Kissinger: A Historiography Essay

Henry Kissinger- Told the history of 19th-century Europe in his book A World Restored, through the eyes of Austria and England monarchs who neglected the millions who fell victim to statesmen’s policies.

The American “way of war” can be seen politically through the evolution of military policy as political perspectives changed. Post-World War II reveals primary and consistent policies that lead American military policymakers to avoid major international conflict. Coined the Cold War, Americans began waging war

Throughout the mid to late twentieth century the United States was extremely concerned with their foreign policy due to mishaps that surfaced as a result of lazy administration when dealing with communism. As an example, one mishap was how the Truman Administration dealt with China after the KMT surfaced following WWII. Instead of immediately defending the People’s Republic of China, the United States stayed mostly secluded and independent and let China slip into the favor of the KMT. This was an example of the United States’ being too moderate in their foreign policy. However, on the other hand, there were examples where the United States was too aggressive in their foreign policy. An example of this was how the US chose to dealt with North

The realization, however, came with a stark reality: in order to obtain access to overseas markets, the US would need to devise clever strategies to validate and facilitate these aims. So, while power-hungry business moguls were busy conjuring up plans as to how to bring this about, government and military officials like Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Henry Lodge, President McKinley and Captain A. T. Mahan sought to extend the political and military presence of US forces around the world. The plan was to gain a foothold, and eventually be positioned to control leaders and policies of overseas nations. Naturally, it was a plan that would require the careful construction of outwardly logical

The doctrine of United States foreign policy has changed significantly during and after the Cold War, as the United States redefined its foreign policies during each of these eras. Although inarguably United States promotes liberal democracy, how it goes about doing so currently, could not be necessarily categorized as a liberal approach. During the Cold War United States had a more liberal approach towards promotion of democracy. Yet this approach has since changed as it did not emphasize enough the importance of other states materialistic needs and its impact on their international behavior, thus leading United States to adopt a more constructivist perspective toward its foreign policy.

When one can truly understand and uncover the meaning behind these articles and how they fit into one or more of the ‘boxes’ we call paradigms and perspectives. In order to dissect and analyze the case of the Cold War, especially its origins, one must not only skim through the text and uncover main ideas, but also must also relate the readings to these paradigms and establish one’s own ideals and opinions regarding the study of international relations. Personally, I believe the articles associated with the origins of the Cold War along with Professor Katzenstein’s lecture on the topic provide strong arguments for the use of a ‘middle fish’ perspective and a ‘big fish’ paradigm: domestic politics and realism, respectively. Through George Kennan’s personal accounts, experience and analysis at both the time of the Cold War’s inception and forty-plus years later after the fall of the Soviet Union, a point is made regarding the nature of Soviet expansion as an offensive maneuver, which he believed must be contained by a defensive strategy. This point of conflicting strategies by the U.S. and (especially) the Soviet Union provides the reader with a realist argument and perspective. Also, in his second piece, which details remarks made to the Council on Foreign Relations in 1994, Kennan explains that instead of whole-heartedly adopting

Our analysis would be based on scholarly journals by Melvin Small and Geoffrey Warner, with one going against both the containment and detente policies while the second would actually consider Kissinger as being the savior of the Nation from exiting the war, dirty. Towards the end, we have Thornton book review of Savienery and rather considering that the containment policy actually made a big difference on the outcomes of the war.

In the article, “Nixon's Second Term: Policy Prospects in the Middle East,” Malcolm Kerr discusses Richard Nixon’s first presidency, Nixon’s current state in his second term as commander in chief, and gives a hypothesis about what Nixon would do for the remainder of his term as President. I thoroughly enjoyed this article because often when you think about Nixon, you automatically think about the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation from presidency. This article was written only months prior to the scandal surfacing, so it gives a neat perspective on the sentiments towards Nixon that is different than most post-scandal articles do.

This essay will focus on the Reagan Administration which spanned from January 1981 to January 1989. When Reagan became President, he had only one clear, defined foreign policy goal – containment of the Soviet Union, or the “evil empire” as he referred to it. He primarily wanted to stop the USSR from growing larger and to keep other non-Communist countries from becoming Communist. In the past, American presidents had used a theory called the “Domino Theory” to justify the need for intervention around

Houghton focuses on the traditionalist view of the Cold War. Houghton mentions in his research that the western allies had abandoned the Morgenthau Plan for the Marshall Plan that targeted the Soviet Union and aimed at preventing it from expanding its influence on another country while aiding war torn country. Robert H. Ferrell’s book Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists, views Franklin D Roosevelt’s administration as pulling back into isolationist country as Winston Churchill viewed the United States, leaving Europe with its problem to solve its own problem, leaving a void of a strong authoritative and economic strength allowing the Soviet Union to aid Britain and Germany. Viewing the orthodox stand point of the Cold War or the revisionist view, there is an amount of incongruity in both politically and scholarly platforms on what brought the Cold War tension to fruition a discussion on whether it was avoidable or inevitable between the two superpowers was largely in part on the work of Timothy White and John Lewis Gaddis. The final project would attempt to fill the back story of the Cold War to justify that the Cold War was an inevitable event that was brought by the Soviet Union because of its postwar

With this book, a major element of American history was analyzed. The Cold War is rampant with American foreign policy and influential in shaping the modern world. Strategies of Containment outlines American policy from the end of World War II until present day. Gaddis outlines the policies of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, including policies influenced by others such as George Kennan, John Dulles, and Henry Kissinger. The author, John Lewis Gaddis has written many books on the Cold War and is an avid researcher in the field. Some of his other works include: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War

Also both have been criticized for their knowledge about operations and conflicts, but did anything to confront or resolve them. They both have enormous support from the government, but the public does not seem to appreciate them in the same way that the political authorities. Kissinger was the first that is still relevant today; Kissinger has written different books that are taught at the University and Albright’s opinion is still relevant. Even though Kissinger did normalize the U.S.-Chinese relationship, he will be remembered as the statesman who was “implicated in horrors in Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Vietnam, East Timor, Latin America, southern Africa, and Washington, DC (the assassination of Orlando Letelier), as well as against the Kurds” (Grandin

Where we were headed, or so we thought, was just about anywhere in the western Pacific except for Vietnam – or China or North Korea, of course. We had just lived through the drama of President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation a few months earlier, with an abrupt transition to the short but eventful Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remained in the Ford

This paper will first discuss the nature of rationalism as laid out by James Fearon in his article “Realist Explanations for War.” By using the rational bargaining model, the increased incidence of American and Soviet involvement in 3rd world conflicts will then be explained in the context of information and commitment problems. Additionally, the paper will discuss how previous conceptions of the Cold War push to the periphery driven by conflicting moral and economic ideologies fail to adequately explain a causal mechanism for the increase of 3rd world interventionism after the Second World War until the fall of the Soviet Union. In conclusion, the implications of such a model will be applied to current foreign affairs.

Henry Kissinger work for as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He was a key figure in uttering U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, and remains one of the leading authorities on international relations and diplomacy.