Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order by Timothy Andrews Sayle,
| Author | James Goldgeier |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020702020930763 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Timothy Andrews Sayle
Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. 346 pp. $34.95 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-5017-3550-9
Reviewed by: James Goldgeier, American University (jgoldgei@american.edu)
The first word in the title of this deeply researched history of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) is “enduring,” and it turns out to be an appropriate
description not just of NATO over 70 years but of this book’s likely staying power.
If you are only going to read one book on NATO, this should be it.
The central theme of the book stems from the quip attributed to NATO’s first
secretary-general, Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, that the purpose of the alliance was
to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down” (p. 3). Sayle
argues that this has remained true even after the Cold War ended, and that it
meant the main potential threats to NATO have always come from within: “a
European populace bullied by the threat of war; a resurgent German chancellor; or
an isolationist Congress or president” (p. 4).
The section of Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global
Order on French leader Charles de Gaulle is outstanding. There were a series of
follow-on discussions to a memorandum which de Gaulle sent his British
and American counterparts that United States President Dwight Eisenhower
viewed as “just a little crazy” (p. 58). But soon, writes Sayle, “The Americans
were learning—if the hard way—that it was better for de Gaulle to expound his
ideas in a private forum rather than anywhere else, for his public declarations ‘pose
greater danger than that which could be caused by their introduction into
tripartite forum’” (p. 60). Sound familiar? The entire section on de Gaulle
brings to mind United States President Donald Trump. But whereas de Gaulle
posed a threat to NATO, France is not the United States, and so the alliance
endured.
Striking throughout were the American attitudes toward Germany. There was a
constant fear that West Germany (and later a unified Germany) would either move
away from the West and strike a separate deal with the Soviet Union (as had
happened at Rapallo in 1922), or that the country would seek its own nuclear
International Journal
2020, Vol. 75(2) 270–287
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020702020930763
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
To continue reading
Request your trial