A Journey through the Cold War

A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence

Raymond L. Garthoff

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN:
  9780815701026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780815798521
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this memoir, Ambassador Ray Garthoff paints a dynamic diplomatic history of the cold war, tracing the life of the conflict from the vantage points of an observant insider. His intellectually formative years coincided with the earliest days of the cold war, and during his forty-year career, Garthoff participated in some of the most important policymaking of the twentieth century: • In the late 1950s he carried out pioneering research on Soviet military affairs at the Rand Corporation. • During his four-year tenure at the CIA (1957-61), in addition to drafting national intellingence estimates, Garthoff made trips to the Soviet Union with Vice President Richard Nixon and as an interpreter for a delegation from the Atomic Energy Commission. • As a special assistant in the State Department, Garthoff worked with Secretary Dean Rusk., and he was directly involved in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Later he served as executive officer and senior State Department adviser for the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) delegation. • In the 1970s he served as a senior Foreign Service inspector, leading missions to a number of countries around the globe. • As U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria (1977-79), Garthoff gained first-hand knowledge of the workings of a communist state and of the Soviet bloc. • In the 1980s, Garthoff wrote two major studies of American-Soviet relations. He traveled to the Soviet Union nearly a dozen times in the final decade of the cold war, and in the early 1990s he had access to the former Soviet Communist Party archives in Moscow. Garthoff¡'s journey through the Cold War informs the views, positions, and actions of the past. His anecdotes and observations will be of great value to those anticipating the challenges of reevaluating American post-cold war security policy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Chapter 1. The Cold War Begins: The Formative Years, 1945–50
• Chapter 2. The View from a Think Tank: Soviet Affairs Expert at RAND
• Chapter 3. The Thaw: Observing the Soviet Union After Stalin
• Chapter 4. CIA and Intelligence Analysis and Estimates
• Chapter 5. “Foreign Affairs Adviser” at the Pentagon
• Chapter 6. Intelligence Excursions in the Soviet Union
• Chapter 7. The Espionage Game
• Chapter 8. Department of State: The Kennedy Years (I)
• Chapter 9. Department of State: The Kennedy Years (II)
• Chapter 10. The Cuban Missile Crisis: Turning Point of the Cold War
• Chapter 11. Department of State: The Johnson Years
• Chapter 12. The Diplomacy of East-West Relations
• Chapter 13. Negotiating on Strategic Arms: SALT and the ABM Treaty
• Chapter 14. Developing Détente in U.S.-Soviet Relations
• Chapter 15. Inspecting the American Conduct of Foreign Relations
• Chapter 16. Ambassador to Bulgaria
• Chapter 17. The Decline and Collapse of the Détente of the 1970s
• Chapter 18. Witness to the Cold War Endgame: 1980–90
• Chapter 19. Reflections on the Cold War
• Epilogue: A Personal Reminiscence
• Index