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Aid Under Fire explores American nation building and modernization efforts in South Vietnam during the decade leading up to the full-scale ground war.Beginning in the mid-1950s, American nation builders traveled to southern Vietnam, eager to help establish a permanent non-Communist state that would advance US interests in Asia.Ignoring the political concerns of the majority of the Vietnamese people, they supported the South Vietnamese government through a massive program of military, economic, and technical assistance.Based on American and Vietnamese archival sources, this book tells the story of how nation-building efforts were carried out and reveals in stark terms the limits on American power and influence in the period widely considered the apex of US supremacy in the world. This bookfocuses on the activities of the civilian aid workers who spearheaded US policies in South Vietnam.Confident in the transformative power of American models, these men and women were developmental enthusiasts who sought to reform Vietnamese institutions and garner support for the government in Saigon.However, like the government officials who recruited them, most aid workers lacked a basic knowledge and understanding of Vietnamese culture, history, and politics.As a result, they attempted to replicate political, economic, and military systems on the basis oftheir own experiences while displaying a willful blindness to the conditions and attitudes in Vietnam. By examining civilian aid workers’ role in implementing and shaping American modernization efforts in Vietnam, this book shows how nation building functioned—and ultimately failed—at the ground level.

Place matters in how Americans have responded to and sought to influence US foreign policy. The dynamic of domestic regional influence on US foreign relations was especially apparent in the American South’s role in the Vietnam War. From the general public to soldiers, college students, and crucially placed political leaders, Dixie supported the war more strongly and longer than any other section of the country. As had been the southern practice since the 1780s, the South’s bellicose foreign policy stance was grounded in distinctly regional political and economic interests, racial views, ideological and historical assumptions, and religious values. Although Dixie’s support helped to sustain an increasingly unpopular war under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon, many of these same regional interests and values spawned an articulate minority opposition to the war. These antiwar protests, together with the war’s mounting agony, led even the South and its prowar leaders to tire of the conflict by the early 1970s.

Humor is sometimes a serious business, especially the humor of Benjamin Franklin, a master at revealing the human condition through comedy. For the country's bicentennial, Reader's Digest named Franklin “Man of the Year” for embodying the characteristics we admire most about ourselves as Americans: humor, irony, energy, and fresh insight. Recreating Franklin's words in the way that his contemporaries would have read and understood them, this book chronicles Franklin's use (and abuse) of humor for commercial, diplomatic, and political purposes. Dedicated to the uniquely appealing and enduring humor of Benjamin Franklin, the book samples Franklin's apologues on the necessity of living reasonably even when life's circumstances may seem absurd.

This book argues for the importance of Arthur H. Vandenberg’s role in America’s conversion to a new status in the world, placing Vandenberg’s name alongside other influential figures such as George Kennan, Dean Acheson, and John Foster Dulles. Vandenberg was a public man, well aware of his importance to his community, party, and nation. As co-secretary of state, he played a major role in bringing the Republican Party into a bipartisan relationship with the Truman administration. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1947 and 1948 and as ranking Republican on that committee in 1949, Vandenberg was arguably the key factor in moving the nation from its isolationist past to an internationalist future. The Conversion of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg attempts to flesh out his conversion from isolationism to internationalism, with appreciation for the limits as well as the extent of his achievements. It follows Vandenberg’s political odyssey from his time as an arch-isolationist in the 1930s to becoming an ardent internationalist after World War II, and outlines his involvement in the passage of the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, North Atlantic Treaty, and Military Assistance Program. Moreover, this study concentrates on Vandenberg’s work establishing the United Nations as the template for U.S. foreign policy after 1945 and analyzes his potential nationalist bias that called his conversion to internationalism into question.

The Currents of War: A New History of American-Japanese Relations, 1899–1941 examines America’s defense of the Open Door policy and containment of Japanese continental expansion from 1899 to 1941. This study argues that the remarkably successful American containment strategy largely begun during the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson administrations limited Japanese expansion from 1905 until 1931. During the 1930s, however, Japan repeatedly challenged American containment, and the policy underwent significant changes as the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration abandoned diplomatic engagement, which until 1930 had been a cornerstone of containment, and instead sought to limit Japanese expansion by sustaining Chinese resistance and weakening the Japanese economy. Despite this significant departure from preceding administrations, containment was a patient, cautious, and largely successful American program that changed radically only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Convinced that Tokyo would not strike Western targets prior to a Soviet collapse and certain that England was safe from invasion until the summer of 1942, the Roosevelt administration abandoned containment and embraced rollback, a policy that sought to drive Japan from China and break the Axis Alliance. This fundamental shift in American objectives led directly to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and brought on the war that neither Tokyo nor Washington sought.

