Uses the tools of critical thinking, historical research, and philosophical inquiry to debunk the many myths and conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's shocking and untimely death. Serves as a comprehensive case study of paranoid reasoning and modern mythmaking. Discusses the causes and consequences of paranoid thinking in contemporary public discourse.

What is grand strategy and what is it good for? What are great powers, and which states are great powers today? What are the grand strategies available to great powers? What are the conditions under which a certain strategy is suitable and when should it be rejected? What are the factors affecting the success or failure of a given grand strategy? The present volume provides answers to these questions by introducing a typology of great power grand strategies, as strategies of rising, status quo, and declining powers, as well as through historical illustrations of each type. The reader is thus exposed to strategies such as divide and conquer, biding your time, opportunity strike, primacy, semi-detachment, concert, and appeasement through the experiences of leaders such as Bismarck, Peter the Great, Metternich, Deng Xiaoping, Neville Chamberlain, and Stalin. This analysis is then brought to bear on present developments in the grand strategies of the United States, China, and Russia. The volume should be of interest to both the academic and foreign policy-making communities, and in particular to students of international relations, diplomacy, history, and current international affairs.

The Baltic States are unique in being the only member-states of the EU to have fought to regain their sovereignty from the Soviet Union, only then to cede it to Brussels in certain key areas. Similarly, no member-states have had to struggle as hard as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to preserve their identity after fifty years of Soviet nationality policy in the face of sub-state and supra-state challenges. The post-communist experience of the Baltic States thus allows us to examine debates about identity as a source of political power; the conditioning and constraining influence of identity discourses on social, political and economic change; and the orientation and outcome of their external relations. In particular, the book examines the impact of Russian and Soviet control of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; the Baltic independence movements of the late 1980s/early 1990s; the citizenship debates; relations with Russia vis-a-vis the withdrawal of the troops of the former Soviet Army; drawing of the shared boundary and the rights of Russian-speaking minorities as well as the efforts undertaken by the three Baltic States to rebuild themselves, modernise their economies, cope with the ensuing social changes and facilitate their accession to the EU and NATO.

The New Yorker's award-winning war correspondent returns to his own country to chronicle a story of mounting civic breakdown and violent disorder, in a vivid eyewitness narrative of revelatory explanatory power. 'This is a searing book, exquisitely reported, lyrically told, and so vivid it will make your heart stop-a dark journey into what ails America' Patrick Radden Keefe On the morning of January 6, a gallows was erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A little after noon, as thousands of Trump supporters marched past the structure, some paused to climb its wooden steps and take pictures of the US Capitol framed within an oval noose. Up ahead, the dull thud of stun grenades could be heard, accompanied by bright flashes. Several people carried Confederate flags. Others had Tasers, baseball bats, bear spray, and truncheons. 'They need help!' a man shouted. 'It's us versus the cops!' No one seemed surprised by what was taking place. There was an eerie sense of inexorability, mixed with nervous hesitation. It reminded me of combat: the slightly shocked, almost bashful moment when bravado, fantasy, and training crash against reality. In early 2020, Luke Mogelson, who had been living in France and covering the Global War on Terrorism, returned home to report on the social discord that the pandemic was bringing to the fore in the US. Soon, he found himself embedded with militias descending on the Michigan state capitol. From there, the story swept him on to Minneapolis, then to Portland, and ultimately to Washington, D.C. His stories for The New Yorker were hailed as essential first drafts of history. They were just the tip of the iceberg. The Storm Is Here is the definitive eyewitness account of how--during a season of sickness, economic uncertainty, and violence--a large segment of Americans became convinced that they needed to rise up against dark forces plotting to take their country away from them, and then did just that. It builds month by month, through vivid depictions of events on the ground, from the onset of the pandemic to the attack on the US Capitol--during which Mogelson was in the Senate chamber with the insurrectionists--and its aftermath. Bravely reported and beautifully written, Mogelson's book follows the tradition of some of the essential chronicles of war and unrest of our time.

