Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan (review)

242 SAIS REVIEW Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan. By William G. Hyland. New York: Random House, 1987. 271 pp. $19.95/cloth. Reviewed by fames Voorhees, Ph. D candidate, SAIS. William Hyland, editor ofForeign Affairs, has written both the memoir of Henry Kissinger during the years of détente and an analysis that borrows on decades of experience in helping shape U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. Hyland served in the National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department under presidents Nixon and Ford and during the first few months of the Carter administration . He left government service very much a "Kissingerian." Kissinger dominates the book. Hyland's admiration for him is clear and at times seems unbounded. Like a student admiring the teacher, he even relies on Kissinger to confirm the truth of his own judgment: "My instincts [that the Shaba invasion in 1978 was a Soviet operation] were confirmed when Kissinger made a public speech . ..." A chapter is devoted to Hyland's appraisal of Kissinger , which is quite positive. This chapter also contains an appraisal of détente, on which Kissinger's reputation must largely rest. Hyland suggests that Kissinger's achievement should be compared with the achievement of thirty years of peace following the Congress of Vienna. He managed the transition from cold war and pure containment and laid a new foundation for a permanent change in the relationship between the superpowers— a foundation on which the Reagan administration still builds. Hyland dismisses most criticisms of détente from the Left and the Right. He does believe, however, that détente did not have roots strongly set in the American consciousness. Kissinger tried to set them there late in his time in office, but it was too late, and he was the wrong man to do it. But Hyland also argues that détente worked partly because it was implemented by a small group of people operating in secrecy but with the authority of the president behind them. Kissinger 's means were surely not designed to gain public support for his ends. It may be that there will always be a tension between a European-style diplomacy like Kissinger's and the American tradition in foreign policy. Hyland seems to believe that, given time, that tension could have been reduced. The book documents the change in feeling that followed the first triumphs of the new policy. Watergate weakened the president responsible for détente, though, for a time it strengthened the policy's architect. But Hyland has found that, in Washington, those who go up must fall down. Kissinger's reputation fell as the country became bitter after Watergate and the fall of Saigon and became less willing to trust the Soviets after events in the Middle East and the Soviet and Cuban entry into Angola. Moreover, Kissinger's secretive style was not well suited to the highly public position of secretary of state, and he did not have the intimate relationship with Ford that he had had with Nixon. Hyland's account of the Carter years after he left the NSC and of Reagan's administration are less interesting simply because he was not there. But those chapters offer careful, thoughtful analysis which concludes that, try though they did, Carter and Reagan had to return to a policy framework that resembled Kissinger's. BOOK REVIEWS 243 It becomes clear in the final chapters that the author really had two books in mind. In combining them into one, both got slighted. He begins and ends the book with a brief discussion of recurring patterns in U.S.-Soviet relations that can be traced throughout the postwar period. But the outline of those patterns is not filled out; a more detailed analysis would be welcome. Similarly, the memoir seems incomplete. How much more could he have told us about how Kissinger's NSC operated? How did it differ from Brent Scowcroft's? What was it like to serve under Kissinger at the State Department? Hyland gives glimpses of these matters, and others; some vignettes are priceless, such as Brezhnev filching binder clips or sitting in a Crimean grotto offering the somber Nixon a treaty...