COLD WAR AT 30,000 FEET The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy Jeffrey A. Engel Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. 351pp. US$35.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0674024618)Power, competition, and prestige are standard elements of geopolitics. They are also concepts associated with high technology. In the early part of the Cold War, both geopolitics and high technology in the form of aviation influenced diplomacy and relationships between friends and foes alike. In a wellwritten and well- documented account ofthe special relationship between the United States and Great Britain, Jeffrey Engel examines how the impact of technology, diplomacy, and the quest for markets revealed fissures and misperceptions that the rhetoric of these old allies otherwise concealed.The book offers unique insight into the complexity of international power relationships, especially where economics and technology are concerned. Aviation enabled the pax Americana, symbolized American modernity, and projected Uncle Sam's strength both literally and figuratively. At the same time, air power threatened the security that isolation between two oceans had traditionally offered the nation. Advanced aircraft guaranteed American freedom and security. In the early Cold War, many American leaders viewed aviation technology as a national security issue, not as a marketable product for use in civilian airlines or for direct export. It could only be sold to allies for the sake of bolstering collective security in the face ofthe red menace.For Great Britain, aircraft were not just symbols of power. They were a cherished national resource backed by government regulation and preferential trade markets, and exports to these markets promised to contribute to postwar recovery. British leaders reasoned that global sales of aircraft technology could ensure a healthy domestic manufacturing base, increase prosperity, and help counterbalance American strength and power. They were more optimistic on this question than American officials because they believed that rigorous export controls would prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands. Planners believed that a combination of these controls and British engineering superiority would enable the UK to retain a dominant position in the industry and still reap windfall profits from sales.Engel chronicles the dilemmas and opportunities pursued by each nation as it sought to balance security and commercial concerns while keeping alliances together and the Soviet Union in check. The British were burned after their 1946 sale of advanced jet engines, including the Rolls Royce Nene, to the USS R, which used them to power high-performance military jets, such as the MiG 15. …