Jeffrey A. Engel

The fall of the Berlin Wall : the revolutionary legacy of 1989

1. 1989: An Introduction to an International History - Jeffrey A. Engel 2. The Transformation of Europe and the End of the Cold War - James J. Sheehan 3. If a Wall Fell in Berlin and Moscow Hardly Noticed, Would it Still Make a Noise? - William Taubman and Svetlana Savranskaya 4. Tiananmen and the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Chinas Path toward 1989 and Beyond - Chen Jian 5. Dreams of Freedom Temptations of Power - Melvyn P. Leffler For Further Reading

America in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: The Long American Century 1 1Motives of Expansion 7 2Imperial America: War with Spain and the Philippines 32 3Varieties of Empire 56 4The Rise and Fall of Wilsonianism 79 5Isolation and Intervention 107 6World War II 131 7The Beginning of the Cold War 157 8The Korean War and the Cold War of the 1950s 182 9The Nationalist Challenge 206 10Years of Crisis 231 11The Vietnam War 255 12The Era of Detente 281 13Escalating and Ending the Cold War 305 14Globalization after the Cold War 331 15The Age of Terror 354 Sources 379 Index 395

N. A. Graebner, R. D. Burns, and J. M. Siracusa, Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War

The most fascinating line of this history of the Cold War’s demise arrives on its final page. “The subsequent unraveling of the Soviet empire was an unintended side effect of Gorbachev’s reforms,” the authors conclude, “termination of the Cold War was not” (p. 146, emphasis in original). In this short study of superpower relations politics in the 1980s through to the end of the Cold War, Graebner, Burns, and Siracusa thus grapple with the bipolar conflict’s most enduring and vexing questions. These include why the Cold War lasted so long; why it ended; why it ended when it did given its clear stamina and staying power; and finally, who deserves credit (or blame) for its eventual demise? That the book discusses these questions and their multiple potential answers rather than offering the author’s collective wisdom with a synthetic argument—hence the reader’s pleasure and surprise to find such a powerful conclusion even on the book’s final page—is more the result of the nature of multiple-authored works than any indictment of their intelligent findings. Answers abound within these pages. Teasing them out requires a particularly close read. Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev explores in six full chapters (along with an introduction exploring the Carter years and a conclusion) the Cold War’s slow erosion during the 1980s and its final quick end. For the authors the reason for its close is clear: the Soviets simply ran out of steam. Their command economy, featuring a full quarter of gross domestic product spent on military preparations for a potential conflict with the United States and its Western allies that Soviet officials neither desired nor believed they could win, simply failed to keep pace with the capitalist world’s productive might. The regime’s political rigidity did not help matters. “Evidence of economic and social decline within the U.S.S.R. were universal” by the late 1970s, they argue (p. 46). That Soviet leaders, until the accession to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, lacked the vision or will to fundamentally alter a declining system doomed the state to failure. Even Gorbachev’s efforts would fall short of revitalizing a moribund Soviet economy. It was simply a case of too little, too late.

The Democratic Language of American Imperialism: Race, Order, and Theodore Roosevelt's Personifications of Foreign Policy Evil

Theodore Roosevelts conception of order and progress within the international system can be discovered through a close analysis of his letters, speeches, and statements to Congress. Like so many of his age, he believed a social contract bound governments to provide for the welfare of their people. Governments which failed at this charge discarded their legitimacy, and could thus be overthrown by more civilized great powers, such as the United States. This worldview is revealed through his thoughts preceding the Spanish–American War of 1898, during the Panama Canal crisis of his presidency, and then finally in the way he blamed Kaiser Wilhelm and his ruling clique for instigating World War One, separating the Kaisers government from well-meaning German citizens. This language and worldview laid the foundation for more profound changes in American foreign policy to come, in particular the transformative diplomacy of Woodrow Wilson.