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For half of the twentieth century, the Cold War gripped the world. International relations everywhere--and domestic policy in scores of nations--pivoted around this central point, the American-Soviet rivalry. Even today, much of the world's diplomacy grapples with chaos created by the Cold War's ...

For half of the twentieth century, the Cold War gripped the world. International relations everywhere--and domestic policy in scores of nations--pivoted around this central point, the American-Soviet rivalry. Even today, much of the world's diplomacy grapples with chaos created by the Cold War's sudden disappearance. Here indeed is a subject that defies easy understanding. Now comes a definitive account, a startlingly fresh, clear eyed, comprehensive history of our century's longest struggle. In The Cold War, Ronald E. Powaski offers a new perspective on the great rivalry, even as he provides a coherent, concise narrative. He wastes no time in challenging the reader to think of the Cold War in new ways, arguing that the roots of the conflict are centuries old, going back to Czarist Russia and to the very infancy of the American nation. He shows that both Russia and America were expansionist nations with messianic complexes, and the people of both nations believed they possessed a unique mission in history. Except for a brief interval in 1917, Americans perceived the Russian government (whether Czarist or Bolshevik) as despotic; Russians saw the United States as conspiring to prevent it from reaching its place in the sun. U.S. military intervention in Russia's civil war, with the aim of overthrowing Lenin's upstart regime, entrenched Moscow's fears. Soviet American relations, difficult before World War II--when both nations were relatively weak militarily and isolated from world affairs--escalated dramatically after both nations emerged as the world's major military powers. Powaski paints a portrait of the spiraling tensions with stark clarity, as each new development added to the rivalry: the Marshall Plan, the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade, the formation of NATO, the first Soviet nuclear test. In this atmosphere, Truman found it easy to believe that the Communist victory in China and the Korean War were products of Soviet expansionism. He and his successors extended their own web of mutual defense treaties, covert actions, and military interventions across the globe--from the Caribbean to the Middle East and, finally to Southeast Asia, where containment famously foundered in the bog of Vietnam. Powaski skillfully highlights the domestic politics, diplomatic maneuvers, and even psychological factors as he untangles the knot that bound the two superpowers together in conflict. From the nuclear arms race, to the impact of U.S. recognition of China on detente, to Brezhnev's inflexible persistence in competing with America everywhere, he casts new light on familiar topics. Always judicious in his assessments, Powaski gives due credit to Reagan and especially Bush in facilitating the Soviet collapse, but also notes that internal economic failure, not outside pressure, proved decisive in the Communist failure. Perhaps most important, he offers a clear eyed assessment of the lasting distortions the struggle wrought upon American institutions, raising questions about whether anyone really won the Cold War. With clarity, fairness, and insight, he offers the definitive account of our century's longest international rivalry.

The decade from 1981 through 1991 saw the remarkable transition from a renewed U.S. confrontation with the Soviet Union to the end of communist rule and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. This turning point is now history, history that is the foundation for what has been occurring between ...

The decade from 1981 through 1991 saw the remarkable transition from a renewed U.S. confrontation with the Soviet Union to the end of communist rule and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. This turning point is now history, history that is the foundation for what has been occurring between the United States and Russia and for what will evolve. In this book, one of America's foremost specialists on Soviet affairs provides a major contribution to our understanding of U.S.-Soviet relations. Raymond L. Garthoff picks up this story from his earlier account of the rise and fall of the detente of the 1970s. Covering the period of 1969 through 1980, Detente and Confrontation (first published by Brookings in 1985) studied American policy toward the Soviet Union under the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, and Soviet policy toward the United States. This new book turns to the final chapter of American relations with the Soviet Union in the succeeding decade, 1981-1991, bringing to an end boththe final period of American-Soviet relations and the story of the Cold War. The Great Transition features a detailed account of relations during the Reagan and Bush administrations and the Soviet leadership from the end of Brezhnev's rule through the revolutionary transformation of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Through his unusual access to many formerly secret Soviet documents, declassified American documents, and interviews with key American and Soviet officials, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Garthoff provides a rare, authoritative analysis of recent events. He examines the turn from renewed confrontation in the early 1980s to a new detente in the late 1980s in the interaction of theUnited States and the Soviet Union. The interrelationships of domestic factors and foreign and security policies in both countries are examined, as are the involvements of both powers with other countries around the world that in

S.J. Ball's new study provides a fresh assessment of the entire course of the Cold War based on the insights into the structure of postwar international politics revealed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing on newly released material and scholarly research from both the West and former ...

S.J. Ball's new study provides a fresh assessment of the entire course of the Cold War based on the insights into the structure of postwar international politics revealed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing on newly released material and scholarly research from both the West and former communist states, Ball argues that the Cold War can only be understood by exploring the interplay between ideology, domestic politics, and military security -- not only in the United States and the Soviet Union, but in other states and movements with a capacity for significant military and political action as well. Providing a truly international history, ranging from Europe to Asia to Latin America, The Cold War is divided into chapters covering the periods 1947-53, 1954-62, 1963-73, 1974-85, 1986-91. Each chapter examines the Cold War policies of the key powers from their own perspective, and a final chapter analyzes long-term trends. In particular, the book explores the initial dynamism of national communism and the reason for its eventual decay as a force in international politics.

How and why did the Cold War begin? How and why did it end? What will its end mean for international relations? Opening his new book with the drama of people struggling to survive in rubble-strewn countries after the Second World War, Thomas G. Paterson follows the long Cold War crisis though to the ...

How and why did the Cold War begin? How and why did it end? What will its end mean for international relations? Opening his new book with the drama of people struggling to survive in rubble-strewn countries after the Second World War, Thomas G. Paterson follows the long Cold War crisis though to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He examines features of the international system that guaranteed conflict: the great-power quest for order by building spheres of influence; the power, ideology, and strategic-economic needs of the United States and the Soviet Union that compelled activist, global foreign policies; and the personalities of key figures, from Truman to Bush, Stalin to Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In his exploration of the end of the Cold War, the author concludes that the two superpowers sought detente because they had been weakened by the economic costs of the Cold War, challenges from allies, and the diffusion of power in the international system after the rise,of the Third World. As historical story and analysis, On Every Front provides a telling account of an era - of the making and unmaking of the Cold War.