WHEN THE 20th CENTURY opened, there were six or seven Great Powers; 50 years later only two were left. Europe, which had once carved up continents, was itself now divided and under the sway of the United States and the Soviet Union.

These two superpowers agreed on some important issues — keeping Germany down, for one; breaking up European empires, for another. But the differences were more important — above all, the ideological incompatibility of capitalism and communism and the competition this engendered in almost every area of international affairs. Looming above everything was the Bomb, and the expectation that another world war would be the last. Gaddis, a Yale professor, has produced a lively and readable history of this struggle for global mastery, from its anxious beginnings, to its surprisingly peaceful ending with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Gaddis focuses on the two superpowers and their oddly intimate relationship. Mutual fear sustained them far more than common interests, especially the frightening logic of mutually assured destruction; but with time and the scare of Korea to guide them they learnt to live together. Neither found it easy to get their supposed subordinates to do what they wanted, and both were sucked into regional quarrels. But as their ideological differences faded, older patterns of diplomacy re-emerged. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger adroitly exploited the rise of China to put the USSR under renewed pressure, but it was only in the 1980s, with the rise of Reagan and a new arms race, that the pot was given a vigorous stir by a President who regarded détente and the indefinite acceptance of Soviet rule as too risky to be allowed to continue.

Gaddis emphasises the importance of leadership and statecraft: ambassadors, presidents and generals, plus the odd pope and prime minister, are sharply portrayed in a book mostly about the big powers and the big boys who ran them. A few small countries, when led by diplomatic sophisticates such as Tito and Sadat, get a look-in, but the global impact of the Cold War, in particular its catastrophic long-term human costs in Africa and Central America, does not engage the author. Gaddis does allow for the importance of social protest, and he is good on the unexpected impact of the Helsinki process of the 1970s. But dramatic social and economic changes occur with barely a mention. There is, for example, no entry in the index for Keynes, and the success of postwar democracy in the Free World is attributed to the superiority of American pragmatism and spontaneity over the Marxist penchant for state planning, rather than to new forms of managed capitalism.

This is very much an American view. Indeed, Americans generally come out smelling better than Russians. The former have principles, the latter a lust for power. Stalin is shown more certain of what he wanted than he really was and Gaddis underplays the impact on both sides of the fear of German resurgence. He can be harsh, too, on Soviet policy-makers: Malenkov is “oily”, Khrushchev “clownish”; no American looks this bad, not even Jimmy Carter. Foreign policy wisdom is incarnated by President Woodrow Wilson — teaching Americans the need to use their power for good — and the State Department official George Kennan (to whom the book is dedicated) underlining the need to temper idealism with realism.

Most postwar presidents avoid serious criticism, and Gaddis thinks particularly highly of Reagan, passing silently over his policies in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia, but praising him for his assault on the “evil empire”. It all ends up sounding reassuringly like the triumph of virtue, and maybe it was, but did the West triumph because of its virtue? That is a lot harder to prove, and with China’s economy booming, it may be too soon.

Gaddis starts by noting that the Cold War seems like ancient history to his students. I don’t find this surprising. After all, the great diplomatic and military struggle he outlines no longer exists, and Washington policy-makers have other concerns — failed states, nuclear proliferation, terrorism. Some even worry about global warming. The so-called War on Terror is no longer about containment, still less realpolitik, and diplomacy has taken a back seat to conventional war fighting. One would not exactly want to say that the US military finds itself where the Red Army was 20 years ago, fighting unwinnable wars by punitively inappropriate means. But Guantanamo, Iraq and renditions have altered the international image of the United States for the worse. Freedom versus totalitarianism? That sounds like yesterday’s line.

Mark Mazower is the author of Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, which won the 2004 Duff Cooper Prize.

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