Barbara Zanchetta analyzes the evolution of American-Soviet relations during the 1970s, from the rise of détente during the Nixon administration to the policy's crisis and fall during the final years of the Carter presidency. This study traces lines of continuity among the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and assesses its effects on the ongoing redefinition of America's international role in the post-Vietnam era. Against the background of superpower cooperation in arms control, Dr. Zanchetta analyzes aspects of the global bipolar competition, including U.S.-China relations, the turmoil in Iran and Afghanistan, and the crises in Angola and the Horn of Africa. In doing so, she unveils both the successful transformation of American international power during the 1970s and its long-term problematic legacy.

With contributions from the most accomplished scholars in the field, this fascinating companion to one of America's pivotal presidents assesses Harry S. Truman as a historical figure, politician, president and strategist. Assembles many of the top historians in their fields who assess critical aspects of the Truman presidency Provides new approaches to the historiography of Truman and his policies Features a variety of historiographic methodologies

This book presents a comprehensive reassessment of Europe in the Cold War period, 1945-91. Contrary to popular belief, it shows that relations between East and West were based not only on confrontation and mutual distrust, but also on collaboration. The authors reveal that - despite opposing ideologies - there was in fact considerable interaction and exchange between different Eastern and Western actors (such states, enterprises, associations, organisations and individuals) irrespective of the Iron Curtain. This book challenges both the traditional understanding of the East-West juxtaposition and the relevancy of the Iron Curtain. Covering the full period, and taking into account a range of spheres including trade, scientific-technical co-operation, and cultural and social exchanges, it reveals how smaller countries and smaller actors in Europe were able to forge and implement their agendas within their own blocs. The books suggests that given these lower-level actors engaged in mutually beneficial cooperation, often running counter to the ambitions of the bloc-leaders, the rules of Cold War interaction were not, in fact, exclusively dictated by the superpowers.

Global Interdependence provides a new account of world history from the end of World War II to the present, an era when transnational communities began to challenge the long domination of the nation-state. In this single-volume survey, leading scholars elucidate the political, economic, cultural, and environmental forces that have shaped the planet in the past sixty years. Offering fresh insight into international politics since 1945, Wilfried Loth examines how miscalculations by both the United States and the Soviet Union brought about a Cold War conflict that was not necessarily inevitable. Thomas Zeiler explains how American free-market principles spurred the creation of an entirely new economic order--a global system in which goods and money flowed across national borders at an unprecedented rate, fueling growth for some nations while also creating inequalities in large parts of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. From an environmental viewpoint, J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke contend that humanity has entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene era, in which massive industrialization and population growth have become the most powerful influences upon global ecology. Petra Goedde analyzes how globalization has impacted indigenous cultures and questions the extent to which a generic culture has erased distinctiveness and authenticity. She shows how, paradoxically, the more cultures blended, the more diversified they became as well. Combining these different perspectives, volume editor Akira Iriye presents a model of transnational historiography in which individuals and groups enter history not primarily as citizens of a country but as migrants, tourists, artists, and missionaries--actors who create networks that transcend traditional geopolitical boundaries.

A transnational approach to understanding and analyzing knowledge circulation. Focusing on what happens to knowledge at national borders, rather than treating it as flowing like currents across them, or diffusing out from center to periphery, the contributors to this collection stress the human intervention that shapes and drives how knowledge is processed, mobilized, and repurposed in transnational transactions to serve differing and uneven interests, constraints, and environments. The chapters consider both what knowledge travels and how it travels across borders of varying permeability that impede or facilitate its movement. They look closely at a vast range of platforms and objects of knowledge, from tangible commodities--like hybrid wheat seeds, penicillin, Robusta coffee, naval weaponry, and high-performance computers--to the more conceptual apparatuses of telecommunications, statistics, and food sovereignty. Moreover, this volume decenters the Global North, tracking how knowledge moves along multiple paths across the borders of Mexico, India, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, the Soviet Union, China, Angola, and Palestine and the West Bank, as well as the United States and United Kingdom. The variety of the kinds of knowledge addressed in the chapters brings forth an extraordinary array of state and non-state actors and institutions committed to performing the work needed to move knowledge across national borders.