This book documents the formulation and execution of US foreign policy in Cambodia during the Eisenhower administration. Based on exhaustive research at the US National Archives, the Eisenhower Library, and other public and private collections of primary sources, the book is a detailed narrative of the Eisenhower administration’s diplomatic struggle with Norodom Sihanouk. A difficult leader who was, at least initially, pro-Western in his political orientation, Sihanouk offended top US officials with his “neutralism.” For much of Eisenhower’s presidency, national security policy supported those who worked against Sihanouk. The book pays particular attention to US relations with anticommunist Cambodian dissidents, especially Dap Chhuon and Son Ngoc Thanh, and with their patrons in South Vietnam and Thailand. This book argues that covert intervention in the internal political affairs of neutral Cambodia proved to be a counterproductive tactic for advancing US anticommunist goals. A contribution to a still-emerging understanding of covert operations in the cold war, the book contends that the US experience in Cambodia in the 1950s deserves more attention in histories of the Indochinese wars and in assessments of Eisenhower’s performance as president. Although some historians have documented President Eisenhower’s moderation, prudence, and restraint in managing the nation’s foreign affairs, these qualities were often lacking in his administration’s relations with Cambodia, which were largely defined by hostility to Sihanouk’s conception of neutrality, by contempt for the prince personally, and by a covert effort to encourage his overthrow.

This book examines how Syngman Rhee and the Korean independence movement used the rhetoric of American exceptionalism to lobby the U.S. government and the American public for support between 1905 and 1945. Alleging that Theodore Roosevelt violated the 1882 Korean-American Treaty when he tacitly supported the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1905, Rhee argued that Germany was not the only nation guilty of regarding treaties as “mere scraps of paper” and exhorted Americans to right this historical wrong by supporting Korean independence. He argued that doing so would prove Americans were the exceptional people many of them believed themselves to be. Rhee’s message gained credibility, not only because the concept of American exceptionalism resonated with Americans, but also because at various junctures certain Americans found the Korean cause useful. During the fight over the Versailles Treaty, the so-called Irreconcilable senators used the Korean issue to criticize President Wilson and to deflect the charge that they were isolationists. During the denouement of World War II, anticommunist politicians and civic organizations argued that Korea must not be abandoned to communism and that the United States’ treatment of Korea would be a test of American resolve in establishing a new rules-based order. The publicity Korea received from these and other episodes transformed Korea into an issue that could not be ignored in the postwar period. The irony and tragedy of Rhee’s efforts is that not only did they fail to regain Korea’s independence, but they directly contributed to the decision to divide Korea—an outcome he never foresaw or supported.

Harold Stassen (1907–2001) is perhaps most famous for running for president of the United States twelve times. At the age of thirty-one, Stassen garnered early accolades as the “boy wonder” governor of Minnesota. Soon thereafter he assumed a national role as aide to Admiral Halsey during World War II and as US delegate to the 1945 international conference on the United Nations Charter. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952, Stassen was named director of the Mutual Security Agency and later became the president’s special assistant for disarmament. Stassen came to Washington advocating the total elimination of nuclear weapons, but he quickly recognized that this would never happen. He refocused his efforts, working for greater international transparency and communication. The liberal internationalism Stassen espoused became embedded in Cold War policy for decades. 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.

Henry Watterson (1840–1921), editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal from the 1860s through World War I, was one of the most important and widely read newspaper editors in American history. An influential New South supporter of sectional reconciliation and economic development, Watterson was also the nation's premier advocate of free trade and globalization. Watterson's vision of a prosperous and independent South within an expanding American empire was unique among prominent Southerners and Democrats. He helped articulate the bipartisan embrace of globalization that accompanied America's rise to unmatched prosperity and world power. This book restores Watterson to his place at the heart of late nineteenth-century southern and American history by combining biographical narrative with an evaluation of Watterson's unique involvement in the politics of free trade and globalization.

After World War II, American statesman and scholar Lincoln Gordon emerged as one of the key players in the reconstruction of Europe. During his long career, Gordon worked as an aide to National Security Adviser Averill Harriman in President Truman’s administration; for President John F. Kennedy as an author of the Alliance for Progress and as an adviser on Latin American policy; and for President Lyndon B. Johnson as assistant secretary of state. Gordon also served as the United States ambassador to Brazil under both Kennedy and Johnson. Outside the political sphere, he devoted his considerable talents to academia as a professor at Harvard University, as a scholar at the Brookings Institution, and as president at Johns Hopkins University. In this impressive biography, Bruce L. R. Smith examines Gordon’s substantial contributions to U.S. mobilization during the Second World War, Europe’s postwar economic recovery, the security framework for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and U.S. policy in Latin America. He also highlights the vital efforts of the advisers who helped Gordon plan NATO’s force expansion and implement America’s dominant foreign policy favoring free trade, free markets, and free political institutions. Smith, who worked with Gordon at the Brookings Institution, explores the statesman-scholar’s virtues as well as his flaws, and his study is strengthened by insights drawn from his personal connection to his subject. In many ways, Gordon’s life and career embodied Cold War America and the way in which the nation’s institutions evolved to manage the twentieth century’s vast changes. Smith adeptly shows how this “wise man” personified both America’s postwar optimism and as its dawning realization of its own fallibility during the Vietnam era.

