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Cold War in the Balkans: American Foreign Policy and the Emergence of Communist Bulgaria 1943–1947
As World War II drew to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union began to maneuver for position in postwar Europe, in the first exploratory moves of what would soon become a worldwide contest for power and prestige. In Bulgaria, Michael Boll finds a unique vantage point for study of the processes of international politics during these years of the emergence of the Cold War. Bulgaria, he writes, was to assume a significance for both the United States and the Soviet Union greater than that small nation's intrinsic importance to either Great Power.
Bulgaria had joined the Axis—under ...Read More
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The United States and NATO: The Formative Years
The creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was one of the most important accomplishments of American diplomacy in countering the Soviet threat during the early days of the Cold War. Why and how such a reversal of a 150-year nonalignment policy by the United States was brought about, and how the goals of the treaty became a reality, are questions addressed here by a leading scholar of NATO.
The importance of restoring Europe to strength and stability in the post-World War II years was as obvious to America as to its allies, but the means of achieving that goal ...Read More
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Crossroads Of Decision: The State Department and Foreign Policy, 1933-1937
In this provocative interpretation of New Deal diplomacy, Howard Jablon challenges the view that the State Department was wiser and more expert at international maneuver than was President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early years of his presidency. These were years of growing world tension, with the preliminary shots of World War II being fired as Japan took over Manchuria, Italy made Ethiopia an extension of its new Roman Empire, and all the European great powers tried out their new weaponry in Spain. The author argues that the department's advice in this period actually led to unfortunate decisions which later ...Read More
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Bitter Legacy: Polish-American Relations in the Wake of World War II
In this most timely book, Richard C. Lukas offers the historical perspective that any reader, scholar, or layman needs to grasp the political turmoil in Poland in the decades after World War II. Bitter Legacy is the first major analysis of Polish-American relations from the Potsdam Conference through the Polish elections of 1947, the critical period during which Poland became a satellite in the Russian sphere. Drawing on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, a number of which have never been used by scholars before, Lukas shows in detail why and how American policy was never able to ...Read More
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Alexander Gumberg and Soviet-American Relations: 1917–1933
Born in Russia in 1887, Alexander Gumberg immigrated to the United States in 1903. He returned to Russia in 1917 as an American businessman sympathetic to the progress of Russia's Revolution. After the Bolshevik seizure of power on November 7, Gumberg became a secretary, translator, and adviser to the American Red Cross Commission and the Committee on Public Information. Through him a Soviet-American dialogue formed despite the lack of official relations. Gumberg advised congressmen who hoped to establish diplomatic ties between the two countries. He helped American publicists, publications, and institutions which sought to present a favorable, or at least ...Read More
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To Keep the Peace: The United Nations Condemnatory Resolution
The first purpose of the United Nations is “to maintain international peace and security.” Among the chief methods employed to attain this end has been the condemnatory resolution, in which international outrage is expressed at the policies or actions of a given state. Here William W. Orbach undertakes to explore the nature of the United Nations and its role in international politics through an examination of the history of such resolutions, the reasons for condemnations, and the process by which they are enacted or rejected. He concludes that the United Nations is not an independent actor on the international stage ...Read More
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United States National Interests in a Changing World
Although the term national interest has long been used in reference to the foreign policy goals of nations, there has been no generally agreed upon definition of the concept; as a result, Donald E. Nuechterlein contends, there has been a tendency for foreign policy to be determined by institutional prejudice and past policy rather than by a systematic assessment of national interests. By what criterion does a President decide that a given interest is or is not vital-that is, whether he must contemplate defending it by force if other measures fail?
In this study Nuechterlein offers a new conceptual framework ...Read More
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The Troubled Alliance: German-Austrian Relations, 1914–1917
On August 1, 1914, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires stood on the brink of the greatest war history had known. Their great need was for alliances that would provide manpower and defense of their borders. In only one direction could these be sought—the Balkan Peninsula. Yet disagreements between foreign officers and high commands increased the difficulty of establishing such alliances. Austrian caution continually clashed with German persistence, for the expansionist drives of the Balkan powers threatened the monarchy’s own ambitions.
The differences between the two allies were smoothed over in the case of Turkey and Bulgaria, but the ultimate diplomatic ...Read More
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Foreign Policy and the Developing Nation
Eight well-known political scientists, economists, and sociologists here explore the interrelationships between the various levels of economic strength and political stability attended by newly emerged nations and the formulation of their foreign policies. These essays provide testimony not only to the importance of these problems, but also to contributions that can be made by various methodological approaches by scholars from the different social sciences. Contributing to the volume are Rupert Emerson, Benjamin Higgins, Gayl Ness, Ivo and Rosalind Feierabend, Henry Bienen, Lloyd Jensen, and Wilson C. McWilliams.
Richard Butwell is the director of the Business Council of International Understanding program ...Read More
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Australia Faces Southeast Asia: The Emergence of a Foreign Policy
Australia as a Western society in the Orient faces a unique and paradoxical challenge in her relations with her close but unfamiliar neighbors of Southeast Asia. Explicitly dependent upon British foreign policy until the fall of Singapore in 1942, Australia has reluctantly and painfully begun the task of developing a policy of her own.
The Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia and many of the Pacific islands during the Second World War awakened Australia to the need to secure her own defenses and later, when Britain began a gradual withdrawal from Southeast Asia, Australia was thrown upon her own resources in ...Read More
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