The Great Detente Disaster: Oil and the Decline of American Foreign Policy, by Edward Friedland, Paul Seabury, and Aaron Wildavsky (Basic Books, 210 pp., $7.95). This book, by a troika of UCal (Berkeley) political scientists, is worth reading, although it promises a good deal more than it delivers. Even your reasonable guess, from the title, that it has something to do with detente will fool you. You get warmer if you stick to the subhead. The authors’ controlling thesis is straightforward: OPEC is the villain in the currently playing global drama; OPEC’s oil ripoff is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Western nations; we’ve got to face up, and really do something about it. Exactly what? Well, we must analyze the situation in terms of game theory, consider all, even the extreme, options, and prove “our willingness to act again with determination.” It’s hard to disagree with the proposed therapy, and that’s as far as the argument—often cogently and sometimes surprisingly pressed—is carried.
JAMES BURNHAM
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