Fifty years after Watergate, researcher Shane O'Sullivan reveals the true story of the break-in in this chilling tale of political espionage and deception. The victory of Richard Nixon in the US presidential election of 1968 swung on an "October Sur prise"--a treasonous plot engineered by Anna Chennault and key figures in the Republican Party to keep the South Vietnamese government away from peace talks in Paris, costing thousands of American lives. The Nixon campaign got away with election "dirty tricks" in 1968, but four years later, they were caught. Drawing on the CIA's recently declassified history of Watergate and thousands of previously un published documents, The Watergate Burglars (previously published as Dirty Tricks) is the definitive account of the men behind the break-in. O'Sullivan documents their ties to the CIA in unprecedent ed detail, and how they implicated the Agency and the White House in three break-ins targeting Daniel Ellsberg and the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee, ultimately leading to Nixon's downfall. How did tapping the wrong phone with a bug that didn't work lead to the burglars' capture? Why was the bug on DNC official Spencer Oliver's phone only found three months after the break-in? And why was the CIA agent inside the plot sent to Cuba on a double agent mission by American intelligence after he got out of prison? Now available for the first time in paperback just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Watergate, this updated edition answers these questions and includes a wealth of new material: burglar James McCord's final testament to his family about his role in the break-in, new revelations from whistleblower Alfred Baldwin, FBI case agent Angelo Lano, and the police officer who first identified McCord after his arrest and debriefed him in jail.

Defections from the People's Republic of China (PRC) were an important part of the narrative of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan during the Cold War, but their stories have previously barely been told, less still examined, in English. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the ROC government paid much special attention to these anti-communist heroes (fangong yishi). Their choices to leave behind the turmoil of the PRC were a propaganda coup for the Nationalist one-party state in Taiwan, proving the superiority of the "Free China" that they had created there. Morris looks at the stories behind these headlines, what the defectors understood about the ROC before they arrived, and how they dealt with the reality of their post-defection lives in Taiwan. He also looks at how these dramatic individual histories of migration were understood to prove essential differences between the two regimes, while at the same time showing important continuities between the two Chinese states. A valuable resource for students and scholars of 20th century China and Taiwan, and of the Cold War and its impact in Asia.

This book analyzes the political culture of the American Sunbelt since the end of World War II. It highlights and explains the Sunbelt's emergence during the second half of the twentieth century as the undisputed geographic epicenter for conservative Republican power in the United States. However, the book also investigates the ongoing nature of political contestation within the postwar Sunbelt, often highlighting the underappreciated persistence of liberal and progressive influences across the region. Sean P. Cunningham argues that the conservative Republican ascendancy that so many have identified as almost synonymous with the rise of the postwar American Sunbelt was hardly an easy, unobstructed victory march. Rather, it was consistently challenged and never foreordained. The history of American politics in the postwar Sunbelt resembles a rollercoaster of partisan and ideological adaptation and transformation.

This book discusses the active relationship among the mechanics of memory, visual practices, and historical narratives. Reflection on memory and its ties with historical narratives cannot be separated from reflection on the visual and the image as its points of reference which function in time. This volume addresses precisely that temporal aspect of the image, without reducing it to a neutral trace of the past, a mnemotechnical support of memory. As a commemorative device, the image fixes, structures, and crystalizes memory, turning the view of the past into myth. It may, however, also stimulate, transform, and update memory, functioning as a matrix of interpretation and understanding the past. The book questions whether the functioning of the visual matrices of memory can be related to a particular historical and geographical scope, that is, to Central and Eastern Europe, and whether it is possible to find their origin and decide if they are just local and regional or perhaps also Western European and universal. It focuses on the artistic reflection on time and history, in the reconstructions of memory due to change of frontiers and political regimes, as well as endeavours to impose some specific political structure on territories which were complex and mixed in terms of national identity, religion and social composition. The volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, history and visual studies.

