Review:
an impressive account of the frency of diplomatic effort which led in 1967 to a new strategy and modus vivendi which held the transatlantic alliance together until the next crisis in the early 1980s. (William Walker, University of St Andrews, International Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2, April 1997)
Publication is well-timed in the context of current discussions about the future of NATO and enlargement. Professor Haftendorn's book should be read by all those involved or interested in these discussions. Common values, coherence and clarity of purpose are central to every institution having a future - a fact which needs to be remembered today. (Frank Cooper, RUSI Journal)
The book offers and intricately detailed account of two years in the life of NATO ... detailed and thoroughly researched, and, for British and American readers, the focus on German sources is refreshing. At the level of history, the book is an important contribution to the literature, and to the current debate, informed by new documentary evidence, surrounding the origins and nature of Flexible Response ... The conclusion provides summaries of the case studies that will prove helpful to those who do not require the level of detail provided in the body of the text. (Contemporary Security Policy)
Basing her research on archives mainly in the USA and Germany, on interviews, news-clipping collections and a host of secondary literature, she achieves once again the high standard of meticulous historical detective work which has already characterised her previous word on nuclear strategy ... Helga Haftendorn's book satisfies all the many expectations that one might bring to it: the historian, the political scientist, the strategist, and even the casual reader will find a lucidly written, well-structured and clearly argued book that is a major record of NATO history ... a masterpiece of scholarly work, and yet without an ounce of superfluous waffle or fat. The detail of the footnoting, the work that has gone into verifying finest details are a joy to behold for anybody who suspects that true standards of scholarship have died out with the increasing pressure for swift publication. (Beatrice Heuser, Contrmpory British History Vol.11 No.1 1997)
From the Back Cover:
Using French President de Gaulle's March 1966 threat to leave NATO as a starting point, this book tells a three-fold story. First, it gives a penetrating analysis how the North Atlantic Alliance has coped with the nuclear revolution and has overcome the crisis of credibility in European-American relations when the strategy of massive retaliation had lost its usefulness. Second, it reports how the disagreements in NATO were finally resolved and a new strategic concept (MC 14/3) was adopted, agreement on force planning, troop stationing and offset achieved, a formula for nuclear consultation found, and the Harmel Report on the management of East-West detente accepted. Third, it challenges some of the dominant theoretical explanations by structural realists and liberal institutionalists relating to alliance cohesion against the empirical findings of the case studies.
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