A vivid portrayal of what drove George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003—an outcome that was in no way predetermined. America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations. In Confronting Saddam Hussein, the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. He shows how fear, hubris, and power influenced Bush's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the core of Leffler's account is his compelling portrait of Saddam Hussein. Rather than stressing Bush's preoccupation with promoting freedom or democracy, Leffler emphasizes Hussein's brutality, opportunism, and unpredictability and illuminates how the Iraqi dictator's record of aggression and intransigence haunted the president and influenced his calculations. Bush was not eager for war, and the decision to invade Iraq was not a fait accompli. Yet the president was convinced that only by practicing coercive diplomacy and threatening force could he alter Hussein's defiance, a view shared by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders around the world, including Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector. Throughout, Leffler highlights the harrowing anxieties surrounding the decision-making process after the devastating attack on 9/11 and explains the roles of contingency, agency, rationality, and emotion. As the book unfolds, Bush's centrality becomes more and more evident, as does the bureaucratic dysfunctionality that contributed to the disastrous occupation of Iraq. A compelling reassessment of George W. Bush's intervention in Iraq, Confronting Saddam Hussein provides a provocative reinterpretation of the most important international event of the 21st century.

The Cold War dominated the world political arena for forty-five years. Focusing on the international system and on events in all parts of the globe, Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter have brought together a truly international collection of articles that provide a fresh and comprehensive analysis of the origins of the Cold War.
Moving beyond earlier controversies, this edited collection focuses on the interaction between geopolitics and threat perception, technology and strategy, ideology and social reconstruction, national economic reform and patterns of international trade, and decolonization and national liberation. The editors also consider how and why the Cold War spread from Europe to Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America and how groups, classes and elites used the Cold War to further their own interests.
This second edition brings the collection right up to date, including the newest research from the Communist side of the Cold War and the most recent debates on culture, race and intelligence. Also included is a completely new section dealing with the Cold War crises in Iran, Turkey and Greece and a guide to further reading.

Shaper Nations provides illuminating perspectives on the national strategies of eight emerging and established countries that are shaping global politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The volume's authors offer a unique viewpoint: they live and work primarily in the country about which they write, bringing an insider's feel for national debates and politics. The conventional wisdom on national strategy suggests that these states have clear central authority, coherently connect means to ends, and focus on their geopolitical environment. These essays suggest a different conclusion. In seven key countries-Brazil, China, Germany, India, Israel, Russia, and Turkey-strategy is dominated by nonstate threats, domestic politics, the distorting effect of history and national identity, economic development concerns, and the sheer difficulty, in the face of many powerful internal and external constraints, of pursuing an effective national strategy. The shapers represent a new trend in the international arena with important consequences. Among them is a more uncertain world in which countries concentrate on their own development rather than on shared problems that might divert precious resources, and attend more to regional than to global order. In responding to these shaper states, the United States must understand the sources of their national strategies in determining its own role on the global stage.

Volume II of The Cambridge History of the Cold War examines the developments that made the Cold War a long-lasting international system during the 1960s and 1970s. A team of leading scholars explains how the Cold War seemed to stabilize after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and how this sense of increased stability evolved into the detente era of the early 1970s. The authors outline how conflicts in the Third World, as well as the interests and ideologies of the superpowers, eroded the detente process. They delve into the social and economic roots of the conflict, illuminate processes of integration and disintegration, analyze the arms race and explore the roles of intelligence, culture and national identities. Discussing the newest findings on US and Soviet foreign policy and examining crises inside and outside of Europe, this authoritative volume will define Cold War studies for years to come.

Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism gathers together decades of writing by Melvyn Leffler, one of the most respected historians of American foreign policy, to address important questions about U.S. national security policy from the end of World War I to the global war on terror. Why did the United States withdraw strategically from Europe after World War I and not after World War II? How did World War II reshape Americans' understanding of their vital interests? What caused the United States to achieve victory in the long Cold War? To what extent did 9/11 transform U.S. national security policy? Is budgetary austerity a fundamental threat to U.S. national interests? Leffler's wide-ranging essays explain how foreign policy evolved into national security policy. He stresses the competing priorities that forced policymakers to make agonizing trade-offs and illuminates the travails of the policymaking process itself. While assessing the course of U.S. national security policy, he also interrogates the evolution of his own scholarship. Over time, slowly and almost unconsciously, Leffler's work has married elements of revisionism with realism to form a unique synthesis that uses threat perception as a lens to understand how and why policymakers reconcile the pressures emanating from external dangers and internal priorities. An account of the development of U.S. national security policy by one of its most influential thinkers, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism includes a substantial new introduction from the author.

The Cold War dominated the world political arena for forty-five years. Focusing on the international system and on events in all parts of the globe, Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter have brought together a truly international collection of articles that provide a fresh and comprehensive analysis of the origins of the Cold War.
Moving beyond earlier controversies, this edited collection focuses on the interaction between geopolitics and threat perception, technology and strategy, ideology and social reconstruction, national economic reform and patterns of international trade, and decolonization and national liberation. The editors also consider how and why the Cold War spread from Europe to Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America and how groups, classes and elites used the Cold War to further their own interests.
This second edition brings the collection right up to date, including the newest research from the Communist side of the Cold War and the most recent debates on culture, race and intelligence. Also included is a completely new section dealing with the Cold War crises in Iran, Turkey and Greece and a guide to further reading.

