FROM COLD WAR TO HOT PEACE

THE INSIDE STORY OF RUSSIA AND AMERICA

MICHAEL MCFAUL Allen Lane, 528pp, £25, Oldie price £17.66 inc p&p

Mcfaul is a former US ambassador to Moscow and ‘the architect of Barack Obama’s ill-fated “reset” of relations with Russia, struggling to provide a common language for two countries drifting apart’, explained Roger Boyes in the Times. ‘Mcfaul’s lively memoir is an up-close account of how Washington tried to find common ground with a Kremlin crippled by suspicion.’ Although we learn of Vladimir Putin’s ‘chippiness, his perpetual tardiness, his fundamental lack of interest in the West, his self-absorption’, the book ‘ends up… revealing more about western naivety in the struggle to deal with a thuggish autocrat than in analysing Putin’s motives’. ‘Putin is clearly the villain in this story’

The New York Times chose the London-based Russian historian Daniel Beer as its reviewer. ‘The Kremlin subjected Mcfaul and his embassy staff to harassment and vitriol that tore up the conventions of international diplomacy,’ he wrote. ‘Putin is clearly the villain in this story.’ Mcfaul ‘makes his case with energy and conviction. Yet his relentless focus on Putin’s individual role tends to obscure the broader evolution of attitudes toward the West within the Russian political establishment. There are, for instance, only passing references to the siloviki – hard-liners with a background in the security services who were all along uneasy about [Prime Minister] Medvedev’s embrace of the Reset. In fact, Putin is far from alone in his hostility to what he sees as aggressive NATO expansionism and the threat of American missile defense programs.’