Bay of Pigs

"Bar-Joseph offers a well-conceived and well-written analysis of intelligence agencies and their relationships with political authority.... His work is excellent in every respect. He creates a sound theoretical framework from which to judge his case studies and provides a convincing analysis in these case studies themselves". -- Choice

Organized chronologically by presidential administration, this text offers an accessible and comprehensive account of American diplomatic history in the 20th century. Bagby focuses on the personalities and economic, cultural and military factors which influence the politics of US foreign policy. Each chapter presents the key foreign relations problems addressed by a particular presidential administration, and concludes with a short assessment of the accomplishments, events and problems of that administration. The chapters are cross-referenced topically so students can follow a particular subject, such as the Vietnam War, through several administrations. The text also includes a helpful list of recommended readings.

In his thousand-day presidency, John F. Kennedy led America through one of its most difficult and potentially explosive eras. With the Cold War at its height and the threat of communist advances in Europe and the Third World, Kennedy had the unenviable task of maintaining U.S. solidarity without leading the western world into a nuclear catastrophe. In Kennedy's Wars, noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace. He recreates insightfully the political and intellectual milieu of the foreign policy establishment during Kennedy's era with vivid profiles of his top advisors--Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Robert Kennedy--and influential figures such as Dean Acheson and Walt Rostow. Tracing the evolution of traditional liberalism into the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy's cabinet, Freedman evaluates their responses to the tensions in Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. He gives each conflict individual attention, showing how foreign policy decisions came to be defined for each new crisis in the light of those that had gone before. The book follows Kennedy as he wrestles with the succession of major conflicts--taking advice, weighing the risks of inadvertently escalating the Cold War into outright military confrontation, exploring diplomatic options, and forming strategic judgments that would eventually prevent a major war during his presidency.

If wars are too important to be left to the generals, crises are too dangerous to be left exclusively to the social scientists. Humanistic inquiry has not realized its potential for illuminating these wars of words. Crises occur in a realm foreign to prevailing approaches, but familiar to interpretive approaches to politics. Decision-makers are no longer observers of unmistakable threats: they are interpreters of cryptic texts and symbolic performances. Accordingly, analysts (quite unwittingly) have become interpreters of interpretations--crises inquiry occurs in the archives, not the laboratory. Relying upon a hermeneutic approach used to illuminate crises at other times and places, Hirschbein explores the puzzling aspects of defining Kennedy, Nixon, and Kissinger episodes: Why is Kennedy's joust on the brink enshrined as the unforgettable Cuban missile crises, while Nixon and Kissingers' prudent resolution of a comparable threat is all but forgotten? This novel account of crises construction, management, and remembrance explores how and why these events were handled so differently, and concludes that it is not the world that is the source of our crises, but our interpretation of the world.

John F. Kennedy did not live to write his memoirs; Fidel Castro will not reveal what he knows; and the records of the Soviet Union have long been sealed from public view: Of the most frightening episode of the Cold War -- the Cuban Missile Crisis -- we have had an incomplete picture. When did Castro embrace the Soviet Union? What proposals were put before the Kremlin through Kennedy's back-channel diplomacy? How close did we come to nuclear war? These questions have now been answered for the first time.

This important and controversial book draws the missing half of the story from secret Soviet archives revealed exclusively by the authors, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and his leadership circle. Contained in these remarkable documents are the details of over forty secret meetings between Robert Kennedy and his Soviet contact, records of Castro's first solicitation of Soviet favor, and the plans, suspicions, and strategies of Khrushchev. This unique research opportunity has allowedthe authors to tell the complete, fascinating, and terrifying story of the most dangerous days of the last half-century.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and extensive interviews with Soviet and American policy-makers, among them several important figures speaking for public record for the first time, Ned Lebow and Janice Stein cast new light on the effect of nuclear threats in two of the tensest moments of the Cold War: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the confrontations arising out of the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. They conclude that the strategy of deterrence prolonged rather than ended the conflict between the superpowers.