The Human Factor

Another tour de force from Archie Brown: detailed scholarship, elegant prose and a clear argument. Read this book to find why we should not ignore the human factor underpinning great historical shifts. A fascinating account of how the Cold War ended, explored through the personal interactions between three world leaders - Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher.

Vorwort
Winner of the 2021 Pushkin House Book Prize

Autorentext
Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books on the former Soviet Union and its demise, including The Gorbachev Factor (1996, also published by Oxford University Press) and The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), both of which won both the Alec Nove Prize and the Political Studies Association's W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best politics book of the year. A leading authority on Mikhail Gorbachev, he was the first person to draw Margaret Thatcher's attention to Gorbachev (at a 1983 Chequers seminar) as a reform-minded likely future Soviet leader.

Klappentext
The Human Factor tells the dramatic story about the part played by political leaders - particularly the three very different personalities of Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher - in ending the standoff that threatened the future of all humanity

Zusammenfassung
In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations? Would any of the realistically alternative leaders of their countries at that time have pursued approximately the same policies? The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines -including the division of Europe- removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher's role. Regarded by Reagan as his ideological and political soulmate, she formed also a strong and supportive relationship with Gorbachev (beginning three months before he came to power). Promoting Gorbachev in Washington as a man to do business with, she became, in the words of her foreign policy adviser Sir Percy Cradock, an agent of influence in both directions.

Inhalt
Introduction
PART 1
1: The Cold War and its Dangers
2: The Making of Mikhail Gorbachev
3: Gorbachev's Widening Horizons
4: The Rise of Ronald Reagan
5: Reagan's First Term
6: Margaret Thatcher: The Moulding of the 'Iron Lady'
7: Thatcher and the Turn to Engagement with Communist Europe
PART 2
8: Breaking the ice (1985)
9: Nuclear Fallout: Chernobyl and Reykjavik (1986
10: Building trust (1987)
11: The End of the Ideological Divide (1988)
12: The End of the Cold War (1989)
13: Why the Cold War Ended When it Did
14: Unintended Consequences (1990)
15: Final Year - of the USSR and of Gorbachev's Power (1991)
16: Political Leadership and the End of the Cold War: Concluding Reflections
Notes
Index

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