Timothy Andrews Sayle

My thanks to the publisher, Cornell University Press, for providing me with a review copy of the eBook via Netgalley. The comments are my own.

This book is a chronological account of the life and times of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since its inception in the late 1940's up to the beginning of the 21st Century. In the author's words, "..it is not a bureaucratic history of NATO organs in Paris or Brussels, nor one meant to hive off the history of NATO from the larger Cold War era." The best explanation for NATO has been attributed to Lord Ismay, NATO's first Secretary-General, who reportedly said that it existed "..to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Throughout its history, NATO members have needed to deal with crises arising from each of these aspects. It seems that in each decade of its existence there has been an existential event facing the alliance. Of course, over the years the cast of characters has changed; for the U.S. it has gone from General, then President Eisenhower to President Trump. The likes of Charles de Gaulle and the Soviet Union have come and gone. NATO has endured, as the author notes, and he references a 2017 Gallup poll that shows 80% of Americans think that it should be maintained.

The last third of the book consists of acknowledgements, explanatory notes to the numerous footnotes in the text and an index. (It is difficult to refer to the footnotes in the eBook format, without losing your place in the text). There is no bibliography as such, but the author has identified his primary sources that influenced his thinking about NATO's place in international relations. It is a book to study and a casual read of it may provide a reader with only a superficial understanding of the argument that NATO " ..should not be considered only as an international organization but as an instrument of great-power politics..".

In the final analysis, this is a good survey course about NATO and placing it in the larger context of international affairs over the life of NATO.… (lisätietoja)