John Lewis Gaddis

Uses contemporary documents to explore the development of the Cold War struggle, the consequences in the 1950s and 1960s, and the lasting effects on American social and cultural patterns.

"September 11, 2001, the distinguished Cold War historian John Lewis argues, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered assumptions about national security and re-shaped American grand strategy. We've been there before, and have responded each time by dramatically expanding our security responsibilities." "The pattern began in 1814, when the British attacked Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol. This early violation of homeland security gave rise to a strategy of unilateralism and preemption, best articulated by John Quincy Adams, aimed at maintaining strength beyond challenge throughout the North American continent. It remained in place for over a century. Only when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 did the inadequacies of this strategy become evident. As a consequence, Franklin D. Roosevelt devised a new grand strategy of cooperation with allies on an intercontinental scale to defeat authoritarianism. That strategy defined the American approach throughout World War II and the Cold War." "The terrorist attacks of 9/11, Gaddis writes, made it clear that this strategy is now insufficient to ensure American security. The Bush administration has therefore devised a new grand strategy whose foundations lie in the nineteenth-century tradition of unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony, projected this time on a global scale. How successful it will be in the face of twenty-first-century challenges is the question that confronts us. This book, informed by the experiences of the past but focused on the present and the future, is one of the first attempts by a major scholar of international relations to provide an answer."--Jacket.

"What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history an art or science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and many other questions in this witty, engaging, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today."--BOOK JACKET.

Two decades ago, historian John Lewis Gaddis published The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, a pioneering work of scholarship that sought to explain how Americans found themselves, at the moment of their victory in World War II, facing a long, difficult, and dangerous struggle with an erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union. That struggle has finally concluded in a manner as abrupt, and with a victory as decisive, as the one Americans celebrated in 1945. In The United States and the End of the Cold War, Gaddis provides one of the first explanations of how this happened; he also considers what this outcome suggests about War history--and the post-Cold War future. The United States and the End of the Cold War contains significant new interpretations of the American style in foreign policy, the objectives of containment, and the role of morality, nuclear weapons, and intelligence and espionage in Washington's conduct of the Cold War. It reassesses, in ways sure to be controversial, the leadership of two distinctive cold warriors, John Foster Dulles and Ronald Reagan. It employs new methodological techniques to account for the sudden and surprising events of 1989. And it provides the clearest view yet of what a world without the Cold War is likely to be. Written with the vigor, authority, and adventurousness readers have come to expect from Gaddis's work, The United States and the End of the Cold War offers important new insights into how we got to where we are, and where we may be going.

How has it happened that the United States and the Soviet Union have managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another? Historian John Lewis Gaddis suggests answers to this and other vital questions about postwar diplomacy in his new book, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War. Gaddis uses recently-declassified American and British documents to explore several key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved: Precisely what was it about the Soviet Union's behavior after World War II that American leaders found so threatening? Did the United States really want a sphere of influence in postwar Europe? What led the Truman administration first to endorse, but then immediately to back away from, a strategy designed to avoid American military involvement on the mainland of Asia? Why did the United States not use nuclear weapons during the decade in which it had an effective monopoly over them? Did American leaders really believe in the existence of an international communist "monolith"? How did Russians and Americans fall into the habit of not shooting down each other's reconnaissance satellites? Relating these questions to the current status of Soviet-American relations, Gaddis makes a strong case for the relative stability of the postwar international system, a stability whose components include--and go well beyond --nuclear deterrence. The result is a provocative exercise in contemporary history, certain to generate interest, discussion, and, in the end, important new insights on both past and present aspects of the age in which we live.--Publisher description.

When Strategies of Containment was first published, the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, and the Berlin Wall was still standing. This updated edition of Gaddis' classic carries the history of containment through the end of the Cold War. Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's postwar plans, Gaddis provides a thorough critical analysis of George F. Kennan's original strategy of containment, NSC-68, The Eisenhower-Dulles "New Look," the Kennedy-Johnson "flexible response" strategy, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of detente, and now a comprehensive assessment of how Reagan - and Gorbechev - completed the process of containment, thereby bringing the Cold War to an end.

The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 is a full-scale reassessment of United States policy toward the Soviet Union during and immediately after World War II, based on recently-opened sources. It is the first major effort to move beyond the revisionist interpretations which have characterized most of the recent writing on this subject. - Jacket flap.

September 11 marked the beginning of a new era - an age of terror in which counter-terrorism will be one of the highest priorities of national governments and international institutions. While the resolve to do whatever necessary to combat terrorism will remain undiminished, a great debate has already begun : What exactly to be done? The answer will depend, in large measure, on the answer to a prior question: What happened here and why? In The Age of Terror, an agenda-setting team of experts begins to answer this question and examines the considerations and objectives of policy decisions in a post-September 11 world.

Distilled from the Yale University seminar, "Studies in Grand Strategy," a master class in strategic thinking surveys statecraft from the ancient Greeks through FDR and beyond as vital historical lessons for future world leaders. "John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in [this book], Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, Saint Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he's never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class."--Dust jacket.

"This book sets current concerns within a broad historical and theoretical context, explores the depth and scope of presumed solidarism amidst the difficulties of acting on the basis of a more strongly articulated liberal position, and underscores the complexity and abiding tensions inherent in the relationship between order and justice. Chapters examine a wide range of state and transnational perspectives on order and justice, including those from China, Europe, India, Russia, the United States, and the Islamic world. Other chapters investigate how the order/justice relationship is mediated within major international institutions, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank."--BOOK JACKET

A remarkably revealing view of how this greatest of Cold War strategists came to doubt his strategy and always doubted himself.