The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 0 wine got its name. A general essay at the end of each major section helps tie together the many entries. This meticulously researched volume, which includes new information and novel interpretations, will appeal to se- rious wine aficionados who have a taste for historical detail. Miles Lambert-Gócs is a retired Foreign Agriculture Service FSO. An avid historian and chronicler, he spent 30 years researching wine in his native Hungary. He is also the author of Desert Island Wine (Ambeli Press, 2007), Greek Salad: a Dionysian Travelogue (The Wine Appreciation Guild, 2004) and The Wines of Greece (Faber and Faber, 1990). He lives in Williamsburg, Va. Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray — and How to Return to Reality Jack F. Matlock Jr., Yale University Press, 2010, $30, hardcover, 368 pages. Part of America’s popular wis- dom concerning the Cold War is that it was American economic and military pressure that brought down the Soviet Union. In Superpower Illusions , Jack Matlock shows that it just wasn’t so, and that this fundamental misunderstanding of the Cold War has been detrimen- tal to subsequent policymaking. In a book that Library Journal cites as “refreshingly free of partisanship,” Matlock traces the history of the late U.S.-Soviet rivalry, re-examining Soviet-American diplomacy during the 1980s, and demonstrating that Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the So- viet Union and undermine communist rule were the pri- mary reasons for the end of the ColdWar. Washington’s failure to appreciate this, Matlock contends, accounts for the erroneous overestimation of U.S. power that, in turn, led to a belief that America did not need allies and international institutions, but could rule the world through the exercise of unilateral military power. This is “a truly remarkable book,” says Dimitri Simes, a Soviet expert and president of the Nixon Cen- ter, “both wise and provocative, telling a sad yet in- structive story of how the United States failed to exploit a triumph in the Cold War to build a new international order reflecting U.S. interests and principles.” Jack F. Matlock is a retired FSO who served as am- bassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991. First posted to Moscow in 1961, he was director of Soviet af- fairs at the State Department at the beginning of the détente era. He returned to Moscow in 1974 and, again, in 1981, before being appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1987. He attended all but one of the U.S.-Soviet summits between 1972 and 1991. Since then, he has held several academic posts, serving as the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Ad- vanced Study from 1996 to 2001. MEMOIRS China Boys: How U.S. Relations with the PRC Began and Grew — A Personal Memoir Nicholas Platt, ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, New Academia Publishing/Vellum, 2010, $28, hardcover, 366 pages. “How should the West deal with a China that has risen? Before you decide, you’ll want to read Nick Platt’s fascinating account of Ameri- can efforts to understand and cooperate with Beijing since the mid-1960s,” says Jerome A. Cohen, co-direc- tor of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York Univer- sity. “Platt sheds light on important events that have been forgotten or misunderstood, and lets us see how the U.S. government processes China policy.” FSONicholas Platt was with President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on their visit to Beijing in 1972 and has been involved in various aspects of the U.S.-China relationship ever since. In China Boys , the 38th volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, he presents the U.S. opening to China, including the forging of the first links between the Pentagon and the People’s Liberation Army during 1979 and 1980, from an insider’s point of view. “Ambassador Platt provides valuable perspective and context for today’s debate, as his engaging storytelling, keen insights, and wicked wit carry the reader through four decades of U.S.-China friendship, friction and frus- tration,” says former Wall Street Journal China bureau chief James McGregor. An Asia hand and China specialist, Nicholas Platt served in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo, among many other assignments during a 34-year diplomatic career that culminated in service as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines (1987-1991) and Pakistan (1991-1992). He served as president of the Asia Society from 1992 to 2004.