Archie Brown, The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher and the End of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xi + 499 pp.
Looking back, it is not easy to recall what the first decade after the Cold War was like. Memories of the Soviet Union's political transformation and ultimate disintegration remained vivid, and the prospects for a “new world order” based on the spread of democracy still seemed promising, despite the security risks posed by conflicts in various part of Eurasia. Today, with the world mired in a pandemic, many democratic regimes deeply embattled, and U.S. conflicts with China and Russia on the rise, that first decade after the Cold War and the hopes that existed back then seem especially remote. Equally alarming, these developments have become entangled with what is arguably the gravest domestic political crisis in the United States since the Civil War....