God at work on the geopolitical scene
Thursday, December 7, 2006
This quotation is a year old, but more current than ever. Last Advent, John Lewis Gaddis, the very impressive Yale historian, published another installment of his history of the Cold War (The Cold War: A New History). Here’s a quotation from a New York Times review:
“Elsewhere Mr. Gaddis has endorsed the writing of a ‘new cold war history – one in which ideas, ideologies and morality are going to be central,’ rather than nuclear strategy and military brinkmanship. From the outset, he argues, the United States and the Soviet Union saw the cold war not simply as a struggle for military superiority. The world would observe, and judge, two competing and contrasting social systems. For Mr. Gaddis, innumerable private perceptions and moral decisions did as much to dissolve the cold war consensus as international treaties or macroecomonic trends. Characteristically, he locates the beginning of the end for Soviet Communism with the dramatic moment when Pope John Paul II arrived at Warsaw airport on June 2, 1979, and kissed the ground.”
……………………………………….–(review by John Lewis 12/28/05)
