Witnesses To The End Of The Cold War

Why did the Cold War end as peacefully, and as suddenly, as it did? In February 1993 key diplomatic players--including former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and his Russian counterpart, former Soviet foreign minister Alexander Bessmertnykh--gathered in Princeton, New Jersey, to exchange views on the transition to the post-Cold War world. Now, the complete transcripts of this historic three-day conference, supplemented by incisive interpretive essays by three senior political scientists, are available in William C. Wohlforth's Witnesses to the End of the Cold War. Conference participants explore the ways in which the two sides overcame domestic and international resistance to easing the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, from the tense crises of the early 1980s to the increasingly productive summits of the decade's end. They also discuss such issues as the arms buildup and reduction, management of crisis flashpoints, chief players in the Cold War thaw, the economic and political impact on Russia of the war in Afghanistan, and events at the Reykjavik Summit. In the interpretive essays, Fred Greenstein, Robert Jervis, and Alexander George discuss the role of personalities and misperception, and offer a political-psychology perspective on the Cold War's end. The book also features a preface by Don Oberdorfer and a concluding chapter by volume editor William Wohlforth, which sets the issue in the context of international relations theory. With an appendix that includes recently declassified Soviet and American documents, Witnesses to the End of the Cold War provides an intriguing firsthand account that will be of interest to students, scholars, and informed general readers alike.

Poirier's personal account of the decade he spent in back-room politics as a civilian employee of the US Navy Department in Washington, with International Telephone and Telegraph Europe in Brussels and Paris, and as assistant to US Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska. He was present during many of the actual events that changed the course of history during the period, and provides perspectives left out of press reports and official records. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Cold War Endgame is the product of an unusual collaborative effort by policy makers and scholars to promote better understanding of how the Cold War ended. It includes the transcript of a conference, hosted by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh, in which high-level veterans of the Bush and Gorbachev governments shared their recollections and interpretations of the crucial events of 1989&–91: the revolutions in Eastern Europe; the reunification of Germany; the Persian Gulf War; the August 1991 coup; and the collapse of the USSR. Taking this testimony as a common reference and drawing on the most recent evidence available, six chapters follow in which historians and political scientists explore the historical and theoretical puzzles presented by this extraordinary transition. This discussion features a debate over the relative importance of ideas, personality, and economic pressures in explaining the Cold War's end.

Originally published in 1991, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations has become an indispensable volume not only for teachers and students in international history and political science, but also for general readers seeking an introduction to American diplomatic history. This collection of essays highlights a variety of newer, innovative, and stimulating conceptual approaches and analytical methods used to study the history of American foreign relations, including bureaucratic, dependency, and world systems theories, corporatist and national security models, psychology, culture, and ideology. Along with substantially revised essays from the first edition, this volume presents entirely new material on postcolonial theory, borderlands history, modernization theory, gender, race, memory, cultural transfer, and critical theory. The book seeks to define the study of American international history, stimulate research in fresh directions, and encourage cross-disciplinary thinking, especially between diplomatic history and other fields of American history, in an increasingly transnational, globalizing world.

Although in hindsight the end of the Cold War seems almost inevitable, almost no one saw it coming and there is little consensus over why it ended. A popular interpretation is that the Soviet Union was unable to compete in terms of power, especially in the area of high technology. Another interpretation gives primacy to the new ideas Gorbachev brought to the Kremlin and to the importance of leaders and domestic considerations. In this volume, prominent experts on Soviet affairs and the Cold War interrogate these competing interpretations in the context of five 'turning points' in the end of the Cold War process. Relying on new information gathered in oral history interviews and archival research, the authors draw into doubt triumphal interpretations that rely on a single variable like the superior power of the United States and call attention to the importance of how multiple factors combined and were sequenced historically. The volume closes with chapters drawing lessons from the end of the Cold War for both policy making and theory building.

Why the future of great power politics is likely to resemble its dismal past Can great powers be confident that their peers have benign intentions? States that trust each other can live at peace; those that mistrust each other are doomed to compete for arms and allies and may even go to war. Sebastian Rosato explains that states routinely lack the kind of information they need to be convinced that their rivals mean them no harm. Even in cases that supposedly involved mutual trust—Germany and Russia in the Bismarck era; Britain and the United States during the great rapprochement; France and Germany, and Japan and the United States in the early interwar period; and the Soviet Union and United States at the end of the Cold War—the protagonists mistrusted each other and struggled for advantage. Rosato argues that the ramifications of his argument for U.S.–China relations are profound: the future of great power politics is likely to resemble its dismal past.

In Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow explores the depth and sophistication of President Ronald Reagan’s commitment to ridding humankind permanently of the threat of nuclear war. Lettow’s narrative spans the start of Reagan’s presidency and the 1986 Reykjavík summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, during which America’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a defining issue. Lettow reveals SDI for what it was: a full-on assault against nuclear weapons waged as much through policy as through ideology. While cabinet members and advisers played significant roles in guiding American defense policy, it was Reagan himself who presided over every element, large and small, of this paradigm shift in U.S. diplomacy. Lettow conducted interviews with several former Reagan administration officials, and he draws upon the vast body of declassified security documents from the Reagan presidency; much of what he quotes from these documents appears publicly here for the first time. The result is the first major work to apply such evidence to the study of SDI and superpower diplomacy. This is a survey that doesn’t merely add nuance to the existing record, but revises our very understanding of the Reagan presidency.