The Chinese Army after Mao (review)

Abstract

It becomes clear in the final chapters that the author really had two books in mind. In combining them into one, both got slighted. He begins and ends the book with a brief discussion of recurring patterns in U.S. -Soviet relations that can be traced throughout the postwar period. But the outline of those patterns is not filled out; a more detailed analysis would be welcome. Similarly, the memoir seems incomplete. How much more could he have told us about how Kissinger's NSC operated? How did it differ from Brent Scowcroft's? What was it like to serve under Kissinger at the State Department? Hyland gives glimpses of these matters, and others; some vignettes are priceless, such as Brezhnev filching binder clips or sitting in a Crimean grotto offering the somber Nixon a treaty aimed at the Chinese; but at the end the reader has snacked, not dined. Mortal RivaL· is revealing and incisive; would that there were more of it.