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So if the mighty steel of US military strength did not tame the Russian bear, what did? Matthew Evangelista's answer to this question should pique the interest of argumentation scholars.... Evangelista's findings raise serious questions about realpolitik models of international relations that explain US Cold War victory over the Soviet Union in terms of one mammoth billiard ball smashing into and destroying its more fragile counterpart. His impressive empirical research illustrates how threats, policies, and norms were constructed and deconstructed by argumentation conducted in transnational channels of communication. If the significance of this finding for students of argumentation is not already apparent, it becomes obvious in Evangelista's final case study, which examines the influence of transnational activism on post-Soviet policy.

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Argumentation and Advocacy

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Matthew Evangelista's Unarmed Forces fills a key gap in Cold War historiography and international relations theory by examining how transnational actors (TNAs) affected Soviet and Russian security policies from the 1950s to the mid-1990s.... The book's most important theoretical contribution is its demonstration that, contrary to standard models, TNAs can affect security issues.... The book's remarkable empirical detail and clear theoretical argument will be invaluable for Cold War historians, arms control experts, international relations theorists, and aspiring transnational actors.

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Andrew Bennett, Georgetown University, Slavic Review

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This is a highly detailed but readable book, punctuated by photographs and entertaining chapter captions.... Evangelista's book makes valuable reading for scholars interested in expanding their views about the end of the Cold War, as well as for those who will be inspired by the fact that transnational citizen influence could bring some amount of pressure to bear on one of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes of the twentieth century.

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Valerie Sperling, Clark University, Journal of Cold War Studies

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This book will help educate those who think the course of the Cold War and its end—or for that matter any important dimension of international politics—were driven only by governments, national leaders, and vast political forces.... This is a smart, well-argued, and unassuming book.

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Foreign Affairs

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At the core of this book lies a thesis unsettling for conventional explanations of the cold war and its end: in terms of its professed aims of moderating Soviet conduct, U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union was a resounding failure.... At one level, this book functions as a massive indictment, sotto voce, of the U.S. security establishment, its government officials, allied academics, and media publicists. Evangelista cuts through their bluff, bluster, and baloney to reveal an astounding intellectual bankruptcy.... This is a powerful, path-breaking study.

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Michael Urban, Political Science Quarterly

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To his credit, Matthew Evangelista has developed in Unarmed Forces a powerful argument that transnational movements of the past half century were able to influence the policies and decisions of a rigid, totalitarian USSR and a bureaucratized US foreign policy establishment.... He carefully marshals his arguments and provides a wealth of source material as an important dividend for the interested reader.

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Herbert L. Abrams, Stanford University, Physics Today