Developments in the Soviet Union necessitate a radical restructuring of U.S.-Soviet relations and the security system that underpins them. Marshall Brement succinctly and masterfully chronicles the history of this relationship and offers a prescription for change in this important book. The United States can influence the power struggle within the USSR by holding out the prospect of going beyond the wary cooperation that our government espouses, to a relationship that embodies comprehensive partnership. It is only through such a relationship that we can achieve a genuine new world order guaranteeing security for decades to come and at the same time sloughing off the burden of excessive defense costs that this nation can no longer afford. The new grand strategy outlined here would demand much of the Soviets, but also offers much. It has a nuclear component, a conventional arms component, an economic component, a Third World component, and a Western Europe component. It sets out clear benchmarks and a method for moving ahead.

Past Soviet and American security policies are so interrelated that they must be changed together, not separately or in sequence. To accomplish this change, the fear doctrine of nuclear deterrence that underlies our entire defense philosophy must be abandoned. The sophistication and power of modern conventional weapons makes it possible for both sides to reduce, even eliminate, nuclear weapons. While establishing a program to eliminate nuclear weapons, we must concurrently lay down benchmarks as to what exactly will be required from both Moscow and Washington to make such a transformation possible, restructure our armed forces to make them less threatening to each other, and engage in a broad-ranging program of economic investment and cooperation in solving critical global problems. These proposals are radical, even visionary. Nevertheless, only through a comprehensive program can a fundamentally different U.S.-Soviet relationship be achieved. This book is addressed not only to the specialist in Soviet and security affairs, but also to a general audience of informed citizens.

During the breakup of the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe underwent transitions to democracy that involved varying degrees of struggle and turmoil. Czechoslovakia eventually split in two with the establishment of separate Czech and Slovak republics in 1993. Paul Hacker witnessed this transition firsthand from his vantage point as head of the U.S. Consulate in Bratislava. This is his story of U.S. diplomacy during this period, from the time the consulate was reestablished there in 1990 (after a forty-year hiatus during the Cold War) through the opening of the U.S. Embassy in 1993 after Slovakia had gained its independence. The memoir covers the volatile political intrigues and changes of the era, the administrative challenges of operating a small diplomatic outpost that was dependent on the embassy based in Prague (headed for much of this period by the high-profile U.S. ambassador Shirley Temple Black), tensions between Slovaks and Czechs and between the Slovak majority and its ethnic Hungarian minority population, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the developments that finally led to independence for Slovakia. In a final chapter, Hacker brings the story of Slovak postindependence political history up to the present, including Slovakia's accession to both NATO and the European Union.