Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism : U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 / Melvyn Leffler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leffler, Melvyn, author.

Series:

Princeton scholarship online.

Princeton scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National security--United States.

National security.

United States--Foreign relations--20th century.

United States.

United States--Foreign relations--21st century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (350 pages) : illustrations, tables

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism gathers together decades of writing by Melvyn Leffler, one of the most respected historians of American foreign policy, 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?Leffler's wide-ranging essays explain how foreign policy evolved into national security policy. He 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, he also interrogates the evolution of his own scholarship. Over time, slowly and almost unconsciously, Leffler'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.An account of the development of U.S. national security policy by one of its most influential thinkers, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism includes a substantial new introduction from the author.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Introduction: Embracing Complexity

1. The Origins of Republican War Debt Policy, 1921- 1923: A Case Study in the Applicability of the Open Door Interpretation

2. Herbert Hoover, the "New Era," and American Foreign Policy, 1921- 1929

3. Political Isolationism, Economic Expansionism, or Diplomatic Realism: American Policy toward Western Europe, 1921- 1933

4. The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945- 1948

5. Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Cold War: The United States, Turkey, and NATO, 1945- 1952

6. Adherence to Agreements: Yalta and the Experiences of the Early Cold War

7. Victory: The "State," the "West," and the Cold War

8. Dreams of Freedom, Temptations of Power

9. 9/11 and American Foreign Policy

10. Austerity and U.S. Strategy: Lessons of the Past

11. National Security

INDEX

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781400888061

1400888069

OCLC:

990299072