Mexico and the United States: The Fragile Relationship (review)

182 SAISREVIEW But other, secondary aims of the book are achieved. The regional focus helps to show the importance of the rest of the world in affecting the evolution ofthe Cold War. As Edward A. Kolodziej says in the volume's conclusion, "Third states, regional groupings, and international movements such as the non-aligned states repeatedly frustrated the aims and strategies ofWashington and Moscow— often both simultaneously—or re-fashioned superpower designs to serve theirown local purposes." Indeed, as a survey of the regional escapades of the United States and the Soviet Union, the book is a valuable reference. There's even a handy chronological "Index of Cases of Superpower Cooperation" keyed to pages in the text. But while the nine-page index might seem to bolster the argument that the history ofthe Cold War is really the history of cooperating superpowers, the book nonetheless fails to answer the question: What can we learn from this? Perhaps it was the rush to publish the book while there still was a Cold War that left some of its articles carelessly edited. Sentences of sixty to eighty words make for difficult reading in some chapters. And phrases like "The cost of intervention also grew progressively more costly and risky" can really sap a reader's motivation, though there are a number of well-written chapters as well. The book's concluding chapter offers a set of explanations for the end of the Cold War. The costs ofregional intervention, says the chapter, did increase over the years, and the probability of success declined. Together with the emerging perception that client states were often greater liabilities than assets the superpowers learned to curtail their adventures abroad. Viewing the limitations on superpower influence as part of an erosion of the bipolar system, the conclusion states that if the U.S. has lost bargaining power since World War II, it was lost not to the Soviet Union but rather to the allies of the United States. Finally, the inability ofEastern European communist regimes to provide adequate living standards for their people "voided their right to rule and, correspondingly, weakened their determination to use police and armed forces to enforce their will." But most of these conclusion have been heard elsewhere and have the feeling of being tacked on the end, regardless of the content of the articles. The Cold War as Cooperation may be useful to those wanting to review how the Cold War played itself out in theaters around the world. But it fails to live up to its intriguing title. Mexico and the United States: The Fragile Relationship. By Lester D. Langley. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. 138 pp. Reviewed by Todd Eisenstadt, ??. Candidate, SAIS. By far the riskiest gambit of Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has been his bid to close in on the great historical divide in relations with the United States in order to inexorably bind Mexico's economic fate with that of the U.S. and Canada. While the U.S. press and policymakers have hailed this sweeping market liberalization as "Salinastroika," more skeptical Mexico-watchers such as the diplomatic historian Lester Langley are guarded about Salinas' reforms. BOOK REVIEWS 183 Langley warns that without placing events into historical context it is impossible to understand Mexico's recent changes. In the epilogue of his work, the author admonishes that Salinas' bid for a North American Free Trade Agreement, and the rest of his economic liberalization policies have not translated into welfare gains. "Sooner or later," he writes, "whatever the 1990s promise for the economy of Mexico, the nation will have to deal with its glaring social inequalities. Strengthening the bilateral economic ties between Mexico and the United States will inevitably incorporate such issues into the political relationship." This slim volume offers a highly readable presentation of the major issues in the increasingly critical relations between Mexico and the U.S. since World War II, and succeeds admirably as an introductory treatment. Measured against its own objectives of giving a context to the latest turn in U.S.-Mexico relations, Langley's work succeeds largely as a historical outline. However, it is too terse to capture many of the nuances...