Trust, but Verify: The Politics of Uncertainty and the Transformation of the Cold War Order is an intriguing examination of the role of trust and distrust in the second half of the Cold War. This edited volume contains twelve chapters that explore a range of subjects, including the personal diplomacy of leaders like Mao Zedong and Ronald Reagan, diplomacy within and between the blocs at conferences like the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and summits such as the G7, and the experiences of smaller and neutral states like Greece and Switzerland. The editors seek to contribute to the expanding field of the history of emotions, asserting that the examination of trust “opens up new perspectives on the dynamics of international relations, the entanglement between international and domestic spheres, and relations between structural and personal aspects” (2). The chapters therefore examine trust and distrust in different ways: as an attitude and an emotion, as personal and institutional, as a product of specific historical trajectories, as a negotiating tool to be built or exploited, and as a potential obstacle to cooperation both within and between blocs.

The chapters’ assessments of the necessity of trust for successful diplomacy range widely. For example, in her examination of Reagan's human rights diplomacy, Sarah Snyder argues that Reagan's ability to build trust with Gorbachev, specifically through his promise not to exploit Soviet cooperation on human rights issues, was key to his success in negotiations over Soviet human rights practices. In contrast, Noël Bonhomme and Emmanuel Morlon-Druol's exploration of summitry as a site to institutionalize trust and Michael Cotey Morgan's examination of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe conclude that trust is not necessarily required for international cooperation or progress. The chapters in this volume therefore resist easy answers; rather than developing a unified and coherent theory of trust, they seek to highlight the diverse role of emotions, psychology, and states of mind in the formation of policies.

The most successful chapters tease out trust's different manifestations and meanings. For example, Nicholas J. Wheeler, Joshua Baker, and Laura Considine's analysis of the creation of the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty examines the relationship between trust and verification. While Reagan had boasted of its stringent verification mechanisms, which seemingly diminished the need for trust, the authors conclude that trust was in fact a key component of the treaty. In doing so, they place the acceptance of vulnerability at the center of their definition of trust. Trusting, they argue, requires the willingness to make oneself vulnerable. This process plays out in two different ways. Trust relies on authenticity – on believing the other side's good intentions – and on capacity – believing that the other side can deliver its promises. Ultimately, they conclude, it was Gorbachev's willingness to make himself vulnerable through key concessions that allowed the INF treaty to proceed. Other chapters successfully explore why historical contexts can make trust so difficult to achieve. This is especially powerful in Sergey Radchenko's chapter on the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the late 1960s. The two countries’ leaders, he shows, suffered from a toxic blend of mistrust and misunderstanding, which led them to attribute the actions of the other to internal circumstances, rather than external reactions. Such misreadings, Radchenko argues, were the product of specific historical narratives and fears, leading to a deadly “spiral of mistrust” (23).

While the volume's chapters are multilayered in their exploration of the main theme, Trust, but Verify takes a geographically limited approach to the Cold War; with the exception of Radchenko's chapter, every chapter in the volume is about Europe or the United States. This undercuts its ability to examine the transformation of the Cold War order after the 1970s; it's hard to fully grasp the era's upheavals without examining issues like the oil crisis, the end of the Bretton Woods system, and the construction of a postcolonial global order. More broadly, while the volume examines the ideological clash between East and West, it could expand its explorations of how conceptions of the “other” shape the process of building trust and distrust. Radchenko's brief mention of joint Soviet–American lamentations about the Chinese as an “exceptionally sly and perfidious people” (31) highlights the potent overlap between racial stereotypes, trust, and diplomatic possibilities. Trust, but Verify therefore offers an interesting foundation for future research on trust, which could more fully examine intersections with race, gender, religion, and other aspects of national and personal identity.