The Khrushchev Era

H-Russia, H-Net Reviews, 2022

In 1989, Robert McFarlane, Ronald Reagan's former national security advisor, congratulated the exiting president on the "vindication of his seven year strategy" that resulted in Reagan's summits with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva and Reykjavik and signing of the INF treaty.[1] In the spirit of this statement, Simon Miles in his monograph, the name and some arguments of which he likely borrows from a William Pemberton chapter on the same period, presents the reader with the peculiarities of Reagan's grand strategy.[2] Contrary to the established stereotype, Miles presents Reagan as a master strategist, who, with the assistance of his team, skillfully applied the dual-track strategy toward the Soviet Union, which combined public hawkish rhetoric with engagement in "quiet diplomacy" long before Reagan and Gorbachev shook hands in Geneva in 1985. Miles thus challenges some of the notions that became deeply engrained in popular memory, such as the

Journal of Cold War Studies, 2007

Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations was originally published in 1991, and this new edition ably reºects the continued evolution of the ªeld once known as diplomatic history. All the essays are deeply informed and highly professional, and most are lucidly written and well edited. Though sometimes critical of competing approaches, most also eschew the vituperation, condescension, and nitpicking often found in academic discourse. A spirit of sharing-scholars learning from each other even if disagreeing-infuses this volume. Because most essays appeared in earlier form in the ªrst edition or in other venues, experts will ªnd few surprises. Nonetheless, this book is outstanding as both an update for insiders and a primer for newcomers (graduate students preparing for examinations should grab it for its succinct summaries of a wealth of scholarship). Long gone, this volume makes clear, are the days when a few stark oppositionsrealist versus idealist, traditionalist versus revisionist-structured the ªeld, when its boundaries were neat and tidy, and when the ªeld seemed insular. Continuing to diminish is its focus on the state, and on the United States. Once the overriding preoccupation, the Cold War is still a major concern but in this volume never a stand-alone category, instead warranting analysis within other frameworks. Gone, too, editors Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson proclaim, is the ªrst edition's "defensive tone" (p. vii) about the ªeld, although the very denial of defensiveness sounds a tad defensive and contributors more often note how their specialty has borrowed from other ªelds than how it has inºuenced them. The volume celebrates a plethora of approaches to American foreign relations, and few authors make bold claims about which will stand the test of time. But some make their case better than others, among them a senior contributor, Akira Iriye, writing about "Culture and International History." Because no single volume can do everything, to note what this one neglects is less to criticize than to situate it. Explaining how the ªeld has changed, the contributors stress intellectual currents within and beyond it but not the most obvious spur to change-transformations in the world in which they operate. Implicitly, they position themselves outside the world they observe, but perhaps no ªeld is more engaged with it. A political history of the ªeld would be useful in showing, for example, how the de

H-Diplo Article Review, 2016

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This paper seeks to dissect and analyze President Kennedy's "ich bin ein Berliner" speech from a foreign relations perspective, as well as the cultural importance of the speech from the perspective of citizens from both Germany and the United States.

Monthly Review, 1995

American Studies in Scandinavia, 2017

This article examines the rather poor emotional relationship between the White House and the State Department during 1961, the first year of the presidency of John F. Kennedy. The article argues that both sides had expectations of the relationship that turned into disappointments and that both sides felt that their approach and work was superior to the other. During the Berlin Crisis, this clash of emotions gained political significance concerning the case of the American response to a Soviet formal diplomatic note (an aide-memoire) following the June 1961 Vienna Summit between Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The White House and the State Department had different priorities and because of the poor emotional relationship they failed to find common ground. The end result was that the State Department won the battle by having its preferred version of the response sent to the Soviets. But the Department lost the war, because the White House used the opportunity to take cont...

Review of Akira Iriye, The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume 3, The Globalizing of America, 1913-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), and A. S. Thompson and C. G. Fentzos, eds., The Routledge Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History, 1865 to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2014). Diplomacy and Statecraft 26:1 (March 2015), 172-177. Compares the two books approaches to the interwar period in particular, especially in terms of the contrast between Iriye's emphasis on the peaceful nature of US policy, and the Routledge Handbook's foregrounding of military issues at this time.

Diplomatic History, 2002