Preface

Summary

On March 2, 1950, the National Security Council organized a debate on the United States’ strategy in the face of the Soviet threat. One of the participants was Professor James Bryant Conant, a chemist who had been president of Harvard University since 1933. He belonged to an elite group of scientists involved with the United States’ most important military undertakings during the Second World War (including the Manhattan Project). He was also close to the world of politics: he had been the chair of the National Defense Research Committee since 1941, and was High Commissioner for Germany during the years 1953–55, and then ambassador to that country until 1957. During that debate, Professor Conant said that if it did not come to war, then “the competition between our dynamic free society and their [Soviet] static slave society should be all in our favor.” He also predicted that the Soviet Union might Balkanize itself by 1980.

The state Moloch created by Lenin and Stalin really did collapse, both formally and definitively, as a result of “Balkanization” in December 1991. It had split into national states, just like the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Professor Conant's prediction was off by just ten years. Nevertheless, the year he mentioned, 1980, was not a normal year for the Soviets, nor for the entire system of their satellite states, created by Stalin in East Central Europe during the years 1944–47. In 1980, the United States led a boycott of the Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the end, however, this was not particularly galling, since the Kremlin could retaliate by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics four years later. The outcome of the US presidential election was incomparably more important than America's posturing over the Olympics. The Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, won, having announced a tough stance toward the Kremlin. After some presidents’ perceived dovishness, now a hawk was in the White House. Just as important as Reagan's victory were events in Poland, the largest Soviet satellite in Europe. Since July 1, a wave of strikes had swept through the country, culminating in a general strike. This was just a couple of weeks before the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, announced the start of the Olympic Games at the opening ceremonies, and a few months before the American elections.