Ideas and action series

"Should the negotiation of the post-World War II peace treaties in Europe be pursued separately or should they be approached within the framework of a general European settlement? The debate on this fundamental foreign policy issue, which has left only faint tracks in the documentary record, is fully explored here for the first time. The book's larger theme is the process by which the Cold War came about. Rostow's interpretation differs from either conventional or revisionist views, emphasizing as it does the process of incremental deterioration that occurred in 1946 and the role of uncertainty and weakness in American policy."--Adapted from book jacket.

In 1955 the United States and the Soviet Union were matching steps in a race to develop missiles tipped with thermonuclear weapons. American officials were frustrated and alarmed by their inability to learn the scale and progress of the Soviet program, which directly threatened the security of the United States, and they were convinced that serious arms control measures required reliable means for mutual inspection. The result: President Dwight D. Eisenhower's dramatic Open Skies proposal, advanced--and rejected--at the Geneva summit of 1955.