Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (review)

Power and Protest aims to provide a global perspective on the unrest of the 1960s and the origins of détente. Arguing that civil disruptions plagued all of the superpowers (the United States, the Soviet Union, Germany, France, and China) during the 1960s, Jeremi Suri argues that détente emerged as a conservative reaction to popular unrest and as a way for the superpowers to create what he calls a "balance of order"—to maintain the status quo and to bolster their international prestige in the face of domestic challenges. Suri combines a traditional diplomatic narrative with a study of the intellectual history of protest movements. He stresses that détente strengthened the superpower governments while burying domestic dissent and dissatisfaction within the rhetoric of international cooperation.

Suri finds the roots of a "common urge for stability" (p. 2) in both the nuclear arms stalemate and the growing domestic frustrations with Cold War policies beginning in the 1950s. U.S. president John F. Kennedy's vision of a "new frontier," for example, promised enlightened government and increased worldwide stability through economic incentives, foreign aid, and strategic nuclear advantage. These enthusiastic promises soon gave way to fears of nuclear war and, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, spurred cooperation, stability, and the preservation of the status quo, particularly between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Even as these two superpowers increased their cooperation, the status quo they sought to preserve came under criticism from the other major powers. In both France and Germany, leaders demanded nuclear disarmament and sought to heal the divisions in Europe. Suri points in particular to the vision of West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for improving connections between East and West. Such efforts encouraged the smaller powers to forge new international alliances. In this regard, Suri highlights the relationship between France and China, noting that diplomatic relations between the two countries aided their respective efforts to assert their independence as superpowers (through nuclear programs) rather than as strategic dependents. The problem, Suri argues, was that the leaders of both countries sought to convey a "charismatic authority" that promised more than it could deliver, and such shortcomings led to increased domestic unrest.

The growing gap between leaders' rhetoric and the results of Cold War politics fueled dissatisfaction at home. This frustration was voiced by what Suri calls the "language of dissent," or critical social analysis, that emerged within all the major superpowers during the 1960s (he mentions Daniel Bell, Barry Goldwater, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Wu Han, and Herbert Marcuse, among others). Increased educational opportunities for a growing youth population, particularly in the United States, created the conditions that turned social criticism and disillusionment into widespread protest movements.

The Vietnam War acted as the most visible focal point for social criticism. Suri provides an overview of the conflict from the perspective of U.S. foreign and diplomatic policy efforts, arguing that support for liberal aid and democratic development goals in Southeast Asia gradually gave way to distrust and dissent among the population as it became clear that these policies fostered only destruction and death. This social criticism culminated in the violent protests of 1968. Suri chronicles protest movements in Berkeley; West Berlin; Washington, D.C.; Paris; Prague; and Wuhan. Although he stresses the local conditions that caused and shaped these protests, Suri emphasizes that this was a global phenomenon of unrest that "challenged the basic authority of the modern nation-state" (p. 211). As a result, Suri argues, political leaders came to distrust their constituents and felt they could not count on popular support for their policy decisions. The search for new sources of political legitimacy and authority led superpower leaders to look abroad, and facilitated the emergence of détente.

Détente, in Suri's analysis, was a mechanism by which the superpower leaders, through their foreign policy, could increase their authority and prestige by...