* Places Nixon in broad economic, political, cultural/social, and foreign policy contexts in which he operated * Take a thematic approach to the presidency * Examines Nixon's legacy * Synthesizes existing literature o the topic * Contains primary source documents including speeches and signing statements from Nixon himself

It could be said that American foreign policy since 1945 has been one long miscue; most international threats - including during the Cold War - have been substantially exaggerated. The result has been agony and bloviation, unnecessary and costly military interventions that have mostly failed. A policy of complacency and appeasement likely would have worked better. In this highly readable book, John Mueller argues with wisdom and wit rather than ideology and hyperbole that aversion to international war has had considerable consequences. There has seldom been significant danger of major war. Nuclear weapons, international institutions, and America's super power role have been substantially irrelevant; post-Cold War policy has been animated more by vast proclamation and half-vast execution than by the appeals of liberal hegemony; and post-9/11 concerns about international terrorism and nuclear proliferation have been overwrought and often destructive. Meanwhile, threats from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, or from cyber technology are limited and manageable. Unlikely to charm Washington, Mueller explains how, when international war is in decline, complacency and appeasement become viable diplomatic devices and a large military is scarcely required.

This book is about nuclear legacies in Russia and Central Asia, focusing on selected sites of the Soviet atomic program, many of which have remained understudied. Nuclear operations, for energy or military purposes, demanded a vast infrastructure of production and supply chains that have transformed entire regions. In following the material traces of the atomic programs, contributors pay particular attention to memory practices and memorialization concerning nuclear legacies. Tracing the Atom foregrounds historical and contemporary engagements with nuclear politics: how have institutions and governments responded to the legacies of the atomic era? How do communities and artists articulate concerns over radioactive matters? What was the role of radiation expertise in a broader Soviet and international context of the Cold War? Examining nuclear legacies together with past atomic futures and post-Soviet memorialization and nuclear heritage shines light on how modes of knowing intersect with livelihoods, compensation policies, and historiography. Bringing together a range of disciplines - history, science and technology studies, social anthropology, literary studies, and art history - this volume offers insights that broaden our understanding of twentieth-century atomic programs and their long aftermaths.

From the frontlines of the war in Ukraine comes this compelling collection of 200+ images from world-class photographers that captures the humanity, perseverance, and determination of the nation's fight for freedom and independence against all odds. "What happened to Ukraine after Moscow's invasion? Look no further. The photographs in this book are by some of the world's best photographers, and provide an unflinching look at the hell wrought by Russia. This is extraordinary and vital work." - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Hume Kennerly. Portfolios from some of the most respected photojournalists of our time: Carol Guzy, four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist. Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and New York Times bestselling author. Paula Bronstein, award-winning photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist. Justyna Mielnikiewicz, award-winning photojournalist. Svet Jacqueline, award-winning photojournalist. Moving essays, published in both English and Ukrainian, by: Foreword by the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova. Markarova provides an overview of how this war has shaken her country and what democracy and freedom mean to her people. Award-winning Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov. Ukraine's most famous living writer, Kurkov provides an emotional, heartfelt reflection on what's happening to his country in relation to the pictures displayed in the book. Pulitzer Prize winner and personal photographer to President Gerald Ford, David Hume Kennerly. Kennerly speaks to the emotional and physical risk photojournalists take in covering war alongside their mission to show truth. As Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in his address to U.S. Congress, Russia "went on a brutal offensive against our values, basic human values. It threw tanks and planes against our freedom, against our right to live freely in our own country, choosing our own future, against our desire for happiness, against our national dreams, just like the same dreams you have, you Americans." Relentless Courage delivers a gripping, visual portfolio of images that remind us of our shared humanity, what is right, and what's at stake when independence and freedom come under attack.

This new edition of Understanding Contemporary Latin America, the first under the editorship of Henry (Chip) Carey, reflects the many changes that have occurred in the region in the decade since the previous edition was published. An entirely new chapter on crime and security, along with new treatments of such classic subjects as geography, history, politics, economics, international relations, and more, make for an unparallelled introduction to the complexities of Latin America today.

This volume includes historiographical surveys of American foreign relations since 1941 by some of the country's leading historians. Some of the essays offer sweeping overviews of the major trends in the field of foreign/international relations history. Others survey the literature on US relations with particular regions of the world or on the foreign policies of presidential administrations. The result is a comprehensive assessment of the historical literature on US foreign policy that highlights recent developments in the field.