The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War offers a broad reassessment of the period war based on new conceptual frameworks developed in the field of international history. Nearing the 25th anniversary of its end, the cold war now emerges as a distinct period in twentieth-century history, yet one which should be evaluated within the broader context of global political, economic, social, and cultural developments. The editors have brought together leading scholars in cold war history to offer a new assessment of the state of the field and identify fundamental questions for future research. The individual chapters in this volume evaluate both the extent and the limits of the cold war's reach in world history. They call into question orthodox ways of ordering the chronology of the cold war and also present new insights into the global dimension of the conflict. Even though each essay offers a unique perspective, together they show the interconnectedness between cold war and national and transnational developments, including long-standing conflicts that preceded the cold war and persisted after its end, or global transformations in areas such as human rights or economic and cultural globalization. Because of its broad mandate, the volume is structured not along conventional chronological lines, but thematically, offering essays on conceptual frameworks, regional perspectives, cold war instruments and cold war challenges. The result is a rich and diverse accounting of the ways in which the cold war should be positioned within the broader context of world history.

This book provides a comprehensive historical overview of US foreign policy in the Middle East using the theoretical framework of offensive realism and highlighting the role of geography and regional power distribution in guiding foreign policy. It argues that the US has been pursuing the same geostrategic interests from President Truman’s policy of containment to President Obama’s speak softly and carry a big stick policy, and contends that the US-Iran relationship has been largely characterized by continued cooperation due to shared geostrategic interests. The book highlights the continuity in US foreign policy over the last seven decades and offers a prediction for US foreign policy in reaction to current and future global events. As such, it will serve as a reference guide for not only scholars but also policy analysts and practitioners.

This essential introduction to postwar US foreign policy combines chronologic and thematic chapters to provide an historical account of US policy and to explore key questions about its design, control and effects.

The first historical study of export control regulations as a tool for the sharing and withholding of knowledge. In this groundbreaking book, Mario Daniels and John Krige set out to show the enormous political relevance that export control regulations have had for American debates about national security, foreign policy, and trade policy since 1945. Indeed, they argue that from the 1940s to today the issue of how to control the transnational movement of information has been central to the thinking and actions of the guardians of the American national security state. The expansion of control over knowledge and know-how is apparent from the increasingly systematic inclusion of universities and research institutions into a system that in the 1950s and 1960s mainly targeted business activities. As this book vividly reveals, classification was not the only—and not even the most important—regulatory instrument that came into being in the postwar era.

In 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts proclaimed at the University of New Brunswick that "Canada and the United States have carefully maintained the good fences that help make them good neighbours." He could not have foreseen that his presidency would be marked not just by some of the tensest moments of the Cold War but also by the most contentious moments in the Canadian-American relationship. Indeed, the 1963 Canadian federal election was marked by charges that the US government had engineered a plot to oust John Diefenbaker, Canada's nationalist prime minister. Camelot and Canada explores political, economic, and military elements in Canada-US relations in the early 1960s. Asa McKercher challenges the prevailing view that US foreign policymakers, including President Kennedy, were imperious in their conduct toward Canada. Rather, he shows that the period continued to be marked by the special diplomatic relationship that characterized the early postwar years. Even as Diefenbaker's government pursued distinct foreign and economic policies, American officials acknowledged that Canadian objectives legitimately differed from their own and adjusted their policies accordingly. Moreover, for all its bluster, Ottawa rarely moved without weighing the impact that its initiatives might have on Washington. At the same time, McKercher illustrates that there were significant strains on the bilateral relationship, which occurred as a result of mounting doubts in Canada about US leadership in the Cold War, growing Canadian nationalism, and Canadian concern over their country's close economic, military, and cultural ties with the United States. While personal clashes between the two leaders have become mythologized by historians and the public alike, the special relationship between their governments continued to function.