How and when did the Cold War end? During the last two decades, multiple new approaches to analyze different dimensions of the Cold War era emerged. One of the major changes in Cold War historiography is the agency of the east, that is the Soviet bloc, as an independent actor and not only a context for the western studies. The agency of the east brought to the fore new approaches and topics to Cold War studies. In spite of this, a clear paradigmatic change in Cold War studies has not emerged so far. The new approaches are still discipline-based and new openings remain more or less inside the disciplinary boundaries.

Two books under review, Transcending the Cold War and Trust, but Verify are both examples of the history of international relations. Focusing on the transformation of the Cold War during the second half of the era, the books investigate high-level political encounters. The actors are political leaders and the arena the highest echelons of international politics. The major questions of the volumes are why and when did the Cold War end and why was the dissolution of bipolarity such a peaceful process? While Transcending the Cold War focuses on the summits, Trust, but Verify analyzes emotions in Cold War politics. Focusing on the same time period with the same historical events, it is possible to compare the outcome of the studies from the applied method point of view of. Traditionally, “new openings” have meant digging into details and depicting events with deepening accuracy. What do these two new books under review bring to Cold War historiography?

Transcending the Cold War analyzes the historical changes that ended the Cold War by focusing on the intricate interplay between structural forces and individual agency. The volume seeks to determine the reason for the peaceful transformation of the international order by focusing on high level east-west interactions in selected summits during the Cold War. Two major topics in the volume are the evolution of the Cold War and the practice of the international summitry. These are investigated through the role of statesmen and statecraft, that is, political interplay in the situational context. The book brings to the fore examples of strategic calculation and pure gambling that illustrates the evolution of international relations. In spite of “Europe” in the title, the volume approaches the Cold War as a global phenomenon. The volume introduces China as a third actor in the field of international relations, traditionally dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union. The triangular approach provides an interesting twist to the analysis and illustrates US-Soviet and Sino-Soviet tensions in the 1970s. The east-west encounters in Europe, China, the US, and the Soviet Union in the summits organized between 1970 and 1990 are analyzed in eight articles starting from the West German-East German meeting in Kassel 1970 to the Mikhail Gorbachev-Helmut Kohl discussion in the Caucasus in 1990. The chronological approach lends an interesting view to the complex system of political geography where state leaders navigated and tried to shape the processes of change.

The volume identified three moments that changed the course of history: 1970–72 (Thawing the Cold War), 1975–79 (Living with the Cold War), and 1985–90 (Transcending the Cold War). This structure creates the analytical starting point for the investigation of “how systemic developments influenced the behavior of leaders and how leaders in turn tried to shape the processes of change” (233). The “change-agent” proved to be Mikhail Gorbachev, who was capable of the Ronald Reagan type of dialogue: “talking to each other rather than about each other” (242). That is why Gorbachev and Reagan were able to have creative summitry and to establish real cooperation (entente) (243). The main features of historically-creative summits were personal trust between the political leaders, initiative, pragmatism, but also vision for the future. For the wider public, the summits signaled not only the transformation of international relations but also the possibility of change.

The major difference between the two books is in the methodological approach. Trust, but Verify seeks to explore the “emotional side” of the Cold War by integrating trust/distrust as a major tool for analyzing developments in international relations during the last phase of the Cold War. The starting point for the investigation is that the concepts trust and distrust are fundamental categories in international relations. The volume seeks to answer how trust and distrust shaped the Cold War as a rhetorical strategy, political goal, and an emotion. The analysis focuses on interaction between the superpowers, within the blocs and inside individual countries. The selected historical case studies are investigated from the point of view of personal factors, the role of smaller states, intra-bloc developments and bloc-to-bloc negotiations. Trust, but Verify seeks to demonstrate what kinds of trust-building and risk-taking efforts, as well as verification strategies, were introduced. The title of the volume refers one of Ronald Reagan's signature phrases describing US-Soviet relations during his presidency: doveriai no proveriai (trust but verify) (121).

The major question in the volume is how to define trust in the context of Cold War international relations. The editors keep the definition “broad enough to cover the case studies presented,” that is, “a three-part relation that is grounded in the truster's assessment of the trusted with respect to some action” (2). This does not include only the shared interests, the predictability of actions, credibility and benevolent intentions of the counterpart, but also emotional quality and trust as “a mixture of calculation and emotion” (2). Although the Cold War, with two systems of alliances, is an interesting subject for investigation, the “imaginary of the Cold War,” that is, not-knowing and speculation as major rules, set several challenges for investigation. The structural and temporal changes in the emergence of trust and distrust between the two blocs are analyzed in personal, societal and alliance levels in twelve articles that all uses emotions as a tool for analysis. The main challenge is that trust is strongly connected to the personal relations with temporal context. Despite the atmosphere of relative trust during the era of détente in the 1970s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 destroyed trust for several years. Trust as emotion was different in the lower levels of international politics: increasing trust between the two superpowers increased suspicion among the smaller states in the alliances that the superpowers would make deals at their expense.

The two books offer interesting views of the evolution and peaceful end of the Cold War. In spite of the different methodological settings, the outcomes of the volumes are quite similar, as are the book covers, with Gorbachev and Reagan. Transcending the Cold War brings to the fore the emergence of trust as one of the major reasons behind the transformations that ended the Cold War. Trust, but Verify, having emotion as a methodological starting point, is able to point out more detailed examples of trust/distrust. The two books contribute to a greater understand of the Cold War's end. The transformation began when political leaders found mutual trust in the mid-1980s. The personal encounters and relationships of political leaders created the atmosphere that enabled serious parley at the summits. This, however, does not explain the whole picture. Although both high-quality scholarly works, these volumes both strengthen the already existing information rather than bringing forth something new. It is easy to agree with the editors of Transcending the Cold War that there were deeper structural changes that underlay the end of the Cold War (3), which needed trust and will force among political leaders but also diffusion of the idea of change at a grass-roots level that activated ordinary people to act for change.

What is still missing is the comprehensive presentation of the Cold War era that combines all parts of the puzzle. The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2010) was a serious attempt to realize this. The picture of the Cold War was remarkably extended in three volumes, seventy-two articles and topics, seventy-six international contributors, and almost 2000 pages of high-quality research. Still, the picture remained somewhat one-sided due to the chosen approach to investigate the Cold War as a conflict.