SAIS Review

226 SAIS REVIEW leaders like Stalin. One essay that stands out is titled "The Survivors of the Other Holocaust." In this piece, Cohen writes about the 7 million survivors of Stalin's gulags who live with the understanding that their neighbors may have been "direct accomplices in Stalin's terror or its circumstantial beneficiaries." As for present U.S.-Soviet relations, Cohen seeks to put conciliation back in the minds of policymakers on both sides. Under Reagan, he indicates, U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union has overemphasized military concerns and shunned détente, which he calls "the only rational alternative to cold war." He calls on the United States to make the first move, for example by ratifying the SALT II agreement and initiating negotiations on a wide range of topics. Cohen feels that such U.S. actions could induce Moscow to make some important concessions in return. There are two problems with this argument. First, Cohen has a tendency to assign the Soviets the role of responding to U.S. initiatives rather than making the first move. This ignores the large share of the blame that the Soviets deserve for the current poor state of superpower relations. Second, Cohen fails to recognize that past U.S. initiatives have been met with unfriendly Soviet responses, for example, the 1980 invasion of Afghanistan, which sealed the fate of the SALT II pact. Cohen's advocacy of a resuscitation of SALT II is unlikely to win many supporters in the Reagan administration. But readers of all political stripes will find something to like in Sovieticus. The book is political writing at its best, erudite and graceful. Cohen's political stance may be out of fashion in Washington these days, but his contribution to a greater understanding of the Soviet Union is always welcome. A World ofSecrets: The Uses and Limits of Intelligence. By Walter Laqueur. New York: Basic Books, 1985. 394 pp. $21.95/cloth. Reviewed by David Colton, M.A. Candidate, SAIS. While stories about spies and their trade make great fiction, factual discussions of intelligence and its role in diplomacy and international affairs seem plagued by unevenness. A shortage of verifiable information and the much-debated status of intelligence services and covert operations in democratic societies clearly reduces the quality of available studies of the intelligence community. Analyses of intelligence have also been used by many authors as a vehicle for expressing their personal ideas about the course of U.S. foreign policy. Given the weakness of so many past efforts, Walter Laqueur's World of Secrets is a welcome — not to mention overdue — addition to the literature on this always controversial subject. This work is different from most of its genre in a number of important ways. First, the book takes a broad view, seeking to place the process and purpose of intelligence within a historical perspective. This approach limits the amount of detail in some areas, but Laqueur makes up for this with a wealth of insight. It is particularly well-suited to introducing a general audience to the various continuities and changes in the field of intelligence in recent years. BOOK REVIEWS 227 Laqueur is an objective observer who provides penetrating insights into the intelligence process without the encumbrance of vested interests or a parochial bureaucratic viewpoint. Secondly, Laqueur resists the inherent temptation to sensationalize the subject . The wild gossiping, overarching moralism and lurid tales that hurt other efforts are noticeably absent from A World ofSecrets. Instead, Laqueur preserves a tone of sober objectivity useful when examining such a controversial issue. When discussing a specific topic or period, Laqueur tries to present the views of all sides. But he does not surrender the right to pass judgment. For example, he attacks the politicians of the mid-1970s who tried to reduce the CIA's covert capabilities in the wake of disclosures about its role in destabilizing Allende's Chile and in organizing assassination attempts on unfriendly leaders. "Not to mince words," he writes, "there was a great deal of self-righteousness" in the probes of congressional investigators ofthis period. Such statements, however, are used sparingly. The structure of the book is both conventional and straightforward. Especially...