The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today

Long time readers of Hal Brands will not be disappointed with his latest examination of the notion insiders call "grand strategy." In this new work, Brands looks at the Cold War not as yet another analytical history of well-trodded territory. Instead, he invites readers to consider it as a classroom for strategic thinking. This book is organized around lessons rather than presidents or periods. It rewards readers with a high-level overview of the Cold War and what it might, or might not, instruct us today as we grapple with the coming era of competition with China and Russia.

I have ordered copies of "Twilight Struggle" for my faculty members as we prepare to teach a war college course on great power competition. Brands does a very good job of framing the cold war great power competition in ways that the reader can extract lessons for the current rivalry. Those familiar with cold war history will find much new and imaginative in this work. I believe that my faculty will benefit considerably from the lessons that Brands lays out in this book.

Using the history of the Cold War as a foundation to revisit the successful framework of strategies that endured from that time, the author adeptly orients readers to the salient aspects of applying strategy and analysis into today’s great power competition. Retrospectively reviewing both the good and the bad from the Cold War, one can take away very useful elements in crafting strategy and conducting analysis. Though no panacea exists in strategy, this book is an outstanding read in growing one’s own intellectual prowess to think and plan strategically.

The Cold War is a distant memory for many of us of a certain age and nothing more than a textbook history lesson for the rest of us under the age of 40. But now, in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s brutal and bloody onslaught against Ukraine amid our collective prolonged worry andapprehension about an increasingly aggressive China, many seem to be struggling to understand what it will take to keep the peace. History can and will guide us, so we go back to the history books for guidance and enlightenment. The first place we should start is with Hal Brand’s latest book. Brands, a noted Cold War historian and former Pentagon advisor, presents an illuminating and richly researched lesson of how the US dealt with the challenge of the Cold War – that “Twilight Struggle” the West fought from the end of World War II until 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved itself. Brands gives us a crisp examination of the many successes, and more than a few missteps US leaders experienced during these anxious years. Ultimately, it was the power of ideas and free markets brought the West victory against a hollowed-out Communist empire – but it took extraordinarywork, innumerable policies and programs, and a willingness to stand strong that won the peace.Brands ventures deep into those many challenges, strategies, and tactics the Cold War American Presidents, beginning with Truman to ending with Reagan and Bush, took up to win that “Twilight Struggle.” To be fair to potential readers, this is not light reading. But it is an excellent read for those fascinated by Cold War history. For everyone else who picks up this book, it is something of an incredibly well-timed primer for what it will likely require from all of us to strenuously defend freedom and democracy as we know it once again.

Professor Hal Brands has written an "important" book for foreign policymakers and implementors.Through Brands writing we can dip into the Cold War past, an often misunderstood and misinterpreted era in American geopolitics. Brands illuminate the often messy process of policymaking and policy implementation across multiple presidential administrations and our shifting cultural landscape. He points to the strategy of "containment" serving as a policy plumb line through the decades of competitive ups and downs.Most importantly, Brands acknowledged the Cold War struggle was not a normal clash of national interests. Two starkly opposed ideologies fought for supremacy believing that each had a corner on truth. And the "best" way forward for civilization.In his conclusion, Brands' last takeaways from the Cold War era provides to be very timely with the events in Ukraine and potentially Taiwan. He writes, "the need to see competition as a way of life." Wise counsel considering our headlines.

Gut, dass es kam. Schlecht: Achtung Zoll!