Graduate Colloquium in Contemporary U.S. Foreign Relations
History 695a, Section 1
Offered by the Department of History, University of Arizona
Monday, 6:30-9:00pm
Psych, Rm. 305
Fall Semester, 2010
Instructor:
David N. Gibbs, Professor of History and Government
Office: Social Sciences, Rm. 227
Office hours: Wednesday and Friday, 1-2:30pm
Tel: 621-5416
Email: dgibbs@arizona.edu
Class Homepage: http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/hist_695a
Class Announcements
Students should check the announcements page regularly.
his course will survey the literature on United States foreign relations during the period since 1945. The reading list is explicitly interdisciplinary in focus, including readings by historians, as well as political scientists, sociologists, and economists. The study of U.S. foreign relations is especially rich in debates between scholars using different frameworks to interpret specific events, and this course will place special emphasis on these debates. A major objective of this course is to familiarize students with several broad analytical frameworks that historians have used, including:
1. Economic perspectives, which emphasize the way economic variables have motivated and influenced the conduct of U.S. foreign relations. Historians in this tradition have explored how the needs of the U.S. macro-economy, especially the need for enlarged foreign markets for U.S. products have affected American overseas expansion;
2. Realist or power-oriented perspectives, which emphasize the importance of national security, and the desire to protect against external threats, as motivating factors;
3. And Idealist perspectives, which emphasize the purportedly altruistic characteristics of American national character – the desire to export democracy and human rights – as major motivations.
Throughout the semester, the readings will illustrate how these three perspectives (including several sub-variants) can be used to understand specific events in the history of U.S. overseas relations. American foreign policy will be considered broadly, to include not only the actions of the State Department and White House, but also other government agencies, such as the military, CIA, and Treasury Department, as well as non-governmental agents, such as business interests, elite organizations, religious groups, think tanks, and organized crime.
A second basic objective is to explore the problem of political biases – which are common to all historical analyses – and how these can affect or (possibly) taint the study of history. The question of historical “objectivity” will be explored, along with the various ways historians and social scientists have tried to address this problem.
Class Requirements
Requirements include completing all required readings for each week, and also a series of three ten-page papers, assigned at intervals during the semester. The three papers will require them to integrate and analyze readings from several different classes and issue areas. Each of these papers will be worth 25 percent of the final grade (for a total of 75 percent). The remaining 25 percent will be based on class participation in discussions of the weekly readings (both quality and quantity of participation will be considered). In general, students are expected to read approximately 200 pages per week for this class.
Though this is a reading colloquium, I will nevertheless provide some discussion about source material in diplomatic history. I have created a web site for locating declassified government documents and archival materials, many of which are available online.
Readings
The following texts can all be purchased at 606 N. 4th Avenue:
Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006);
Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968);
E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: An Introduction to International Relations (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).
Several articles listed below are available through one of several electronic databases (JSTOR, ABI Inform-Proquest, and EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier). Other materials, as indicated below, are available through the course D2L page.
Note: I may make small changes in the reading list – with advance notice – during the course of the semester.
August 23
Introduction to Class
No assigned readings.
August 30
The Sociology of Knowledge
Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, chaps. 1, 2, 3, 5.
David N. Gibbs, "Sigmund Freud as a Theorist of Government Secrecy," 2010, unpublished. Available through D2L.
Recommended:
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” in George Orwell: A Collection of Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday-Anchor Books, 1954). For full text, click here.
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920), pp. 1-59, 110-21. Click here for full text (go to "B/W PDF").
September 6: Labor Day, no class.
September 13
The Influence of the Cold War on History and Social Science
Conyers Reed, “The Social Responsibilities of the Historian,” American Historical Review 55, no. 2, 1950. Available through JSTOR.
Harvey Weinstein, Psychiatry and the CIA: Victims of Mind Control (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Press, 1990), chap. 8. Available through D2L.
David N. Gibbs, “The Question of Whitewashing in American History and Social Science,” in Four Arrows [Donald Trent Jacobs], ed., Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006). Available through D2L.
Peter Novick, That ‘Noble Dream’: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chap. 10. Available through D2L.
Recommended:
Mark Solovey, “Project Camelot and the 1960s Epistemological Revolution: Rethinking the Politics, Patronage, Social Science Nexus,” Social Studies of Science 31, no. 2, 2001. Available through JSTOR.
Frances Stoner Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999).
Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
Irene Gendzier, “Play It Again Sam: The Practice and Policy of Development,” in Christopher Simpson, ed., Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War (New York: New Press, 1998).
