Andrew J. Bacevich (ed.), The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy since World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, £50.49). Pp. xiv+586. isbn978 0231505864.

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-582
Author(s):  
MARILYN B. YOUNG
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
World War ◽  
National Security Policy ◽  
History Of

Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvyn P Leffler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
National Security Policy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Global War

This book gathers together decades of writing by the author, 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? The wide-ranging chapters explain how foreign policy evolved into national security policy. The book 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, the author also interrogates the evolution of his own scholarship. Over time, slowly and almost unconsciously, the author'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.

Post-Revisionist Cold War - Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944–1947. By Robert M. Hathaway. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. x, 410 pp. - From War to Cold War, 1942–48. By Roy Douglas. New York: St. Martin's, 1981. ix, 224 pp. Photographs. $22.50. - The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947. By Terry H. Anderson. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981. xi, 256 pp. $18.00. - The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War. By Robert L. Messer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. x, 282 pp. Illustrations. $19.95. - Witnesses to the Origins of the Cold War. Edited by Thomas T. Hammond. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982. 318 pp. $22.50. - Bitter Legacy: Polish-American Relations in the Wake of World War II. By Richard C. Lukas. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982. 191 pp. $16.00. - American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949. By Lawrence S. Wittner. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. xii, 445 pp. - Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. By John Lewis Gaddis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. xi, 432 pp. $9.95, paper. - Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War. By William Taubman. New York: Norton, 1982. xii, 291 pp. $18.95. - Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II. By Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson. New York: Pergamon Press, 1982. vii, 320 pp. $35.00, cloth. $10.95, paper.

Slavic Review ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 662-668
Author(s):  
Vojtech Mastny
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
World War ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
The Cold War

Dreams of Freedom, Temptations of Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-280
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
September 11 ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter considers the end of the Cold War as well as its implications for the September 11 attacks in 2001, roughly a decade after the Cold War ended. While studying the Cold War, the chapter illustrates how memory and values as well as fear and power shaped the behavior of human agents. Throughout that struggle, the divergent lessons of World War II pulsated through policymaking circles in Moscow and Washington. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, governments around the world drew upon the lessons they had learned from their divergent national experiences as those experiences had become embedded in their respective national memories. For policymakers in Washington, memories of the Cold War and dreams of human freedom tempted the use of excessive power with tragic consequences. Memory, culture, and values played a key role in shaping the evolution of U.S. national security policy.

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