A narrative history and assessment of the early years of Robert McNamara’s tenure as Secretary of Defense, including McNamara’s relationship with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the transformation of the Department of Defense as a part of Kennedy’s New Frontier, and the Pentagon’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs episode, and onset of the Vietnam War along with other major national security events and developments during a turbulent and momentous period of the Cold War. (Fuller description is on the dust jacket flaps.)

History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 5: The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961-1965

History

Kaplan, Lawrence S.

Drea, Edward J.

Landa, Ronald D.

Military

Government Printing Office

NATO and the United States: The enduring alliance (Twayne's international history series)

Twayne Publishers

Kaplan, a NATO scholar and professor of history, analyzes the challenges the organization faces in the 1990s, arguing that the alliance is still essential for a stable Europe and that it is incumbent on the US to maintain its NATO troop strength. Includes texts of the Brussels Pact, the North Atlantic Treaty, and various related agreements, and a chronology. Paper edition (9221-X), $16.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

NATO and the United States, Updated Edition: The Enduring Alliance (Twayne's International History Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Twayne Pub

NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Twayne's International History Series)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The United States and NATO: The Formative Years

Univ Pr of Kentucky

The United States and NATO: The formative years

University Press of Kentucky

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 were far from clear. The problem for European statesmen was how to secure much- needed American economic and military aid without sacrificing political independence. For American policymakers, in contrast, a degree of American control was seen as an essential quid pro quo. As Mr. Kaplan shows, the lengthy negotiations of 1947 and 1948 were chiefly concerned with reconciling these opposing views. For the Truman administration, the difficulties of achieving a treaty acceptable to the allies were matched by those of winning its acceptance by Congress and the public. Many Americans saw such an "entangling alliance" as a threat not only to American security but to the viability of the United Nations. Mr. Kaplan demonstrates the tortuous course of the debate on the treaty and the pivotal role of the communist invasion of South Korea in its ultimate approval. This authoritative study offers a timely reevaluation of the origins of an alliance that continues to play a critical role in the balance of power and in the prospects for world peace.

Americas

The United States has looked inward throughout most of its history, preferring to avoid "foreign entanglements," as George Washington famously advised. After World War II, however, Americans became more inclined to break with the past and take a prominent place on the world stage. Much has been written about the influential figures who stood at the center of this transformation, but remarkably little attention has been paid to Arthur H. Vandenberg (1884–1951), who played a crucial role in moving the nation from its isolationist past to an internationalist future. Vandenberg served as a U.S. senator from Michigan from 1928 to 1951 and was known in his early career for his fervent anti-interventionism. After 1945, he became heavily involved in the establishment of the United Nations and was a key player in the development of NATO. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during 1947 and 1948, Vandenberg helped rally support for President Truman's foreign policy―including the Marshall Plan―and his leadership contributed to a short-lived era of congressional bipartisanship regarding international relations. In The Conversion of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Lawrence S. Kaplan offers the first critical biography of the distinguished statesman. He demonstrates how Vandenberg's story provides a window on the political and cultural changes taking place in America as the country assumed a radically different role in the world, and makes a seminal contribution to the history of U.S. foreign policy during the initial years of the Cold War.

The Conversion of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg: From Isolation to International Engagement (Studies In Conflict Diplomacy Peace)

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Harold Stassen (1907–2001) garnered accolades as the thirty-one-year-old "boy wonder" governor of Minnesota and quickly assumed a national role as aide to Admiral William Halsey Jr. during World War II. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1952, Stassen was named director of the Mutual Security Administration and then became the president's special assistant for disarmament. In this position, Stassen had the power to profoundly shape the country's foreign policy and became influential in early Cold War policy discussions about the limits and uses of conventional and nuclear weapons. In this nuanced biography, Lawrence S. Kaplan demonstrates that Stassen's role in Eisenhower's White House deserves more analysis than it has received from scholars. Stassen came to Washington advocating the total elimination of nuclear weapons, but he quickly came to recognize that this would not happen. He refocused his efforts, working for greater international transparency and communication. The liberal internationalism that Stassen espoused became embedded in Cold War policy for decades, and he consistently provided a voice for peace in an increasingly hawkish national security establishment. Stassen, in many ways, was his own worst enemy; his ambition and ego undermined his efforts and clouded his vision. His feuds with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were legendary, and while Dulles often prevailed in the meeting room, Stassen's vision of nuclear restraint was one that Eisenhower shared. Kaplan's study provides a new perspective on nuclear disarmament during a critical period in US history and sheds light on Eisenhower's approach to international relations.

Harold Stassen: Eisenhower, the Cold War, and the Pursuit of Nuclear Disarmament (Studies In Conflict Diplomacy Peace)

NATO and the UN: A Peculiar Relationship

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed just four years after the United Nations, it provided its members with a measure of security in the face of the Soviet Union’s veto power in the senior organization’s Security Council, as well as a means of coping with Communist expansion. Ever since then, the two institutions have been competitors in maintaining peace in the postwar world. Occasionally they have cooperated; more often they have not. In NATO and the UN, Lawrence Kaplan, one of the leading experts on NATO, examines the intimate and often contentious relations between the two and describes how this relationship has changed over the course of two generations. Kaplan documents the many interactions between them throughout their interconnected history, focusing on the major flashpoints where either NATO clashed with UN leadership, the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other directly, or fissures within the Atlantic alliance were dramatized in UN sessions. He draws on the organizations’ records as well as unpublished files from the National Archives and its counterparts in Britain, France, and Germany to provide the best account yet of working relations between the two organizations. By examining their complex connection with regard to such conflicts as the Balkan wars, Kaplan enhances our understanding of both institutions. Crisis management has been a source of conflict between the two in the past but has also served as an incentive for collaboration, and Kaplan shows how this peculiar but persistent relationship has functioned. Although the Cold War years are gone, the UN remains the setting where NATO problems have played out, as they have in Iraq during recent decades. And it is to NATO that the UN has turned for military power to face crises in the Balkans, Middle East, and South Asia. Kaplan stresses the importance of both organizations in the twenty-first century, recognizing their potential to advance global peace and security while showing how their tangled history explains the obstacles that stand in the way. His work offers significant findings that will especially impact our understanding of NATO while filling a sizable gap in our understanding of post-World War II diplomacy.

University of Missouri

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