Melvyn P. Leffler

In the United States the Cold War shaped our political culture, our institutions, and our national priorities. Abroad, it influenced the destinies of people everywhere. It divided Europe, split Germany, and engulfed the Third World. It led to a feverish arms race and massive sales of military equipment to poor nations. For at least four decades it left the world in a chronic state of tension where a miscalculation could trigger nuclear holocaust. Documents, oral histories, and memoirs illuminating the goals, motives, and fears of contemporary U.S. officials were already widely circulated and studied during the Cold War, but in the 1970s a massive declassification of documents from the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of Defense, and some intelligence agencies reinvigorated historical study of this war which became the definitive conflict of its time. While many historians used these records to explore specialized topics, this author marshals the considerable available evidence on behalf of an overall analysis of national security policy during the Truman years. To date, it is the most comprehensive history of that administration's progressive embroilment in the Cold War.

To the amazement of the public, pundits, and even the policymakers themselves, the ideological and political conflict that had endangered the world for half a century came to an end in 1990. How did that happen? What caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did?The distinguished historian Melvyn P. Leffler homes in on four crucial episodes when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding, or ending hostilities and asks why they Stalin and Truman devising new policies after 1945; Malenkov and Eisenhower exploring the chance for peace after Stalin’s death in 1953; Kennedy, Khrushchev, and LBJ trying to reduce tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; and Brezhnev and Carter aiming to sustain détente after the Helsinki Conference of 1975. All these leaders glimpsed possibilities for peace, yet they allowed ideologies, political pressures, the expectations of allies and clients, the dynamics of the international system, and their own fearful memories to trap them in a cycle of hostility that seemed to have no end.Leffler’s important book illuminates how Reagan, Bush, and, above all, Gorbachev finally extricated themselves from the policies and mind-sets that had imprisoned their predecessors, and were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.

The Hill and Wang Critical Issues concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.The Specter of Communism is a concise history of the origins of the Cold War and the evolution of U.S.-Soviet relations, from the Bolshevik revolution to the death of Stalin. Using not only American documents but also those from newly opened archives in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe, Leffler shows how the ideological animosity that existed from Lenin's seizure of power onward turned into dangerous confrontation. By focusing on American political culture and American anxieties about the Soviet political and economic threat, Leffler suggests new ways of understanding the global struggle staged by the two great powers of the postwar era.

A vivid portrayal of what drove George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003--an outcome that was in no way predetermined. America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations.In Confronting Saddam Hussein, the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Lefflervividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. He shows how fear, hubris, and power influenced Bush's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the core of Leffler's account is his compelling portrait of Saddam Hussein. Ratherthan stressing Bush's preoccupation with promoting freedom or democracy, Leffler emphasizes Hussein's brutality, opportunism, and unpredictability and illuminates how the Iraqi dictator's record of aggression and intransigence haunted the president and influenced his calculations. Bush was not eagerfor war, and the decision to invade Iraq was not a fait accompli. Yet the president was convinced that only by practicing coercive diplomacy and threatening force could he alter Hussein's defiance, a view shared by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders around the world, including HansBlix, the chief UN inspector. Throughout, Leffler highlights the harrowing anxieties surrounding the decision-making process after the devastating attack on 9/11 and explains the roles of contingency, agency, rationality, and emotion. As the book unfolds, Bush's centrality becomes more and moreevident, as does the bureaucratic dysfunctionality that contributed to the disastrous occupation of Iraq.A compelling reassessment of George W. Bush's intervention in Iraq, Confronting Saddam Hussein provides a provocative reinterpretation of the most important international event of the 21st century.

The Cold War dominated the world political arena for forty-five years. Focusing on the international system and on events in all parts of the globe, Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter have brought together a truly international collection of articles that provide a fresh and comprehensive analysis of the origins of the Cold War. Moving beyond earlier controversies, this edited collection focuses on the interaction between geopolitics and threat perception, technology and strategy, ideology and social reconstruction, national economic reform and patterns of international trade, and decolonization and national liberation. The editors also consider how and why the Cold War spread from Europe to Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America and how groups, classes and elites used the Cold War to further their own interests. This second edition includes the newest research from the Communist side of the Cold War and the most recent debates on culture, race and the role of intelligence analysis. Also included is a completely new section dealing with the Cold War crises in Iran, Turkey and Greece and a guide to further reading.

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.

Leffler argues that American officials did not disregard European developments after World War I but, rather, they sought to settle the war debt and reparations controversies, to stabilize European currencies, and to revive European markets. Leffler bridges the gap between revisionist and traditionalist studies by integrating the diverse aspects of foreign policy and elucidates many new aspects of the foreign policymaking process in the postwar period.Originally published in 1979.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.