A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (review)

Algeria's war of national liberation (1954-1962), as well as the colonialist enterprise that gave rise to it, has been the subject of many books, mainly in French but also in English. Historians and social scientists alike have mined historical records, archival materials, first-person accounts, and private journals in an effort to unravel the mystery that still surrounds one of the most contested countries in the world. The current struggle taking place in Algeria is but the latest manifestation of a political system at war with itself, agonizing over the most fundamental issues of identity, nationhood, political economy, culture, and belief.

For most analysts, attempting to penetrate the Algerian enigma is too great a challenge—whether personal, logistical, or methodological—to overcome. Few inside or outside the country fully comprehend the mass-based Algerian experience, and few are prepared to explain its complex political behavior, socioeconomic travails, or cultural crises. It is no surprise, therefore, that the overwhelming number of studies devoted to Algeria in the modern period are either journalistic accounts of uneven depth and sophistication or those concerned with Algeria's war of independence in the context of French politics, colonization and decolonization, theories of revolution, imperialism and globalization, and other issues related to Algeria's impact on the rest of the world and vice versa. Connelly's book is an example of the second category of writing, somewhat overlapping with a similarly oriented study by Malley.¹

The originality of Connelly's book has less to do with his treatment of Algeria itself—his footnotes make reference to interviews with only three Algerians (361-362)—or his historical review of the country's struggle for independence, of which there are a multitude of quality volumes—Horne's treatment probably being the most compelling—than with his reconceptualization of diplomatic history as international history.² In this regard, the author's broader purpose is to view the Algerian revolutionary experience as a prism through which to comprehend larger historical forces, including the actions and interactions of key global players like France, the United States, China, and the Soviet Union.

The author deftly elaborates the intended and unintended consequences of actions taken by global decision makers seeking to reconfigure Algeria using Cold War geostrategic templates. When the dust had finally settled, and Algeria had achieved its independence, several grand "paradoxes" of the war and the international environment within which it operated became clear. These paradoxes, with their global consequences, are what this book seeks to explain, utilizing a multi-archival research methodology that integrates solid diplomatic history with structural analysis, along with a close reading of the personal accounts of the decision makers themselves.

By focusing on the diplomatic-international dimension of Algeria's revolutionary war, Connelly seeks to clarify, if not resolve, that war's three glaring paradoxes: the paradox of France's weakened "bargaining position vis-à-vis the [Algerian] nationalists," despite its "preponderant military strength" (4); the paradox of the war's international scope, which accelerated Africa's decolonization, in the face of France's effort to contain the conflict; and the paradox of a war ostensibly fought in the name of national independence and state sovereignty, unleashing the forces of globalization that "exacerbated cultural conflicts and caused increasing political fragmentation" (5). Algeria's "diplomatic revolution" thus serves as a kind of "laboratory for observing the velocity of trends that were sweeping the Cold War world and shaped the contemporary era" (5).

Algeria's intense colonial experience and devastating decolonization clearly presaged the kind of international system that would emerge in the postcolonial era—a world community that was simultaneously fragmented and integrated. Connelly's diverse historical, diplomatic, and ideological evidence makes the linkage between the Algerian experience and its global...