ccc

Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente is a monograph written by Jeremi Suri, a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which attempts to theorizes that 1960s climaxing turmoil was a turning point in the long history of the nation-state. Suri examines how after WWII (1945-mid 1960s), leaders of USA, Soviet Union, France and China appealed to what they established as pervasive apprehension from regional divisions and nuclear threats of the Cold War by making promises to proof the supremacy, dominance, and prominence of their countries globally. However, by mid to late 1960s especially 1968, sources of international stalemate intensified and there began global dissent, protest and upheaval because leaders failed to follow through with the vision they crafted for their citizens. Intensely distressed by growing social and political discontent, Cold War powers such as the United States, Soviet Union, China, France and East/West Germany united on the international front in the policy of détente. Détente is a development of the international system that endeavors to maintain authority under siege through change and reform. Suri states, “From 1969 through 1972 leaders in each of the major states attempted to reconstruct order from international “top” down to the domestic “bottom”. They used promises of international peace to deflect attention from domestic difficulties and to free their resources for repressive measures”(p.213). Leaders invented foreign policy against accelerating internal disorder. Consequently, Suri argues, “ Cooperation among great powers became a substitute for both domestic and international reform”(p.216). By inventively connecting the domestic upheavals that shook many soc...

... middle of paper ...

... the students attest that, “Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, and for the people-these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency”(137). Although the government housed the students in University, it is through learning channel that the students were able to see the reality of their country. They also mention, “Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of American ideals were discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden Age was actually the decline of an era”(138). Observing their surroundings, students realized that freedom and equality were mere heresy, and their leaders failed to fulfill their grand visions leading them to produce domestic unrest.