Moral diversions block route

This is the final of eight editions that have been well received by a hungry public since 1968, and it brings us through the aftermath of the cold war and into the new world disorder. It provides the reader not merely with a basic narrative but also a critical judgement on key events.

Peter Calvocoressi is at his best on contemporary Europe. His discussion of events leading to the reunification of Germany is extraordinarily well informed and balanced. Inevitably, however, as historians have gained access to archives hitherto sealed, earlier sections of the book require revision. Cold war history is now a major field of study, and even the amateur has a wealth of new source material.

In the light of new research, the explanation Calvocoressi offers for the origins of the cold war appears inadequate. On Korea, for example, documents reveal that the Russians not only supported but actually planned the invasion by the North. We now know also that the Russians defined the Prague Spring as counter-revolutionary as early as March 1968, making invasion merely a matter of time (delayed by Leonid Brezhnev's illness and the need to get the nuclear non-proliferation treaty signed). In contrast, the entire Soviet leadership agreed until the last minute that there was no basis for communist revolutionary change being inflicted on the restive population of Afghanistan and that intervention would be disastrous, but went in regardless.

Both incidents raise questions about the nature of the Soviet regime and the manner in which it managed international affairs that cannot be contained within a general survey of this kind. The book's real strengths come through, for example, in the wide-ranging and balanced discussions of the disastrous US involvement in Vietnam, de Gaulle's France and the emergence of the European Union.

Calvocoressi never fails to judge statesmen (and women) by moral standards as well as by those of effectiveness, and is at his most scathing when he deems the use of force immoral as well as ineffective. Thus he lambasts the Americans over Iraq, for flouting "the law" and failing "to get the results". On Kosovo, he argues that it "was an illicit war with a just cause". Aside from the troublesome question of what this "law" is (international law now appears to change with whoever is interpreting it), these ex cathedra pronouncements can be irritating for readers who do not necessarily share the author's value system and distract from the substance of the story. Similarly, Calvocoressi describes Margaret Thatcher as "deliberately divisive and rude", while he is silent over the less attractive personality traits of others, such as Lyndon Johnson - who received people he wished to insult sitting on the toilet.

More seriously, Calvocoressi draws a veil of silence over Mikhail Gorbachev's responsibility for the massacres in Tbilisi and Vilnius, and over Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon's involvement in the bloody overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The distribution of moral condemnation thus appears somewhat arbitrary and arouses unease. Nevertheless, everyone will benefit from reading this volume, which will remain a mainstay for some time to come.

Jonathan Haslam is reader in the history of international relations, University of Cambridge.