The Global Rivals: Soviet-American Contest for Supremacy

For more than forty years the international scene has been dominated by the rivalry between the superpowers - a rivalry with the potential to destroy humanity. Yet since Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States have dramatically improved. What are the implications? And what opportunities and dangers will the two superpowers face in the years ahead?
The Global Rivals is a penetrating analysis of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, written by two of the United States' most well-known and astute authorities on the subject. Drawing on sources rarely available to other scholars, Bialer and Mandel-baum write of a relationship in which neither country is at war or peace, and in which both countries find war unthinkable - but peace apparently unattainable. They explore why the rivalry will not end in the immediate future and describe the broad, deeply rooted economic, social and political forces that keep the pot boiling. They explain why Soviet-American detente in the 1970s failed, and show how the forces that shape the rivalry have changed markedly during the last decade. Full of fascinating insights. The Global Rivals reveals why Soviet weakness is a great danger to Europe, and why the United States may take a less active role in politics around the world in the years to come. Informative, perceptive and highly compelling, this will be a key work on the USA and the USSR in the Gorbachev era.