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Fire and Rain
Offering a fresh perspective on the American war in Southeast Asia and superpower diplomacy during the Nixon-Kissinger years, this gripping work drawing on thousands of declassified documents and tapes to provide a startling account of the mpact of high-level decisions in Washington on people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the United States.
Drawing the Line
In this fresh and challenging study of the origins of the Cold War, Professor Eisenberg traces the American role in dividing post-war Germany. Drawing upon many original documentary sources, she examines the Allied meeting on the Elbe, follows the Great Powers through their confrontation in Berlin, and culminates with the creation of the West German state in the fall of 1949. In contrast to many works in the field, the book argues that the partition of Germany was fundamentally an American decision. US policy-makers chose partition, mobilized reluctant West Europeans behind that approach, and, by excluding the Soviets from West Germany, contributed to the isolation of East Germany and the emergence of the post-World War II US-Soviet rivalry. The volume casts new light on the Berlin blockade, demonstrating that the United States rejected United Nations mediation and relied on its nuclear monopoly as the means of protecting its German agenda.
How Wars End
The first comprehensive treatment of how the United States has handled the final stages of its conflicts-from World War I to Iraq-spoiled repeatedly by leaders' failures to plan clearly for what to do when the guns fall silent. Concerned with not repeating past errors, our leaders miscalculate and prolong the conflict or invite unwelcome results. In his penetrating analysis of past, present, and future wars, Rose suggests how to break this cycle.
Contention and Trust in Cities and States
The catalyst for this book is the fact that noted sociologist Charles Tilly, upon his death in 2008, left one completed chapter of an unfinished manuscript entitled “Cities, States, and Trust Networks,” examining the relationships between cities and nation-states over the sweep of history, and in particular the role of trust networks in mediating this relationship. Though this was the catalyst, the book serves a broader purpose: to survey recent frontier work on cities, nation-states, and the relations between the two in historical and contemporary perspective. Essays in the book will address four main themes: city-state relations, trust networks and commitment, democracy and inequality,...
Orders of Exclusion
When and why do powerful countries seek to enact major changes to international order, the broad set of rules that guide behavior in world politics? This question is particularly important today given the Trump administration's clear disregard for the reigning liberal international order in the United States. Across the globe, there is also uncertainty over what China might seek to replace that order with as it continues to amass power and influence. Together, these developments mean that what motivates great powers to shape and change order will remain at the forefront of debates over the future of world politics. Prior studies have focused on how the origins of international orders have be...
The Truth Is Our Weapon
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, deployed a tactic Chris Tudda calls “rhetorical diplomacy”— sounding a belligerent note of anti-Communism in speeches, addresses, press conferences, and private meetings with allies and with Moscow. Yet all the while, Tudda discloses, the two were confidentially committed to a contradictory course—the establishment of a strong system of collective security in Western Europe, peaceful accommodation of the Soviet Union, and the maintenance of a new, albeit divided Germany. Tudda explores the Eisenhower administration’s pursuit of these two mutually exclusive diplomatic strategies and reveals how failure to...
The Peace of Illusions
In a provocative book about American hegemony, Christopher Layne outlines his belief that U.S. foreign policy has been consistent in its aims for more than sixty years and that the current Bush administration clings to mid-twentieth-century tactics--to no good effect. What should the nation's grand strategy look like for the next several decades? The end of the cold war profoundly and permanently altered the international landscape, yet we have seen no parallel change in the aims and shape of U.S. foreign policy. The Peace of Illusions intervenes in the ongoing debate about American grand strategy and the costs and benefits of "American empire." Layne urges the desirability of a strategy he ...
The Myth of the Good War
In the spirit of historians Howard Zinn, Gwynne Dyer, and Noam Chomsky, Jacques Pauwels focuses on the big picture. Like them, he seeks to find the real reasons for the actions of great powers and great leaders. Familiar Second World War figures from Adolf Hitler to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin are portrayed in a new light in this book. The decisions of Hitler and his Nazi government to go to war were not those of madmen. Britain and the US were not allies fighting shoulder to shoulder with no motive except ridding the world of the evils of Nazism. In Pauwels' account, the actions of the United States during the war years were heavily influenced by American corporations -- IBM, GM...
A World Safe for Commerce
When seeking to understand why nations come into conflict, political scientists tend to focus either on threats to national security (realism) and or on moral duty, ideology, and domestic pressures (liberalism). Liberalism has been the major lens for international relations scholars analyzing the United States, due to the country's strong democratic foundations. In this expansive new book, Dale Copeland argues that the realist cast can shed fascinating light on American foreign policy--if one looks beyond security threats to consider economic threats as well. Copeland's "commercial approach to realism" establishes a new understanding of realism in three ways: by building out a new realist theory, by showing how this commercial approach applies to the United States, and by projecting this theory onto different scenarios that may arise in future conflicts between the United States and China.
Among Empires
Contemporary America, with its unparalleled armaments and ambition, seems to many commentators a new empire. Others angrily reject the designation. What stakes would being an empire have for our identity at home and our role abroad? A preeminent American historian addresses these issues in light of the history of empires since antiquity. This elegantly written book examines the structure and impact of these mega-states and asks whether the United States shares their traits and behavior. Eschewing the standard focus on current U.S. foreign policy and the recent spate of pro- and anti-empire polemics, Charles S. Maier uses comparative history to test the relevance of a concept often invoked bu...