Debating Turkish Modernity describes the opening act of Turkey s half century bid to join the European Community. Between 1959 and 1980, Turks from all walks of life weighed in on their prospective integration into Europe. This book details how these Turks made sense of the project of European Unification and how they spoke about it. It argues that Turkey s EEC debates, by resurrecting past questions over Turkey s relationship to Europe, became the principle forum where Turks of the Second Republic defined who they were, where they came from, and where they were going.

This book examines episodes in NATO's history from the founding of the North Atlantic Alliance in 1949 to its transition to the post-Cold War order in the 1990s, with an eye to better understanding its present and its future. NATO's history, now running over seventy years, can no longer be framed in Cold War terms alone. Nor can the organization be understood fully as a post-Cold War institution. Today's NATO is a product of both these eras. This edited volume offers a reconsideration of NATO's place in history, looking both at how the alliance coped with the Cold War and how it managed its difficult transition to the post-Cold War international order. Contributors recount how NATO coped with its many political and operational challenges, which on occasion threatened - but never managed to - derail the alliance. The book opens new vistas for explaining how NATO thrived and survived for decades and ponders whether it will survive for many more. The book will be of great value to scholars, students and policymakers interested in Politics, International Studies, Global Affairs and Public Policy. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Strategic Studies.

This book presents new aspects of the U.S. Cuba policy during Gerald R. Ford's presidency (August 9, 1974-January 20, 1977). Based in governmental and other sources from the U.S. and Cuba, the book examines how the Ford administration broke with Nixon's hostile policy when the diplomatic and economic isolation of Cuba was ended in the OAS, even when the U.S. economic blockade prevailed. In line with the detente policy towards the USSR, the Ford administration strived to normalize the relations with Cuba through secret discussions. However, the Cuban involvement in the Angolan civil war ended this process of normalization, and the U.S. returned to a confrontational policy. Within this framework, counterrevolutionary groups in the U.S. could act, more or less with impunity, towards Cuba, but also against Cuban and third-country targets both within and outside the U.S. The book describes the oscillating Cuba policy that was the hallmark of the Ford administration. The Cuban perspective adopted will complement and enrich the knowledge of the U.S. policy toward Cuba during Gerald Ford's presidency. It is of relevance to everyone interested in the issue and especially for students and researchers within the disciplines of History and Political Science.

Historians generally portray the 1950s as a conservative era when anticommunism and the Cold War subverted domestic reform, crushed political dissent, and ended liberal dreams of social democracy. These years, historians tell us, represented a turn to the right, a negation of New Deal liberalism, an end to reform. Jennifer A. Delton argues that, far from subverting the New Deal state, anticommunism and the Cold War enabled, fulfilled, and even surpassed the New Deal's reform agenda. Anticommunism solidified liberal political power and the Cold War justified liberal goals such as jobs creation, corporate regulation, economic redevelopment, and civil rights. She shows how despite President Eisenhower's professed conservativism, he maintained the highest tax rates in US history, expanded New Deal programs, and supported major civil rights reforms.

Enoch Powell's explosive rhetoric against black immigration and anti-discrimination law transformed the terrain of British race politics and cast a long shadow over British society. Using extensive archival research, Camilla Schofield offers a radical reappraisal of Powell's political career and insists that his historical significance is inseparable from the political generation he sought to represent. Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain follows Powell's trajectory from an officer in the British Raj to the centre of British politics and, finally, to his turn to Ulster Unionism. She argues that Powell and the mass movement against 'New Commonwealth' immigration that he inspired shed light on Britain's war generation, popular understandings of the welfare state and the significance of memories of war and empire in the making of postcolonial Britain. Through Powell, Schofield illuminates the complex relationship between British social democracy, racism and the politics of imperial decline in Britain.

