Mercifully for scholars looking at the Cold War, studies presenting that period as a bipolar struggle between two unified blocs (East and West) have been made somewhat redundant in recent years. In their stead have come a range of works that have sought to delineate the Cold War as being about far more than simply the balance of power between Washington and Moscow. The result has been a field that is far livelier, far more nuanced and far more inclusive; indeed, the field of diplomatic history could be said to be in rude health as studies dealing with cultural, ideological and transnational issues have reinvigorated a genre that experienced a relative downturn in the immediate post-Cold War era. A by-product of these developments has been a far sharper understanding of diplomatic relations during the Cold War: no longer are all nations in the western hemisphere automatically assumed to have been pursuing a common goal or singing from the same hymn sheet. The study of independent national interests has, in many ways, taken us beyond the Cold War when it comes to examining the nature of diplomatic relations in the post-World War II era.

In his rich and detailed new book, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, Jeffrey A. Engel embraces this approach and examines the relationship between Britain and the United States in the highly competitive (and lucrative) field of aviation sales. In doing so, he successfully deconstructs many of the perceived axioms about the so-called “special relationship.” Although often viewed as the closest of allies, when it came to aviation and the crusade to control the growth of air travel Washington and London were very often at loggerheads. And, while the special relationship survived this period of turbulence, Engel's book adds a welcome new layer of context to the evolution of the US–UK relationship.

At first the book's central argument is presented rather simplistically: Anglo-American disputes over sales of aviation technology to the USSR and China were, the author argues, a consequence of the incompatibility of Washington's anticommunist zeal and London's desperate need for commercial sales. However, as the story unfolds it evolves into far more than that juxtaposition between American and British interests; it becomes a darker, Machiavellian tale of the competition for power and international leadership. As the author notes in the conclusion, “A crude calculus of sales versus security in which profits mattered most of all would not do justice to the complexity of this story. Power instead lies at its heart” (298).

London was motivated by its innate desire to recapture its former position as a leading world power, while Washington was transfixed by the challenges being posed to American supremacy by the Soviet Union (and, latterly, China). Intriguingly, for all the myriad disputes – which, in the case of the “Viscount conspiracy,” saw the British attempting to flout US wishes through grandiose intrigues of an almost comical nature – London often stopped short of a full-blown confrontation with the US. The lure of the special relationship remained a strong enough pull to prevent an irreparable split in Anglo-American relations. It took a nation relatively immune to US posturing – Pakistan in the 1960s – to demonstrate that it was possible to achieve independent goals in the face of determined opposition from the White House. Ultimately, the moral of the tale is that while national interests played a major role in the complexity of the US–UK relationship, it was still Washington, in spite of ongoing machinations in London, which wielded the most power and could force Britain's hand on specific policy issues relating to aviation exports. It was only when the US began to focus on commercial factors in the mid-1960s that the nature of aviation exports behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains began to alter. By then, as Engel's exciting, well-researched and fast-paced book illustrates, it was far too late to resurrect Britain's outdated dreams of recapturing its former position of international pre-eminence.