In the United States the Cold War shaped our political culture, our institutions, and our national priorities. Abroad, it influenced the destinies of people everywhere. It divided Europe, split Germany, and engulfed the Third World. It led to a feverish arms race and massive sales of military equipment to poor nations. For at least four decades it left the world in a chronic state of tension where a miscalculation could trigger nuclear holocaust. Documents, oral histories, and memoirs illuminating the goals, motives, and fears of contemporary U.S. officials were already widely circulated and studied during the Cold War, but in the 1970s a massive declassification of documents from the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of Defense, and some intelligence agencies reinvigorated historical study of this war which became the definitive conflict of its time. While many historians used these records to explore specialized topics, this author marshals the considerable available evidence on behalf of an overall analysis of national security policy during the Truman years. To date, it is the most comprehensive history of that administration's progressive embroilment in the Cold War.

This volume examines the origins, causes and early years of the Cold War. Leading scholars show how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic, and socio-political environment of the two world wars and the interwar period as well as examining how markets, ideas, and cultural interactions affected political discourse, diplomatic events, and strategic thinking. Chapters focus not only on the USA, the USSR, and Great Britain, but also on other critical regions such as Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and East Asia. They deal not only with the most influential statesmen of the era but also address the issues that mattered most to peoples around the globe: food, nutrition, and resource allocation; demography and consumption; ethnicity, race, and religion; science and technology; national autonomy, self-determination, and sovereignty. In so doing, the book illuminates how people worldwide shaped the evolution of the increasingly bipolar conflict, and, in turn, were ensnared by it.

Leffler argues that American officials did not disregard European developments after World War I but, rather, they sought to settle the war debt and reparations controversies, to stabilize European currencies, and to revive European markets. Leffler bridges the gap between revisionist and traditionalist studies by integrating the diverse aspects of foreign policy and elucidates many new aspects of the foreign policymaking process in the postwar period.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Volume III of The Cambridge History of the Cold War examines the evolution of the conflict from the Helsinki Conference of 1975 until the Soviet collapse in 1991. A team of leading scholars analyzes the economic, social, cultural, religious, technological and geopolitical factors that ended the Cold War and discusses the personalities and policies of key leaders such as Brezhnev, Reagan, Gorbachev, Thatcher, Kohl and Deng Xiaoping. The authors show how events throughout the world shaped the evolution of Soviet-American relations and they explore the legacies of the superpower confrontation in a comparative and transnational perspective. Individual chapters examine how the Cold War affected and was affected by environmental issues, economic trends, patterns of consumption, human rights and non-governmental organizations. The volume represents the new international history at its best, emphasizing broad social, economic, demographic and strategic developments while keeping politics and human agency in focus.

The Cambridge History of the Cold War is a comprehensive, international history of the conflict that dominated world politics in the twentieth century. The three-volume series, written by leading international experts in the field, elucidates how the Cold War evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and socio-political environment of the two World Wars and the interwar era, and explains the global dynamics of the Cold War international system. It emphasises how the Cold War bequeathed conditions, challenges and conflicts that shape international affairs today. With discussions of demography and consumption, women and youth, science and technology, ethnicity and race, the volumes encompass the social, intellectual and economic history of the twentieth century, shedding new light on the evolution of the Cold War. Through its various geographical and national angles, the series signifies a transformation of the field from a national - primarily American - to a broader international approach.

Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism gathers together decades of writing by Melvyn Leffler, one of the most respected historians of American foreign policy, to address important questions about U.S. national security policy from the end of World War I to the global war on terror. Why did the United States withdraw strategically from Europe after World War I and not after World War II? How did World War II reshape Americans' understanding of their vital interests? What caused the United States to achieve victory in the long Cold War? To what extent did 9/11 transform U.S. national security policy? Is budgetary austerity a fundamental threat to U.S. national interests? Leffler's wide-ranging essays explain how foreign policy evolved into national security policy. He stresses the competing priorities that forced policymakers to make agonizing trade-offs and illuminates the travails of the policymaking process itself. While assessing the course of U.S. national security policy, he also interrogates the evolution of his own scholarship. Over time, slowly and almost unconsciously, Leffler's work has married elements of revisionism with realism to form a unique synthesis that uses threat perception as a lens to understand how and why policymakers reconcile the pressures emanating from external dangers and internal priorities. An account of the development of U.S. national security policy by one of its most influential thinkers, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism includes a substantial new introduction from the author.

"A highly relevant and much-needed historical study . . . One of the best books on the period to have been written." --"The Economist"

To the amazement of the public, pundits, and even the policymakers themselves, the ideological and political conflict that endangered the world for half a century came to an end in 1990. How did that happen? What had caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did? To answer these questions, Melvyn P. Leffler homes in on four crucial episodes when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding, or ending hostilities and asks why they failed. He then illuminates how Reagan, Bush, and, above all, Gorbachev finally extricated themselves from the policies and mind-sets that had imprisoned their predecessors, and were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.

