The point of departure for distinguished historian Richard C. Thornton's insightful new assessment of the Reagan administration is Reagan's overwhelming re-election in 1984. His first-term policies had placed the United States in the ascendancy over the Soviet Union, and he sought to capitalize on that success by bringing the Cold War to an end on favorable terms. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, proved increasingly unable to bear the costs of supporting its empire and client state and adopted a strategy of detente. Its new leader Mikhail Gorbachev personified the new stance, and his rise to power in 1985 galvanized the U.S. administration's detente faction in renewed opposition to Reagan's strategy and advocacy of accommodation with Moscow.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he found America's economy, defense, and global position weakened to the point of collapse. The previous seven years of attempted detente with the Soviet Union had resulted in the worst foreign policy failures in American history. As the distinguished diplomatic historian Richard C. Thornton shows in this thorough reassessment of Reagan's presidency, written for the 40th anniversary of his election, the new president was determined to rebuild American economic and military power and to restore the Western Alliance. Reagan's "Victory Program" supported anti-Soviet resistance movements in communist countries, attacked the financial underpinnings of the Soviet economy, and boldly challenged the Soviet Union's forward positions around the world. The deployment of Pershing II missiles to Europe in 1983 restored the balance of power in Europe and, combined with the U.S. military buildup, reestablished strategic equilibrium between the United States and the Soviet Union by the end of Reagan's first term. As America faces a host of new challenges in the world today, this reexamination will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners alike.

Spain’s American empire began as the serendipitous outgrowth of the search for a shortcut to China. That search derived from two mid-fifteenth-century developments: the Ming Dynasty’s decision to adopt a silver standard for its medium of exchange and the Ottoman Turks’ capture of Constantinople in 1453. China’s great demand for silver and the disruption of the Silk Road drove the need to find alternative access to China. King John II of Portugal sent explorers southward along the coast of Africa and thence to the Orient, but Ferdinand and Isabella sent Christopher Columbus westward, believing he would find a shorter route. A persistent if disorderly push by Spanish conquistadors led to the discovery of previously unknown civilizations, including the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas. The search for a short-cut to China became bound up with the seizure of the riches held by native populations. Although the conquistadors were vastly outnumbered, their superior technology—steel swords, armor, war horses, and firearms—concomitant with diseases that accompanied them, enabled them to subdue native American peoples and confiscate their wealth. The aftermath was fraught with complications and strife. Crown- appointed governors came into conflict with the conquistadors. Distances were great, and the governors tended to place their interests over those of the King. Cortez conquered the Aztecs despite the governor’s attempts to prevent his campaign. Bureaucratic interference bedeviled Francisco Pizzaro’s campaign against the Incas, which, nonetheless, contributed more to the wealth of his country than any other conquistador’s exploits. Ultimately, the vast wealth of the Americas would fuel Spain and its Empire for nearly two centuries.

It is the purpose of this work to provide an integrated analytical framework that will serve as a guide to further study of the vast and complex subject of Chinese Communist politics. The outpouring of materials from U.S., Soviet, Chinese Communist, and Chinese Nationalist sources in recent years has greatly enriched our fund of knowledge about China. For the historian of Chinese politics the new data have provided answers to hitherto unresolved problems and raised questions about seemingly settled issues. Although it is now possible to piece together the main outlines of the struggle for power in China, obviously no single volume can presume to encompass all aspects of the story.

The People's Republic of China is changing. It is modernizing, shifting ideological gears, becoming realistic about development needs and goals, and moving away from its isolationist past toward a much more open and pragmatic assessment of its present and future position in the world. In the post-Mao period, China also seems to be willing to engage, albeit reluctantly, in the painful internal reshuffling of priorities and functions necessary to speed development. But change has not been easy: there have been major problems, both domestic and international. Richard Thornton puts the events of the past eight years in China into historical perspective in this updated and expanded version of his textbook on China's political history since 1917 (first published in 1973 as China: The Struggle for Power, 1917-1972). With the additional material, the book now stands as the most detailed account available. Professor Thornton deals with every significant issue that has confronted the leaders of revolutionary China and discusses the origins of the People's Republic. How did communism first take root in China? How did Mao first gain control of the Communist movement? What were the ingredients of Mao's victory and emergence as the undisputed master of the most populous country in the world? What was the origin of the Sino-Soviet alliance and what caused its collapse in the fifties? And in what sense were the tumultuous events of the Cultural Revolution of the sixties a prelude to the emergence of the new pragmatism and the Sino-U.S. rapprochement in the seventies? There has been very little stability in China's recent past, but Professor Thornton points out that there has been a historical logic in the sequence of China's history. An awareness of this logic is vital to understanding China's future.

History of Reagan's victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War and his defeat at the hands of his domestic political opponents, who sought accommodation with Moscow over victory. The book traces the climax of a two-decade-long struggle within the American establishment over strategy, known as the Iran-Contra scandal. As detailed in this volume, the scandal masked both the president's political defeat and the fundamental change that occurred in American national security strategy.

Volume III of the Reagan Revolution series recounts the president's successful defeat of the Soviet drive for global hegemony--for strategic weaons superiority, political domination of the Eurasian landmass, and decisive leverage over world oil. In volumes I and II of this study I analyzed the president's decisions to jettison the failed strategy of detente and seek victory in the Cold War. In broadening the nation's economic base to sustain a more powerful military capability, he confronted the Soviet military challenge. Simultaneously, he worked to rebuild the Western Alliance, which had disintegrated during the detente years.
In this volume I show how Reagan foiled the Soviet drive for strategic weapons superiority with a complex, high technology weapons buildup and a surprise shift to strategic defense, inaugurating a fundmental change in the national security equation. He neutralized the Soviet attempt to dominate the Eurasian landmass with the SS-20 missile by deploying the Pershing II/cruise missile package to Western Europe. And he blocked the Soviet drive to shift Iran into its orbit thereby preserving the secure flow of oil to the west and opening the door to an improvement of reltions with Iran.
Recognizing that the Soviet Union was overextended, fueling revolutionary movements on four continents and deeply mired in Afghanistan, the president raised the costs of competition for the Soviet economy already laboring under the heavy burden large-scale military expenditures. He worked for reduced energy prices, reducing Soviet hard-currency earnings, while at the same time blocking the transfer of high technology upon which the Soviet Union depended to remain competitive with the United States. By the middle of 1984 the Soviet leadership concluded that its strategy had failed and would have to be changed.

A stratling reinterpretation of the events that led to the Korean War; Based on previously unavailable documents from Chinese, Russian, and U.S. archives; Odd Man Out is a novel assessment of the motives and strategies of Truman, Stalin, and Mao as they struggled to maneuver their countries into positions of advantage in the postwar world. Their successes and failures resulted in the catastrophic event that globalised the Cold War - the Korean War. Based on recently released secret documents, Thornton puts the reader inside the American, Soviet, and Chinese decision-making processes during these earth-shaking events, events that have been misinterpreted for decades.