An Cosantóir

35 BOOKS Author: Martin Sixsmith Publisher: Profile Books ISBN: 978 1 78125 912 2 Price: €19.59 BOOKS The period of the Cold War which ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the then Soviet Empire, witnessed the freedom of the nations of Eastern Europe including Ukraine, that had been under the Soviet yoke since 1945; are perhaps seen by many as a bygone era consigned as a footnote of history. In April 2005 Vladimir Putin famously decried these events as "the greatest Geopolitical catastrophe of the century," and which had fostered separatist movements inside Russia. Little did many Western Europeans at the time realise, this was in effect an ominous portent for his "special military operation" in Ukraine; a full-scale wholly unjustified military invasion, which has seen the largest conflict in European history since the Second World War and whose tragic events are still unfolding. We have also recently seen increasing tensions in the South China Sea with large-scale Chinese military manoeuvres, off the coast of Taiwan, whereby there remains an inherent danger that such aggressive sabre rattling could escalate into a major conflict. These unfolding events are a salient reason why we should read "The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War," by the veteran BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith. For nearly two decades in the twilight of the Cold War as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, he was stationed in Washington, Warsaw, Brussels and in Moscow which gave him a unique insight into the power-games and manoeuvrings then taking place. Sixsmith is perhaps best known to an Irish audience as the author of "The Lost Child of Philomena Lee," which in the film version of same he was portrayed by Steve Coogan. The recuring theme within this work that has a foreboding resonance for our time is that the whims of human behaviour from a psychological perspective, can have a disproportionate influence on events, causing not only instability but the dreadful prospect of tipping nations/alliances into the abyss of conflict against traditional adversaries, amplified by the haunting spectre of nuclear war. Again, with an almost existential sense of déjà vu, the author notes how the Cold War conflict which pitted the United States of America and the Soviet Union, was in very real sense a psychodrama playing out between the Superpowers, and was in effect a contest of competing social, economic, political and ethical systems, each of them "professing a monopoly of wisdom and the keys to humankind's future;" are we at such a juncture again in European history? This is not just mere hyperbole, the renowned Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, along with other commentators, has noted that Russia's war with Ukraine and still escalating tensions, positions society at perhaps the "most dangerous moment in world history since the Cuban missile crisis [October 1962]." In this fraught atmosphere where each side then and now strove to understand the thinking of the other in what Sixsmith ascribes to an "ongoing guessing game," which strained what psychologists called Theory of Mind – the ability to understand that others may think differently from oneself, has a greater resonance now as ever. The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind By Dr Rory Finegan (Comdt. Ret'd)

• Cover