Paschalis Pechlivanis’ meticulously researched and immensely readable monograph is an important contribution to the scholarship of “differentiation.” “Differentiation” constituted one of the most nuanced and durable strands of US Cold War policy towards eastern Europe from 1956, but surprisingly it has not attracted the attention it deserves from scholars. It was premised on controlling risks and simultaneously utilizing soft power, primarily culture and finance, to probe Soviet power stealthily by stirring up tensions within the Soviet empire in eastern Europe. Differentiation, however, was not without its risks as the crushing of the Prague Spring by the Warsaw Pact demonstrated in 1968. President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, embarked on implementing differentiation as a corollary to their own version of superpower détente, seemingly undaunted by the unpredictability of outcomes such a high-risk approach could unleash in eastern Europe. However, they took precautions. They eschewed those countries that could vex the Soviets seriously. They downgraded Yugoslavia and upgraded Romania as their main focus for differentiation. To them, President Nicolae Ceauşescu seemed to offer the best prospect.
Pechlivanis devotes six chapters to scrutinizing the application of differentiation towards Romania during the decade of superpower détente and depicts how three successive US Presidents, Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, interacted with one brutal east European dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu. He also delves deeply into Romanian foreign policy, aspirations and expectations and Ceauşescu's desire to “establish himself as a first rate statesman internationally” (5). He subjects the two countries and their leaders to almost simultaneous observation to monitor their aims and interactions. The book is organized chronologically and is based on a wealth of American and Romanian primary sources.
Pechlivanis begins with a visit by Nixon to Bucharest in 1969—the first ever visit by an American President to an east European capital during the Cold War, it was steeped in symbolism, real-politik, and experimentation. He sides with the view that for the Nixon administration, Romania was a valuable “weathervane” to guide them safely through differentiation and détente and an intermediary in efforts to “open up” China and bring the war in Vietnam to an end. He unpeels, deftly, the veils of the “mystique” of Romanian foreign policy and argues confidently that in Ceauşescu's “hierarchy of foreign policy ideals, the Romanian national interest trumped Marxist-communist ideology, be it due to personal ambition or his peculiar version of communist ideology (National Communism)” (55–56). He evokes vividly Ceauşescu's curiosity to see “capitalism in action” for himself (46) and at the same time his frustrations and incomprehension of democratic processes and pluralism and his almost reckless desire to experiment with institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, which he clearly did not understand. He recounts how Romanian-related issues were caught up in American domestic politics, so as to become one of the focal points of an increasingly assertive Congress, irked by an “imperial” executive to curb the Administration's powers and designs. Ceauşescu's disregard for human rights and Nixon's toleration of his excesses emerge in this book as an important factor behind growing disillusionment with superpower détente and its penchant for amoralism that led to its eventual delegitimization. The book describes in detail the critical Ford years on their own merit and not just as a mere afterthought, and tracks the takeover of the GOP by its right wing. It explains how the obvious contradictions in American foreign policy that stemmed from “differentiation” and the way it was applied towards Romania were to lead President Carter to feeling uncomfortable with détente.
Ceauşescu's Romania has attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention over the last two decades. Pechlivanis, however, deserves praise for relating the story of the confluence of differentiation with superpower détente in an incisive, engaging, and thought provoking manner. Yet, there are times when one wishes that the author had adopted a bolder approach and had juxtaposed differentiation and détente more starkly without conflating them and their effects. There was an opportunity to assess the impact American focus on Romania had on the rest of eastern Europe that has not been fully explored. Also, there was scope for the author to conceptualize his empirical research within a more analytical and theoretical framework, as there is a tendency to narrate when more probing was demanded. More attention could have been paid to Soviet foreign policy and reactions. These are, however, minor issues and do not detract from the immense breakthroughs achieved by this volume. America and Romania in the Cold War: A Differentiated Détente, 1969–80 deserves a prominent place on the reading lists of courses on the Cold War.
