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The Cold War

HISTORY is CENTRAL Summer 2006. The Cold War. ( and the Cold War in Connecticut). Duck and Cover (1951). Roadmap. Foreign Relations & Cold War & Historians Leffler’s book NSC-68 Connecticut Vietnam. Foreign Relations. Orthodox Revisionist “Cultural Turn”.

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The Cold War

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  1. HISTORY is CENTRAL Summer 2006 The Cold War ( and the Cold War in Connecticut)

  2. Duck and Cover (1951)

  3. Roadmap • Foreign Relations & Cold War & Historians • Leffler’s book • NSC-68 • Connecticut • Vietnam

  4. Foreign Relations • Orthodox • Revisionist • “Cultural Turn”

  5. Cold War Historiography • Traditionalists • New Left (Revisionists) • Post-Revisionists • John Lewis Gaddis

  6. Reagan as ultimate hero • Argument of John Lewis Gaddis and in “memory” of conservatives • Strong rhetoric, but practical • R. saw opportunity and seized it • R. pursued policy of strength

  7. Flaws in the Gaddis argument and much popular perception • Fails to see full picture of 1980s U.S., USSR, Eastern Europe, and World • Fails to see power of containment over the long haul

  8. Leffler Ideological competition and geostrategic threat made American officials aware of vulnerability of domestic political and economic institutions. Anti-Communism provided a simple framework to view the world (78, 119-20) Many groups used the Cold War to fight internal battles (25, 59-60, 79-80) Many policymakers feared that if the USSR took advantage of power vacuums, it could only be defeated by making the US a garrison state. (30, 47-48, 57, 61-62, 96, 126)

  9. NSC-68

  10. Connecticut

  11. Vietnam and the Cold War

  12. Vietnam Historiography • Extraordinary passions and influence of war • Several key issues: • Origins: necessary or a terrible mistake? • Outcome: why unable to preserve South Vietnam? Unwinnable? • Meaning and lessons: what are they?

  13. Two main camps • Critical - Vietnam a bad war - the “Standard Interpretation” • Legitimate endeavor that could have been won

  14. The “Standard Interpretation” • Critics dominated the early literature • Reversal of other war histories • Journalists and former officials start • The Bitter Heritage 1967 - Arthur Schlesinger Jr. - “quagmire” • “Quagmire” challenged by Pentagon Papers revelations • Presidents knew their actions might fail

  15. Radical interpretation • Anatomy of a War Gabriel Kolko 1985 • Structurally determined economic reasons

  16. Revisionist Challenge • (Argue vehemently against anyone who says “trying to rewrite history”) • Started to appear at end of 1970s • Part of growing conservative rise and fueled by postwar conditions in Vietnam

  17. Revisionists seek to justify war on either or both of these grounds: • Vietnamese Communists a part of a larger threat of Communism that was a real threat to U.S. • Moral reasons: to save the South from the ravages of Communism

  18. Revisionists also seek to argue that war was winnable • U.S. Grant Sharp Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect 1978 • But, two opposing views of how it could have been won • More conventional • More counter-insurgency • (each position claims the actual war was fought in the opposite manner)

  19. Recent Scholarship • Standard interpretation still holds for most historians • Herring’s book • What is being written now: • Broader in scope: Congress, other nations’ views • Archives from China and former USSR • Vietnamese side

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