AT THE ABYSS: An Insider's History of the Cold War

Sea Power, Apr 2004 by Munns, David W

AT THE ABYSS: An Insider's History of the Cold War by Thomas C. Reed, New York, N.Y: Ballantine Books, March 2004. 368 pp. $25.95 ISBN: 0-89141-821-0.

America's fight against communism was a tumultuous struggle spanning nearly half of the last century. Thomas C. Reed, former secretary of the Air Force, was at the heart of the Reagan administration during the final years of the Cold War and was involved in various capacities throughout the era. In a revelatory account of this period, Reed provides his insider's perspective on the strategic battle that guilefully prevented what could have become World War III, a battle wrought with the threat of nuclear devastation.

Ironically, Reed began his involvement in this historic period developing thermonuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. he served as director of national reconnaissance, a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan for national security policy and eventually as one of the youngest secretaries of the U.S. Air Force. It is with this experience that Reed offers At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War as both a historic analysis and a cautionary retrospective of the Cold War.

The book "tells the story of the heroic men and women on both sides of the Iron Curtain who fought that Cold War and kept us from plunging into the abyss of nuclear disaster along the way," as former President George Bush states in his introduction.

Reed points to Whittaker Chambers, author of the revolutionary work Witness, who provided the American lexicon surrounding the Iron Curtain to a semi-reluctant American public. Joseph Stalin's seizure of Soviet power during the years following Lenin's death created a palate for the devastation and isolation that allowed the oppressive communist regime to gestate on Russian soil. When Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Stalin in the 1950s, a stage was set, following famine in the Ukraine and the enslavement of much of the Russian populace to build "the nuclear facilities that fueled the Soviet military machine while slowly killing those who operated them," that enabled a generation of oppressive rule.

Reed traces the formation of tyrannical powers in China - with the rule of Mao Tse-tung and his "bizarre economic plan" to "vastly increase the production of food, steel, and infrastructure, all perceived to be the sinews of a modern state" through the formation of severely repressive communes and with "lesser dictators" such as North Korea's Kim Il Sung, who utilized the training techniques of communist prewar Moscow. Reed spells out similar patterns in Romania, Cuba, North Vietnam and Cambodia that allowed for a mounting threat by communist regimes against western civilization and, most importantly, against freedom, democracy and capitalist ideals.

By the time President Dwight D. Eisenhower entered office, there already was a significant intelligence dilemma that led to the eventual creation of a new American military force whose intent was to have a sheer capacity to deter action by any impending military. This armament began with Howard Hughes, "a man of both inherited wealth and creative genius" who "was making movies, building airplanes, running an airline, dating movie stars and organizing the future." Hughes was indeed casually at the burgeoning helm of America's nuclear warfare program with Si Ramo, "a young scientist from General Electric," and Dean Wooldridge, a student with "One of the greatest technical minds' Ramo ever knew."

The development of weapons by these philanthropic and technological geniuses was a precursor to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, "a declaration of technological war by the Soviet Union." In the time that followed, arms proliferated, starting with rockets and missiles and leading to plutonium- and titanium-based weapons that were at the forefront of the tense conflict that culminated in the 1980s, when Reed himself was in a position of power under President Reagan.

Reed writes, "President Reagan put the pieces in place to end and win the Cold War. he was not the 'victor' in this struggle; the citizens of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were the big winners. Nor was he the closer; George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev filled those shoes. Ronald Reagan's contribution was to rearrange the chessboard of history in a whole new way."

Reed provides in-depth details of the brilliance executed by Reagan in this grand "chess game" leading to the eventual bankruptcy of the U.S.S.R. he compares much of the war to a series of diplomatic countermoves between Russia and the United States. In his chapter, "The Queen of Hearts," Reed discusses a significant player in these games, Nancy Reagan. Reed notes that in order "to maintain the tranquility and glamour of her environment, Nancy became an instigator of palace intrigue that nearly derailed her husband's rendezvous with destiny. Nancy was the Queen of Hearts, and like that playing card, she presents two faces for historians to decipher."