David Reynolds.Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century.:Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The words “summit conference” conjure up images of powerful leaders emerging from airplanes in foreign capitals, being greeted by heads of governments with much handshaking and embracing, all to the delight of the ubiquitous media. Then come the days of cloistered talks, public toasts, and anodyne communiqués. In the end, more often than not, nothing much really happens. This is the world of twentieth-century diplomacy that David Reynolds explores. The roots of this book lie in a successful BBC series featuring three summits: Munich (1938), Vienna (1961), and Geneva (1985). Each merits a chapter here, as do Yalta (1945), Moscow (1972), and Camp David (1978), augmented by introductory and concluding essays. Reynolds deals quickly with proto-summitry in earlier times (from the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV by Pope Gregory VII through the Lloyd George–inspired conferences of the 1920s), but, he indicates, they do not fall within his remit as identified by Winston Churchill in 1950. Modern summits for Reynolds require airplanes to bring leaders great distances in a short time to meet their peer-antagonists. Second, there must be modern weapons to make the stakes monstrously high. Also necessary are modern media to make such affairs the center of world attention.