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Cold War Respite: The Geneva Summit of 1955. Gunter Bischof and Saki Dockrill, eds. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. 319 pp.
History is full of lost opportunities. What might have happened if things had been done differently? The cold war provides fertile soil for such counterfactual speculation. The Geneva Summit of 1955 is a case in point. Coming as it did at the midpoint of the high cold war, this first and only meeting of the heads of state from the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France offered the possibility that face-to-face diplomacy might alter the course of cold war relations. Perhaps these discussions would allow the major powers to move away from embittered conflict toward peaceful coexistence. Geneva was a ray of hope to a world yearning for a safer, less threatening future. It was not to be, however. The reality of the conference's meager results made a mockery of any wishful expectations. The "Spirit of Geneva" vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Why? What accounts for the failure of the first leaders' summit of the cold war? Moreover, was this meeting a tragic lost opportunity? If...