The book studies the experience of Bulgaria under communism from the point of view of conditions for intellectuals at the timePolitical, social, cultural and economic angles lead this into being a fully comprehensive overview of the topicThe book draws a line between individual instances of repression and resistance and the eventual collapse of the regime in 1989

This book presents new aspects of the U.S. "multiple path" policy toward Cuba that was designed and adopted after the Missile Crisis (October 1962) until the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, from a Cuban perspective. The policy was characterized by its contradictory profile, since simultaneously as aggressions were directed at Cuba, it also included the establishment of channels of communication with the Cuban government. The book also analyzes the Cuban-Soviet dispute during the same period. The Cuban experiences have still not been sufficiently discussed, and the aspects offered will enrich the knowledge of the U.S.-Cuban relationship during the mentioned period.

Exploring the largely positive representations of Romanian Germans predominating in post-1989 Romanian society, this book shows that the underlying reasons for German prestige are strongly connected with Romania's endeavors to become European. The election, in 2014, of Klaus Iohannis as Romania's president was hailed as evidence that the country chose a 'European' future: that Iohannis belonged to Romania's tiny German minority was also considered to have played a part in his success. Cercel argues that representations of Germans in Romania, descendants of twelfth-century and eighteenth-century colonists, become actually a symbolic resource for asserting but also questioning Romania's European identity. Such representations link Romania's much-desired European belonging with German presence, whilst German absence is interpreted as a sign of veering away from Europe. Investigating this case of discursive "self-colonization" and this apparent symbolic embrace of the German Other in Romania, the book offers a critical study of the discourses associated with Romania's postcommunist "Europeanization" to contribute a better understanding of contemporary West-East relationships in the European context. This fresh and insightful approach will interest postgraduates and scholars interested in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe and in German minorities outside Germany. It should also appeal to scholars of memory studies and those interested in the study of otherness in general.

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a fair number of Americans thought the idea was crazy. Now everyone, except a few die-hards, thinks it was. So what was going through the minds of the talented and experienced men and women who planned and initiated the war? What were their assumptions? Overreach "aims to recover those presuppositions.

Michael MacDonald examines the standard hypotheses for the decision to attack, showing them to be either wrong or of secondary importance: the personality of President George W. Bush, including his relationship with his father; Republican electoral considerations; the oil lobby; the Israeli lobby. He also undermines the argument that the war failed because of the Bush administration s incompetence.

The more fundamental reasons for the Iraq War and its failure, MacDonald argues, are located in basic axioms of American foreign policy, which equate America s ideals with its interests (distorting both in the process) and project those ideals as universally applicable. Believing that democratic principles would bring order to Iraq naturally and spontaneously, regardless of the region s history and culture or what Iraqis themselves wanted, neoconservative thinkers, with support from many on the left, advocated breaking the back of state power under Saddam Hussein. They maintained that by bringing about radical regime change, the United States was promoting liberalism, capitalism, and democracy in Iraq. But what it did instead was unleash chaos. That these axioms are not limited to Iraq can be seen in the recent ousting of Khadafi s regime in Libya."

The Cold War in South Asia provides the first comprehensive and transnational history of Anglo-American relations with South Asia during a seminal period in the history of the Indian Subcontinent, between independence in the late 1940s, and the height of the Cold War in the late 1960s. Drawing upon significant new evidence from British, American, Indian and Eastern bloc archives, the book re-examines how and why the Cold War in South Asia evolved in the way that it did, at a time when the national leaderships, geopolitical outlooks and regional aspirations of India, Pakistan and their superpower suitors were in a state of considerable flux. The book probes the factors which encouraged the governments of Britain and the United States to work so closely together in South Asia during the two decades after independence, and suggests what benefits, if any, Anglo-American intervention in South Asia's affairs delivered, and to whom.

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis and overview of China's foreign policy since 1949. It starts with constructing an analytical framework for explaining Chinese foreign policy and then, on the basis of that, outlines and analyzes developments in different areas of foreign policy - such as security policy, international economic policy and policy toward multilateralism - and foreign policy toward different areas of the world - such as the United States, East Asia, Europe and developing countries. The book also examines decision-making in Chinese foreign policy, discusses issues of current concern, including maritime disputes, Xi Jinping's more assertive approach to foreign policy, the One Belt One Road initiative and the trade war with the United States. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of the three phases of China's foreign policy since 1949 and provides a brief assessment of how China's foreign policy is likely to develop going forward.