Super Power Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray—and How to Return to Reality

This persuasive, occasionally provocative book corrects a number of pervasive myths about the Cold War, including the beliefs that it ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and that the U.S. effectively “won.” The text, which is as much a work of historiography as history, re-examines Soviet-American diplomacy of the 1980s to reassess the key decisions made by Reagan and Gorbachev that led to a thawing of relations between the two countries. Matlock, American ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, reassesses the transition to the post–Cold War era, critiquing analyses of Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel P. Huntington that perniciously oversimplified the complexities of the changing geopolitical landscape. Surveying policy as well as theory, the author criticizes Clinton for unclear foreign policy goals, but reserves his harshest assessment for Bush, positing that the September 11 attacks could have been prevented “if a competent, alert administration had been in office.” Matlock is refreshingly free of partisanship and concludes on a hopeful note, suggesting that Obama possesses the same pragmatism that made Reagan an effective and successful leader of American foreign policy. (Feb.)