In Uncertain Times considers how policymakers react to dramatic developments on the world stage. Few expected the Berlin Wall to come down in November 1989; no one anticipated the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. American foreign policy had to adjust quickly to an international arena that was completely transformed.

Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro have assembled an illustrious roster of officials from the George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations Robert B. Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric S. Edelman, Walter B. Slocombe, and Philip Zelikow. These policymakers describe how they went about making strategy for a world fraught with possibility and peril. They offer provocative reinterpretations of the economic strategy advanced by the George H. W. Bush administration, the bureaucratic clashes over policy toward the breakup of the USSR, the creation of the Defense Policy Guidance of 1992, the expansion of NATO, the writing of the National Security Strategy Statement of 2002, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A group of eminent scholars address these same topics. Bruce Cumings, John Mueller, Mary Elise Sarotte, Odd Arne Westad, and William C. Wohlforth probe the unstated assumptions, the cultural values, and the psychological makeup of the policymakers. They examine whether opportunities were seized and whether threats were magnified and distorted. They assess whether academicians and independent experts would have done a better job than the policymakers did. Together, policymakers and scholars impel us to rethink how our world has changed and how policy can be improved in the future.

Contributors: Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago; Eric S. Edelman, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Melvyn P. Leffler, University of Virginia; Jeffrey W. Legro, University of Virginia; John Mueller, Ohio State University; Mary Elise Sarotte, University of Southern California; Walter B. Slocombe, Council on Foreign Relations and Caplin & Drysdale; Odd Arne Westad, London School of Economics and Political Science; William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College; Paul Wolfowitz, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia; Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank Group"

In Uncertain Times considers how policymakers react to dramatic developments on the world stage. Few expected the Berlin Wall to come down in November 1989; no one anticipated the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. American foreign policy had to adjust quickly to an international arena that was completely transformed.

Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro have assembled an illustrious roster of officials from the George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations Robert B. Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric S. Edelman, Walter B. Slocombe, and Philip Zelikow. These policymakers describe how they went about making strategy for a world fraught with possibility and peril. They offer provocative reinterpretations of the economic strategy advanced by the George H. W. Bush administration, the bureaucratic clashes over policy toward the breakup of the USSR, the creation of the Defense Policy Guidance of 1992, the expansion of NATO, the writing of the National Security Strategy Statement of 2002, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A group of eminent scholars address these same topics. Bruce Cumings, John Mueller, Mary Elise Sarotte, Odd Arne Westad, and William C. Wohlforth probe the unstated assumptions, the cultural values, and the psychological makeup of the policymakers. They examine whether opportunities were seized and whether threats were magnified and distorted. They assess whether academicians and independent experts would have done a better job than the policymakers did. Together, policymakers and scholars impel us to rethink how our world has changed and how policy can be improved in the future.

Contributors: Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago; Eric S. Edelman, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Melvyn P. Leffler, University of Virginia; Jeffrey W. Legro, University of Virginia; John Mueller, Ohio State University; Mary Elise Sarotte, University of Southern California; Walter B. Slocombe, Council on Foreign Relations and Caplin & Drysdale; Odd Arne Westad, London School of Economics and Political Science; William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College; Paul Wolfowitz, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia; Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank Group"

U.S. national security policy is at a critically important crossroads. The Bush Doctrine of unilateralism, pre-emptive war, and the imposition of democracy by force has proven disastrous. The United States now finds itself vilified abroad, weakened at home, and bogged down in a seemingly endless and unwinnable war. In To Lead the World, Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro bring together eleven of America's most esteemed writers and thinkers to offer concrete, historically grounded suggestions for how America can regain its standing in the world and use its power more wisely than it has during the Bush years. Best-selling authors such as David Kennedy, Niall Ferguson, Robert Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, and Samantha Power address such issues as how the U.S. can regain its respect in the world, respond to the biggest threats now facing the country, identify reasonable foreign policy goals, manage the growing debt burden, achieve greater national security, and successfully engage a host of other problems left unsolved and in many cases exacerbated by the Bush Doctrine. Representing a wide range of perspectives, the writers gathered here place the current foreign-policy predicament firmly in the larger context of American and world history and draw upon realistic appraisals of both the strengths and the limits of American power. They argue persuasively that the kind of leadership that made the United States a great-and greatly admired-nation in the past can be revitalized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Written by prize-winning authors and filled with level-headed, far-sighted, and achievable recommendations, To Lead the World will serve as a primary source of political wisdom in the post-Bush era and will add immeasurably to the policy debates surrounding the 2008 presidential election.

The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.

The Specter of Communism is a concise history of the origins of the Cold War and the evolution of U.S.-Soviet relations, from the Bolshevik revolution to the death of Stalin. Using not only American documents but also those from newly opened archives in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe, Leffler shows how the ideological animosity that existed from Lenin's seizure of power onward turned into dangerous confrontation. By focusing on American political culture and American anxieties about the Soviet political and economic threat, Leffler suggests new ways of understanding the global struggle staged by the two great powers of the postwar era.