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Ron Robin looks at the original power couple of strategic studies who, during the most dangerous military standoff in history, gained access to the deepest corridors of power. The Wohlstetters' legacy was kept alive by disciples in George W. Bush's administration, and their signature brilliance and hubris continue to shape U.S. policy today.
List of contents
Cover Title Copyright Contents Introduction Part One: The Wohlstetters' Cold World Chapter 1. The Wohlstetter Partnership: The Early Years Chapter 2. Roberta Wohlstetter: The Uncertainties of Surprise Chapter 3. "In Dubious Battle": The RAND Years Chapter 4. "He Is but MAD North-North-West": Albert and His Critics Chapter 5. Castrophobia and the Free Market: The Wohlstetters' Moral Economy Chapter 6. Discriminate Interventionism: The Wohlstetters in a Multipolar World Chapter 7. Slow Pearl Harbors: Fear and Loathing of Glasnost Chapter 8. "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night": Albert Wohlstetter after the Cold War Part Two: The Wohlstetter Legacy in the Post-Cold War Era Chapter 9. Paul Wolfowitz: Fin de Siècle All Over Again Chapter 10. Zalmay Khalilzad: The Orientalist Chapter 11. Richard Perle: Prejudice as a Cultural Weapon Epilogue: The Hamlet of Nations? Notes Acknowledgments Index
About the author
Ron Robin is Senior Vice Provost for Global Faculty Development at New York University. He is the president-elect of the University of Haifa, Israel.
Summary
Ron Robin looks at the original power couple of strategic studies who, during the most dangerous military standoff in history, gained access to the deepest corridors of power. The Wohlstetters’ legacy was kept alive by disciples in George W. Bush’s administration, and their signature brilliance and hubris continue to shape U.S. policy today.
Report
An impressive book about one of the most fascinating and influential couples in recent American history, Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter. The book is full of very interesting material and sheds new light on an extraordinary chapter in the history of American strategic thought.
-- Marc Trachtenberg, author of The Cold War and After
Ron Robin is outstanding in reconstructing the mental world and cultural milieu that engaged the Wohlstetters. He also shows that Roberta Wohlstetter was a crucial intellectual partner in the marriage of these two scholarly Cold Warriors.
-- Bruce Kuklick, author of Death in the Congo
The Wohlstetters were among the most influential strategic thinkers in Cold War America. In this dual intellectual biography, Ron Robin shows how their grim vision of a dangerous, unpredictable world took shape, and how through their followers their vision continued to shape U.S. global strategy in the post-9/11 era.
-- Erez Manela, coeditor of Empires at War, 1911-1923
Provocative...The Cold World They Made is a withering indictment of the Wohlstetters and their influence on defense policy.
-- Philip Taubman New York Times Book Review
Robin's book is about a rabid form of foreign-policy thinking that speaks with placid assurance about 'reality,' that presents itself as 'pre-emptive' but takes the form of outright aggression, that claims to be 'strategic,' but is often more enamored of tactics than actual strategy.
-- Thomas Meaney Chronicle of Higher Education
Although critical of the Wohlstetters' policy agenda, Robin reveals that they possessed more intellectual depth than their many detractors recognize and traces the ways in which their legacy has been sustained by disciples such as Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz.
-- Lawrence D. Freeman Foreign Affairs
Thanks to Ron Robin, we now know that [the Wohlstetters'] actual contribution was not to strategy and certainly not to the avoidance of war, but to the art of propaganda. Rather than freeing mankind from fear, they promoted it while simultaneously feathering their own comfortable nest.
-- Andrew Bacevich First Things
