Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente

by Jeremi Suri

Book Overview

In a brilliantly-conceived book, Jeremi Suri puts the tumultuous 1960s into a truly international perspective in the first study to examine the connections between great power diplomacy and global social protest. Profoundly disturbed by increasing social and political discontent, Cold War powers united on the international front, in the policy of detente. Though reflecting traditional balance of power considerations, detente thus also developed...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674017633
• ISBN13: 9780674017634
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Détente to Counteraction

Jeremi Suri contextualizes the turbulent `60s from a transnational perspective in a study that looks at the links between diplomacy and social protest and seeks the "common urge for stability" (Suri, Power and Protest 2) among the nations. According to Suri, Cold War powers who were deeply troubled by increasing social and political upheaval united on the international front, and instituted a policy of détente to counteract the forces that, "challenged the basic authority of the modern nation-state" (Suri, Power and Protest 211). Though reflecting lens of balance of power considerations, détente developed from a common urge for a sense of stasis among leaders, who by the late 1960s, were concerned about rising threats of domestic social activism. In the early part of the `60s, Cold War pressures concurrently inspired activists and constrained leaders. According to Suri, within a few years this grassroots activism altered into revolutionary movement on a global scale. Suri looks at the `60s through leaders and protesters on three continents, including Mao, de Gaulle, Martin Luther King Jr., Cohn-Bendit, and Solzhenitsyn. He examines links between "policy and protest" looking at incidents such as the Berkeley riots and Prague Spring. Suri does not stop there; he also looks at the Paris strikes to the huge unrest in Wuhan, China. According to Suri, policy changed, he even argues, "designed" to protect the political status quo and repress local social action movements. Detente gradually hijacked politics from the public. In the end, according to Suri, a growing sense of distrust and disillusion in nearly every society left a resilient legacy of global dissent, fracturing, and an unprecedented public cynicism against authority.

Brilliant Work: Manages to Cover Cold War Politics, Diplomacy, and Domestic Movements

In 250 pages, Jeremi Suri manages to do what other books do in four times that length. Suri makes brilliant connections between all aspects of the Cold War and what happens beyond it. Suri is an incredible writer and historian (see: Henry Kissinger and the American Century) and deserves recognition for his comprehensive and concise works.

A book worth reading for the non-historian

Although the other reviews I read here were justifiably positive, I just wanted to mention that this book is also a very worthwhile read for almost anyone with a passing interest in recent American history and its impact on modern politics, irrelevant of the readers background. Jeremi Suri writes in a wondefully clear and concise manner that allows the reader to immerse themselves in the period of history he is discussing and consider it from every perspective without any particular bias. I highly recommend this book to everyone -- if you buy it you will not be dissapointed.

Fear of Demos Makes For (Not So) Strange Bedfellows

The main thesis of POWER AND PROTEST is best summarized by author Jeremi Suri himself at the end of this brilliant and original exploration of post WWII international relations and their impact and continuity with domestic policy: "In previous decades [the 40s through the early 60s] the Soviet-American rivalry had provided a simple bi-polar framework for both competition and cooperation. This inherited architecture now proved inappropriate for a world in which citizens besieged their leaders, small nations challenged the influence of larger states [France and West Germany; Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the East] and China acted as an independent great power [dealing directly with France, for instance, instead of through their "big brother states, the U.S. and Soviet Union]. The international environment had grown multipolar, but the United States and the Soviet Union desired the continued power and standing they had possessed in the earlier bipolar setting. What Kissenger called a new 'structure of peace' would protect the benefits of order and stability for the largest states despite the fragmenting trends in world affairs. This was the conservative core of detente, and the drive behind the central accomplishment of the superpower summit [between Brezhnev and Nixon in 1972]" P.256.His supporting thesis that "The strength of detente derived from the fact that it addressed the fears and served the interest of the leaders in the largest states," is well and amply proven with reference to original source material from each period he explores. With state documents and memoirs, he dramatically shows the panic of the world leaders as they confront their suddenly, inconveniently active citizens, who, given reason to hope in the early 60s with their leaders' charismatic rhetoric about the "New Frontier," the "Great Society," "Great Leap Forward," "Communist Construction (and DeStalinization)," ironically had their rising expectations dashed by the very same men those who activated these hopes. In their tussle for power, and in their attempts to prove their systems or their insight into world and domestic politics were superior, Mao, DeGaulle, Kennedy, Johnson, Krushchev, Willy Brandt, and others came to fear the chauvinistic idealism they had unleashed in their charismatic rhetoric. Ironically, this leadership cohort, especially the most powerful actors, the U.S. and Soviet Union, felt compelled to reach out to each other, put aside the inflammatory anti-communist and anti-capitalistic rhetoric, and demonstrate to their unruly citizens and client states that as nations they could and would work together in peaceful coexistence. Suri likens these two states to "overmuscled wrestlers" who were constrained by the potential of mutally assured (nuclear) destruction to muzzle their client states' inflammatory rhetoric. The exception that proved the rule, according to Suri, was Vietnam. It was seen by Kennedy and Johnson, as well as by Chinese and So

An excellent book on Cold War social and political factors

In this book, Suri puts a new twist on the period of detente in the late 60's and early 70's. He explains how the social uprisings centering around 1968 forced world leaders in the United States, Europe, and Asia to pursue detente in order to keep reign on their legitimacy domestically. The research and documents used in this book are both credible and excellent. I had Professor Suri for a class and he is an excellent lecturer. This book is like a lecture from him, but he has time to go into even deeper detail on the subject at hand. We were required to read it in his class, but it is a book that I have read twice since then because it is that good. Anyone with interest in the Cold War or US foreign policy will love this book!