Containing History: How Cold War History Explains US-Russia Relations

by Stephen P. Friot

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with U.S.-Russia relations approaching a breaking point, this book provides a key to understanding how we got here. Specifically, Stephen P. Friot asks, how do Russians and Americans think about each other, and why do they see the world so differently? The answers, Friot suggests, lie in the historical events surrounding the Cold War and their divergent influence on politics and popular consciousness.

Cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural in its scope, Containing History employs the tools and insights of history, political science, and international relations to explain how twenty-first-century public attitudes in Russia are the product of a thousand years of history, including searing experiences in the twentieth century that have no counterparts in U.S. history. At the same time, Friot explores how—in ways incomprehensible to Russians—U.S. politics are driven by American society’s ethnic and religious diversity and by the robust political competition that often, for better or worse, puts international issues to work in the service of domestic political gain. Looking at history, culture, and politics in both the United States and Russia, Friot shows how the forty-five years of the Cold War and the seventy years of the Soviet era have shaped both the Russia we know in the twenty-first century and American attitudes toward Russia—in ways that drive social and political behavior, with profound consequences for the post–Cold War world.

Amid the wreckage of the high hopes that accompanied the end of the Cold War, and as faith in a rules-based international order wanes, Friot’s work provides a historical, cultural, and political framework for understanding the geopolitics of the moment and, arguably, for navigating a way forward.
 

Genres: Audiobook, History

432 pages, Hardcover

Published June 22, 2023

Reviews

[Kristjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book: ****
Performance: ***

An closer look at the History of the Cold War

An interesting review of the history of American and Russian relationships that can go a long way toward understanding where we find ourselves today. It is most helpful in the “behind the scenes” examination of intent, motivation and pressures that informed each political encounter that gives each side a real and relatable positions, goals and understanding. With the current deteriorating relationship between these two super powers, there is plenty of blame to go around as each side tried to manipulate the other over the years for their own benefit, without truly understanding the mindset of their opponents. Frankly it is truly amazing that we didn’t destroy ourselves many times over given the stupid games we all were playing. Of course, while the book does a good job of helping us understand how we got here … it is very short on advice on how to dig us out (not that I really expected such). Perhaps most important is a clear understanding of our limitations in this political dance and perhaps a reset toward more reasonable goals is in order.

The chapters and sections in this work are:

Preface (7:35)
Prologue (15:08)
Chapter 1. It Took Centuries to Get to Yalta (1:01:56)
Chapter 2. The Geopolitics of the Peace 1945-1952 (1:18:08)
Chapter 3. Truman and Kennan (36:40)
Chapter 4. Geopolitical Realignment Becomes a Reality (49:23)
Chapter 5. Two Years That Set the Stage for the Next Four Decades (1:09:49)
Chapter 6. A Reflection on US Leadership in the 1940s and Early 1950s (16:08)
Chapter 7. The Russian Bomb (19:44)
Chapter 8. NSC-68: The Militarization of Containment (18:47)
Chapter 9. Politics and Policy in the First Decade of the Cold War (1:59:58)
Chapter 10. From Korea to Krushcheve and the Thaw (1:03:49)
Chapter 11. Communism and the United States Supreme Court (49:06)
Chapter 12. Avoiding Armageddon (1:40:55)
Chapter 13. From Camelot to Saigon (1:28:39)
Chapter 14. Stalemate and the Birth and Death of Detente (43:51)
Chapter 15. From the Wilderness to the Promised Land (1:42:41)
Conclusion (1:41:16)

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#ContainingHistory #FreeAudiobookCodes

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen P. Friot is not George F. Kennan. He is, after all, a United States district judge and not an acknowledged diplomat and scholar. Yet, Friot has authored a superb history of the Cold War relations of the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to the Union's collapse in the early 1990s. Why should we be at all concerned why a noted judge has any opinion about the state and future of our nation's international relationship with Russia? Part of an answer to that question lies with the memoir-like publication this book really is. Judge Friot has worked for many years in the Russian Federation with Russian judges, judicial and constitutional organizations, and the faculties of various academic institutions. He has come to really know and understand the Russian people and their social, cultural, and political beliefs and outlooks. Judge Friot is, today, an associate participant with the University of Oklahoma's Romanoff Center for Russian Studies. Going well beyond the fundamental memoir, Judge Friot also writes persuasively about the absolute necessity of aggressive United States foreign policy to contain the Russian Federation today and in tomorrow's post-Putin world. And that's where George Kennan and the whole idea of "containment" as foreign policy is relevant. This is superb history. It is also necessary reading to understand how and why our nation's foreign policy really develops.

[Keith Turek · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOTE: I received this audiobook for free, with an accompanying request to write an honest review.

There was a lot of good history here (particularly that before Gorbachev) that provided some helpful context for the current situation with Russia. I was less impressed by the analysis, which I thought mediocre at best, and frequently found myself at odds with it. For me, it was too lopsidedly realpolitik and militaristic, with a perspective that seemed rather neo-con. Admirers of Kissinger and Brzezinski, which I'm not, might like the book more than me.

The narrator did a good job.

[David Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well-written, historical account of the relationship between Russia and the United States, dating back to World War 2. This book sheds light on recent events involving Russia, the U.S., and Ukraine, viewed through the lens of history. If you’re a political science or history fanatic, this writing will scratch both of those itches.