The Cold War is conventionally regarded as a superpower conflict that dominated the shape of international relations between World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Smaller powers had to adapt to a role as pawns in a strategic game of the superpowers, its course beyond their control. This edited volume offers a fresh interpretation of twentieth-century smaller European powers – East–West, neutral and non-aligned – and argues that their position vis-à-vis the superpowers often provided them with an opportunity rather than merely representing a constraint. Analysing the margins for manoeuvre of these smaller powers, the volume covers a wide array of themes, ranging from cultural to economic issues, energy to diplomacy and Bulgaria to Belgium. Given its holistic and nuanced intervention in studies of the Cold War, this book will be instrumental for students of history, international relations and political science.

Overall, the volume covers an impressive variety of topics that demonstrate the multiplicity of means that small states employed to challenge Cold War power relations. Thus, the high degree of extensive research makes this book a must-read for any scholar interested in Cold War history or the history of small states.

- Felicitas Hartung, University of California, San Diego, H-Net Reviews

Laurien Crump is Associate Professor in Contemporary European History at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She has published widely on multilateral relations in the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain, based on multi-archival research in eight European countries.

Susanna Erlandsson is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of History at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has published on Swedish and Dutch security policies in the 1940s, on personal trust in diplomatic relations and on the role of gender in diplomatic history.