Spies! What a great title! I could feel the ground shift within the first few pages of Calder Walton’s blockbuster accounting of the twentieth century “epic intelligence war between east and west.” Cold War historiography is again on the move and Walton, who is the assistant director of the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project, at…
Tag: United States
H-Diplo | RJISSF Commentary III-2 on Marc Trachtenberg, “Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion”
It is a treat to read something, anything, that Marc Trachtenberg writes. The reasons go beyond the originality and authority of his substantive contributions to international history and international relations. Trachtenberg focused on European foreign relations before shifting to the United States, and, as is well known, trained in history and a titan in the…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-8 on Brew. Petroleum and Progress in Iran
For nearly half a century, the United States has tried to hobble the Iranian economy. The Carter administration first imposed sanctions in the wake of the 1979 American embassy takeover. Despite some periods of détente, like the Mohammad Khatami presidency of 1997-2004 and the immediate aftermath of the 2015 nuclear deal, the general trend has…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-4 on Painter & Brew, The Struggle for Iran
In The Struggle for Iran, David Painter and Gregory Brew analyze the complex set of affairs that eventually led to the August 1953 coup against the government of Mohammad Mosaddeq, with a sharp causal focus on the interplay of Cold War logic and oil control. The reviews that follow mostly praise the authors for deploying…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-3 on Mukherjee, Ascending Order
Over the last decade or so, the International Relations (IR) literature has increasingly turned its attention to the crucial role of status and status-seeking in influencing state interactions and the shape of international order. Recent real-world politics has only underscored the importance of thinking about status given that, on the one hand, the international order…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-2 on Mattiacci, Volatile States in International Politics
How do we understand seemingly inconsistent behavior in foreign policy? This is the question Eleonora Mattiacci takes on in Volatile States in International Politics. In International Relations (IR) scholarship, the focus tends to be on consistent change : either towards conflict in terms of escalation or towards cooperation in terms of reconciliation. Seldom do scholars…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-55 on Henry, Reliability and Alliance Interdependence
The interdependence of alliance commitments, specifically the notions that the United States must continually demonstrate loyalty to allies and that a failure to back any ally (no matter how strategically insignificant or obstreperous) would surely lead other allies to question the credibility of US security guarantees, has long been conventional wisdom among policymakers in Washington,…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-51 on Haglund, Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France
It is a great pleasure for me to introduce David Haglund’s Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France. As a citizen of both nations, and one who has done some research on the question, I find the topic fascinating. The book covers a large expanse of time, considering the evolution of the subject since…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-50 on Macrakis, Nothing is Beyond Our Reach
This is, admittedly, a difficult introduction to write. It is difficult not only because Kristie Macrakis’s final work, Nothing is Beyond Our Reach: America’s Techno-Spy Empire elicited complicated responses from the reviewers in this roundtable. No, this introduction is particularly difficult because I find myself unable to divorce from the discussion my own personal experiences…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 100: Maurer on O’Hanlon, Military History for the Modern Strategist
Michael O’Hanlon is a much-respected analyst of foreign policy, national defense, and military strategy at the Brookings Institution.[2] In Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars Since 1861, he looks back at the major wars fought by the United States since 1861. He devotes a chapter to each case study: the Civil War;…