The Foreign Service Journal, October 2010

54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 Telling It Like It Was Cold War Saga Kempton Jenkins, Nimble Books, 2010, $20.94, paperback, 452 pages. R EVIEWED BY A URELIUS F ERNANDEZ Retired Foreign Service officer Kempton Jenkins makes a valuable contribution to Cold War studies with this informative and engaging memoir. Appropriately billed as a saga, it chronicles the decades of relentless competition and conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, with the threat of nuclear war always looming in the background. Equally usefully, he gives readers a front-row seat on how containment and detente paved the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Over the course of three decades of Foreign Service assignments, includ- ing policymaking positions in Berlin, Moscow and Washington, D.C., Jen- kins honed an enviable expertise in Soviet affairs. Tours in Bangkok and Caracas enabled him to observe first- hand the global dimensions of Soviet objectives in Southeast Asia and Latin America. And a detail to Harvard Uni- versity introduced him to renowned scholars, an association reflected in his well-annotated bibliography. Jenkins was an exceptionally effec- tive practitioner of public diplomacy throughout his career, even before that term came into vogue in the 1970s. Press and cultural relations were always at the heart of his activi- ties, abroad and in Washington. (Dis- closure: I had the good fortune of serving under Jenkins in the mid- 1970s, when he was the U.S. Informa- tion Agency’s assistant director for Soviet and Eastern European affairs.) The author paints a panoramic can- vas illustrating the whole arc of Cold War history, encompassing such topics as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the Conference for Security and Co- operation in Europe, trade issues and the Jackson Vanik Amendment, among many others. He combines these broad strokes with finer ones illustrat- ing how particular events cast long shadows, such as the 1961 Thompson- Gromyko Berlin talks in Moscow. Jenkins served as notetaker for those talks, experiencing firsthand the Soviet foreign minister’s legendary truculence, as well as Ambassador Llywellyn Thompson’s consummate diplomatic professionalism. In a per- sonal touch illustrating the challenges and rewards of Foreign Service life, he recalls rushing back to the embassy on cold winter nights to draft cables re- porting each day’s talks. (For details, see Jenkins’ Reflections column, “A Confrontation in Moscow,” in the February 2009 FSJ .) In the final chapter, the author de- molishes various myths about the Cold War, such as the claim that Ronald Rea- gan singlehandedly won it for America. He rightly stresses that all presidents, from Harry Truman through George H.W. Bush, pursued policies that con- tributed to ultimate victory. Throughout the book, Jenkins dis- creetly shares poignant personal de- tails within his narrative of Foreign Service life. In 1970, he was widowed with three teenage sons, but remar- ried a supportive spouse four years later, who enabled him to continue his impressive career. Following a detail as an assistant secretary at the Department of Com- merce, he retired from the Foreign Service in 1980, joining the private sector to support a blended family that had grown to include five college-age children. But he has continued to support the mission of the Foreign Service ever since, not least through Jenkins discreetly shares poignant personal details in his narrative of Foreign Service life. B OOKS