in 1999, coupled with outstanding use of national ar-
chives in many of the NATO members, the contributors to the volume shed new
light—from an array of perspectives—on NATO’s challenges during this tenuous pe-
riod in the alliance’s existence. The book, which is divided into four substantive sec-
tions—including analyses of NATO as an organization of shared political values, the
challenge posed by French President Charles de Gaulle and the broader desire within
the alliance for détente policies, NATO’s nuclear dilemmas, and the role of domestic
political concerns in shaping alliance debates—is a must read for students of NATO.
Many of the essays point to a more “participatory alliance” than is commonly as-
sumed and taught (p. 10). Using a multinational analysis, the contributors depict
NATO as a pluralistic security community in which debate among member-states,
both large and small, frequently occurred. Early chapters ªnd evidence of transna-
tional groups within the alliance, consisting of key policymaking elites who fostered
common transatlantic interests, as well as contributions from states such as Belgium,
Canada, and the Netherlands, all of which are often absent from analyses of key Cold
War questions that faced the alliance.
Several chapters also point to the role of NATO’s institutional leaders, including
the secretaries general and individual ambassadors. These essays ªll a large void in the
existing scholarship, especially on the role of NATO’s secretaries general, including
Paul Spaak, Dirk Stikker, and Manlio Brosio, during the Cold War. Anna Locher’s
chapter is especially good in capturing the challenges faced by Stikker in dealing with
the French from 1963 on, when NATO’s French ambassador essentially refused to
speak in the North Atlantic Council.
Among the many impressive chapters, Christian Nuenlist’s analysis of U.S. Presi-
dent Dwight Eisenhower shows that Eisenhower was far less consultative with the al-
lies than has often been assumed. Eisenhower at one point in his communications
with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev criticized the NATO allies and encouraged
Khrushchev not to let intra-alliance differences detract from U.S.-Soviet relations.
Nuenlist also presents evidence that the Kennedy administration took more substan-
tial steps to consult with the allies than previously believed. Nuenlist credits Secretary
General Stikker with playing a “constructive role” at NATO headquarters during the
Berlin crisis of 1961 (p. 83). His analysis diverges from most of the previous scholar-
ship on Stikker, which emphasizes the secretary general’s frequent absences because of
health concerns and alleged lack of interest in fostering a more consultative environ-
ment within the alliance. Nuenlist thus offers unique historical insights into NATO’s
Cold War tribulations.
The section on domestic politics in the member-states, including analyses of
Denmark, Italy, and the anti-nuclear/anti-American protest movements in Europe,
also provides novel perspectives on intra-alliance discussions. Among these chapters,
158
Book Reviews
Jonathan Søborg Agger’s assessment of Danish politics and Denmark’s reasons for sup-
porting NATO’s Harmel report and détente more generally highlights the importance
of Denmark’s domestic critics of NATO in shaping the Danish government’s aggres-
sive support of these initiatives at NATO headquarters.
One gap in the volume is the absence of analysis of the Supreme Allied Com-
mander, Europe (SACEUR) during this period. Previous analyses have identiªed the
SACEUR as NATO’s dominant institutional leader during most of the Cold War. Al-
though the evidence in this volume convincingly points to far greater pluralism than
previously thought, further research is needed to examine the degree to which the
SACEUR, especially Lauris Norstad, shaped intra-alliance decision-making and dis-
cussion.
In sum, this volume offers many new insights on NATO’s history in the 1960s
and is deftly edited around the four central themes. Nearly all of the essays suggest a
much more “political” rather than strictly “military” alliance during the Cold War,
with plenty of solid evidence to support this claim. This volume is a welcome and
needed addition to the existing scholarship.
✣ ✣ ✣
Nigel J. Ashton, ed., The Cold War in the Middle East: Regional Conºict and the Super-
powers, 1967–73. New York: Routledge, 2007. 212 pp.
Reviewed by William B. Quandt, University of Virginia
A challenge in teaching students today about the Middle East during the Cold War is
to explain the complicated links between regional politics and superpower relations.
One can go wrong in several ways: placing too much emphasis on the strings being
pulled from Moscow or Washington, ascribing too much autonomy to regional ac-
tors, or ignoring domestic political factors that affect all decision-makers. This vol-
ume, skillfully edited by Nigel Ashton, is a welcome contribution to these debates, al-
though the contributors at times disagree and leave a number of issues unsettled.
Ashton portrays the links between regional politics and superpower relations as com-
plex and unpredictable, which is probably about right but not necessarily very helpful
for understanding speciªc cases. Fortunately, the individual chapters contain plenty of
substantive material to satisfy the empirically minded reader, and they are of uni-
formly high quality.
I was impressed in most of these essays by the thorough use of recently released
archival materials and, in some cases, of interviews as well. Unfortunately, we still do
not have complete access to relevant documents, and by now the memories of those
who lived through these events are not necessarily reliable. At some point researchers
will obtain fuller information from Soviet, Arab, and Israeli archives. Even on the
American side a bit more is still to be released. But the interpretive challenge will
never be fully settled by documents and interviews alone.
After reading these unusually well-written essays, I found that most of my pre-
159
Book Reviews


Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges beyond Deterrence in the 1960s (review)

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Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges beyond Deterrence in the 1960s (review)

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