American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War; An Insider's Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989-1992

Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland: The Woodrow Wilson Center and The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xviii, [2], 456, [6] pages. Includes Preface, Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chronology, Notes, Bibliography, and Index. Chapters include Introduction, American Grand Strategy; The Revolutions of 1989; The Diplomacy of German Unification; Toward a Post-Cold War Order; The Challenges of Postcommunist Transition; The United States and Eastern Europe; Europe in Search of Security; The Return of History; and Conclusion: Beyond the Cold War. Robert Hutchings is the Walt and Elspeth Rostow Chair in National Security at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and served as dean of the school from 2010 to 2015. Previously he was Diplomat-in-Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Hutchings is best known as the former chair of the National Intelligence Council, a position he held from 2003 to 2005. On December 15, 2009, Hutchings was appointed Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, a position he assumed effective March 22, 2010. From 1992-1993, he served as a special adviser to the Secretary of State with the rank of ambassador, managing the U.S. SEED Eastern European democracy assistance program. From 1989 to 1992, Hutchings served as the National Security Council's director for European affairs. Hutchings has received the National Intelligence Medal, the U.S. State Department Superior Honor Award, and the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Robert Hutchings was "present at the termination' as few others were. He has now drawn on that experience to provide us with a remarkably thorough--and balanced--account of the role the United States played in ending the Cold War. Historians on the "outside" will be relying upon this excellent 'insider" history for many years to come. As director for European affairs at the National Security Council from 1989 to 1992, Robert Hutchings was at the heart of U.S. policymaking toward Europe and the Soviet Union during the dizzyingly fast dissolution of the Soviet bloc. American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War presents an insider's report on and analysis of U.S. performance during a crucial turn of world history. Hutchings also brings a scholar's balanced judgment and historical perspective to his insider's view as he reconstructs how things looked to policymakers in the United States and in Europe, describes how and why decisions were made, and critically examines those decisions in the light of what can now be known. He assesses the critical support of U.S. diplomacy for the East European revolutions and the unification of Germany, offering fascinating character sketches along the way, and describes how U.S. relations with Moscow were managed up to the collapse of the USSR. Hutchings also discusses the difficulties in forging a post-cold war European order and U.S. failures in dealing with a disintegrating Yugoslavia. Excerpt from Foreign Affairs: This well-written study of the Bush administration's European policy gives a vivid account of the diplomatic strategies and processes that attended the liberation of Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author, who was director of European affairs at the National Security Council in 1989-92, stresses that the outcome that had once seemed impossible was not, after all, foreordained. The principal American accomplishment -- securing German unification within a Euro- Atlantic security framework -- required a delicate juggling act that propitiated Germany, eased the fears of Britain and France, and reassured Soviet leaders. An important question raised by this grand settlement -- though addressed only obliquely in this account -- is whether current plans to expand NATO are consistent with the reassurances then given. Hutchings shows that the U.S. desire to bring Eastern Europe into Western institutions was present at the outset of the Bush administration, but also records as one of the "nine assurances" given to Soviet leaders in 1990 that no NATO forces would be deployed in the former GDR.