This book traces the troubled history of American liberalism between the tumultuous 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and Bill Clinton's election to the White House. In those years, liberals effectively conceded the political center to conservatives and wandered the political wilderness. For decades, scholars have examined how conservatives captured the American electorate during this time. This book, however, looks at why and how liberals sowed the seeds of their own creed's demise. Through examining a sundry array of grassroots activists and officeholders, from big city mayors to Congresswomen and Senators, the book details the Democratic coalition in all of its diversity. Unlike the rest of the literature that sees liberals as unwitting victims of cunning conservatives, this book lays the blame for liberalism's demise where it belongs—on liberals themselves. Understandably outraged by the Vietnam War and the resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, New Politics activists organized and took over the Democratic Party. Rejecting the Democratic Party's Vital Center liberalism, New Politics liberals crafted a new set of policies for the 1970s. Unfortunately for them, voters consistently rejected New Politics liberalism and turned instead to conservative politicians and eventually Ronald Reagan. This book traces liberalism slow demise during the 1970s and 1980s and the gradual re-emergence of centrist liberalism that eventually brought Bill Clinton to the White House.

The changing international environment of the 1960s made it possible to attain détente, a relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Back-channel diplomacy—confidential contacts between the White House and the Kremlin, mainly between National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin—transformed that possibility into reality. This book argues that although back-channel diplomacy was useful in improving U.S.-Soviet relations in the short term by acting as a safety valve and giving policy-actors a personal stake in improved relations, it provided a weak foundation for long-term détente. This book traces the evolution of confidential channels during the Nixon administration and examines certain flashpoints in U.S.-Soviet relations, such as the 1970 Cienfuegos crisis, Sino-American rapprochement, and the Indo-Pakistani War in 1971. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Moscow’s support for Hanoi remained constant irritants in U.S.-Soviet relations. The back-channel relationships allowed both sides to agree to disagree and paved the way for the Moscow Summit of May 1972. This focused examination of U.S.-Soviet back-channel diplomacy mitigates some of criticisms levied against Nixon and Kissinger in their secretive conduct of diplomacy by showing that back channels were both necessary and an effective instrument of policy. However, back channels worked best when they supplemented rather than replaced more traditional diplomacy.

Peacemakers is a candid, inside account of the US response to the disintegration of Yugoslavia by James Pardew, an official at the heart of American policy-making, diplomacy, and military operations, from the US-led negotiations on Bosnia in 1995 until Kosovo declared independence in 2008. The book describes in colorful detail the drama of war and diplomacy in the Balkans and the motives, character, talents, and weaknesses of the heroes and villains involved. The US engagement in the former Yugoslavia is a major American foreign policy and national security success with lasting implications for the United States, Europe, and the Balkan region. It involves aggressive diplomacy, the selective use of military force and extensive multilateral cooperation. The experience demonstrates the value of American leadership in an international crisis and the critical importance of America’s relationship with European democracies. US engagement in the former Yugoslavia shows the overwhelming benefits of the shared costs and the international legitimacy of multilateral cooperation when responding to a crisis. A capable and determined US-led coalition restores stability and gives the new nations of Southeastern Europe the chance to become successful democracies in the European mainstream. Peacemakers concludes with lessons learned from the Balkan experience and insights on international crisis management of potential value to envoys and foreign policy and national security decision-makers in the future.

The political biography of Kerr Scott covers his career in North Carolina as commissioner of agriculture (1936–1948), governor (1949–1953) and US senator (1954–1958). A rural progressive/populist, Scott came to power in 1948 by defeating the powerful political machine that had controlled the state for years. As governor, despite a conservative legislature, he led the state from a poor, backwater southern state to an economically viable state by investing in roads, education, health care, new industry, and new port facilities. A charismatic and controversial governor, he was a moderate on race and the first environmental governor in the state, and he made great progress in women’s rights. His progressive reforms, which changed the course of North Carolina’s history, made him one of the most influential governors in the state’s history. In 1954 he was elected to the US Senate, where he served effectively until his death in 1958.

This book discusses the formulation and execution of US foreign policy in Laos during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Based on documents from the US National Archives, the Kennedy Library, the Library of Congress, and other public and private collections of primary sources, the book provides an intimate look at the diplomacy, intelligence operations, and military actions that led to the 1962 Geneva accords. It also examines the rapid breakdown of that agreement, the response of the Kennedy administration to the collapse of the Geneva solution, and the consequences of that response not only for Laos but also for Vietnam. Kennedy's most far-reaching response to the failure of the Geneva agreement was settling for a de facto partition of Laos, with a center-right coalition controlling the population and agricultural centers of the Mekong River Valley and the communist-led Pathet Lao dominating the mountainous jungle region bordering Vietnam. Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma remained in nominal charge of an ostensibly integrated government, and fighting between the center-right coalition and the Pathet Lao was “secret”—at least to the extent that neither the United States nor the DRV publicly admitted its own role in the conflict. This fragile equilibrium established a pattern of combat in Laos that grew in intensity during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.