This edited volume is a useful step forward for the literature on what the authors refer to as “Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact” (NSWP) countries’ activities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the Cold War. The well-researched collection of chapters covers all six NSWP countries, though it focuses more on East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania than on Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. As quality edited volumes aspire to do, this book succeeds in becoming more than just the sum of its parts by convincingly reframing the narrative around the Eastern Bloc in the Third World. Rather than see the Warsaw Pact countries as either simple adjuncts of Soviet foreign policy or as renegades from it, the book's various chapters paint a picture of states pursuing their own individual interests within certain bounds set by Moscow, but not necessarily exclusively marching to a tune called by the Kremlin. Not neglecting their role, the book also demonstrates how the Soviets made use of the different agendas, capacities, and appetites of the Warsaw Pact states, enabling the alliance to achieve more collectively in its geopolitical competition with the west than if the NSWP countries had acted internationally as mere satellites of Moscow. In other words, within limits, the book suggests that the Warsaw Pact be treated as an actual alliance rather than merely an imperial construct, and that the Soviets even found this state of affairs desirable more often than not.

The book consists of twelve chapters, divided roughly into three sections. The first section covers initial tentative attempts to engage with the “Third World” in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the middle section seeks to go beyond the realm of high politics to examine the efforts of individuals on the ground, including journalists and medical personnel; and the final section focuses on aid, primarily of a military nature. The German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia merit three chapters each, Romania and Poland get two, and Hungary and Bulgaria only one each. Although some mention is made of pre-war Czechoslovakia's diplomatic presence in Africa, the story really begins in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956 and ends in the mid-1970s, though the weight of the narrative falls largely in the earlier part of the period covered. While in terms of Soviet archival sources the latter years of the Cold War are still somewhat less accessible and documented than the earlier years, making such a chronological scope understandable if often regrettable, it is less clear why the latter part of the Cold War is neglected here given the relative openness of the archives of the former Warsaw Pact countries. Especially considering the efforts in the late 1970s and 1980s by Warsaw Pact countries, including the USSR, to support an increasing number of “countries of socialist orientation”—Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Nicaragua, not to mention Cuba and Vietnam—economically, politically, and militarily, the lack of attention paid to this period is particularly striking in the final section on aid.

Geographically, the weight of the books falls on the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. One wonders if this is a reflection of the direction of the activities of the NSWP countries, or rather an accident of the selection of chapters, but the most notable geographic absences are South and Southeast Asia, which were central fronts of the Cold War competition in the Third World. To give just one example of something that might have merited attention, Poland's presence on the International Control Commission in Vietnam would present an interesting test for the assertion made by Przemysław Gasztold in Chapter 8 that “Moscow often took advantage of Warsaw's ideological blindness” (207). Of particular note are three excellent chapters on sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s by the two editors and George Roberts. Telepneva's chapter on Czechoslovakia and the Congo and Muehlenbeck's on Czechoslovakia's diplomatic activities in East Africa both illustrate the degree to which the USSR was reliant on its allies in this part of the world, as well as the ways in which the ambitions of NSWP countries were ultimately vulnerable to the failures of Soviet foreign policy. Roberts’ chapter offers a close reading of East Germany's attempts to influence the Tanzanian media, what he argues is an ultimately futile attempt by a “scavenger state” to collect whatever diplomatic crumbs might fall to it in the interstices of the Cold War (166).

Overall, the book is a useful step towards bringing the NSWP countries more prominently into the emerging literature on the Cold War in the “Third World.” The book does not necessarily significantly revise the broad stroke narratives of each individual country's foreign policy—the GDR is still seeking recognition, Poland and Hungary are looking for economic gain, Bulgaria seeks to be a loyal ally, Czechoslovakia is ideologically supportive of “liberation,” and Romania seeks to chart its own geopolitical path. However, the book does advance our understanding of the foreign policy dynamics of the Warsaw Pact as a whole, illuminating the ways in which the interactions of the various states in the alliance combined to advance or inhibit the interests of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.