September 20
The Realist and Idealist Approaches to International Relations
Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Read entire book.
Recommended:
Walter Lafeber, “The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 2, 1999. Available through Wiley Online.
Hans J. Morgenthau, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene,” Foreign Affairs 45, no. 4, 1967. Available through ABI Inform-Proquest.
September 27
Political Economy Approaches
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (London: Pluto, 1996), chaps. 1-5. For a digitized version of this book, click here.
David N. Gibbs, “Pretexts and U.S. Foreign Policy: The War on Terrorism in Historical Perspective,” New Political Science 26, no. 3, 2004. For full text, click here.
Ethan Kaplan, Arindrajit Dube, and Suresh Naidu, “Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information,” unpublished ms, 2008. For full text, click here.
James Kurth, “The Political Consequences of the Product Cycle: Industrial History and Political Outcomes,” International Organization 33, no. 1, 1979. Available through JSTOR.
Ronald Cox, Power and Profits: U.S. Policy in Central America (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), pp. 1-19. Available through D2L.
Kees Van Der Pijl, “From Gorbachev to Kosovo: Atlantic Rivalries and the Re-Incorporation of Eastern Europe,” Review of International Political Economy 8, no. 2, 2001. Available through JSTOR.
Recommended:
John Robinson and Ronald Gallagher, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review 6, no. 1, 1953. Available through JSTOR.
Contributions by Thomas J. McCormick, J. Garry Clifford, Michael J. Hogan, Akira Iriye, Louis A. Perez, Jr., Emily S. Rosenberg, Thomas G. Patterson, Melvyn P. Leffler, Michael J. Hunt, and Richard H. Immerman in “Round Table: Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations,” Journal of American History 77, no. 1, 1990. Available through JSTOR.
First short paper assigned; due in October 4.
October 4
The Military-Industrial Complex Approach
Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People,” January 17, 1961. For full text, click here.
Ben Baack and Edward Ray, “The Political Economy of the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States,” The Journal of Economic History 45, no. 2, 1985. Available through JSTOR.
Gregory Hooks and Gregory McLauchlan, “The Institutional Foundation of War-Making: Three Eras of U.S. War-Making, 1939-1989,” Theory and Society 21, no. 6, 1992. Available through JSTOR.
John M. Treddenick, “The Arms Race and Military Keynesianism,” Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques 11, no. 1, 1985. Available through JSTOR.
Lisa Martino-Taylor, "The Military Industrial Academic Complex and a New Social Autism," Journal of Political and Military Sociology 36, no. 1, 2008. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Complete.
Recommended:
John L. Boies, Buying for Armageddon: Business, Society, and Military Spending since the Cuban Missile Crisis (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
Harry Magdoff, “Militarism and Imperialism,” American Economic Review 60, no. 2, 1970. Available through JSTOR.
October 11
Interpreting America’s Rise as a Major Power
Jeffrey Freiden, “Sectoral Conflict and U.S. Foreign Economic Policy, 1914-1940,” International Organization 42, no. 1, 1988. Available through JSTOR
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Norton, 1988), pp. 18-89. Available through D2L.
Andrew J. Bacevich, "Tragedy Renewed: William Appleman Williams," World Affairs 171, no. 3, 2009. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier.
Samuel Huntington, “American Ideals Versus American Institutions,” Political Science Quarterly 97, no. 1, 1982. Available through JSTOR.
Alfred E. Eckes, Opening America’s Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), chap. 3. Available through D2L.
Recommended:
Paul Buhle, “Williams for 2000: A Comment,” Diplomatic History 25, no. 2, 2001. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier (click on “PDF Full Text” at bottom).
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 46-91. Available through D2L.
October 18
Foreign Economic Policy and the Bretton Woods System
Thomas Ferguson, “From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition, and American Public Policy During the Great Depression,” International Organization 38, no. 1, 1984. Available through JSTOR.
Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression: 1929-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 19-30, 291-308. Available through D2L.
William Glenn Gray, "Floating the System: Germany, the United States, and the Breakdown of Bretton Woods, 1969-1973," Diplomatic History 31, no. 2, 2007. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier.
Ronald W. Cox and David Skidmore-Hess, U.S. Politics and the Global Political Economy: Corporate Power, Conservative Shift (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), chap. 3. Available through D2L.
John Maynard Keynes, “On National Self Sufficiency,” Yale Review 22, no. 4, 1933. For full text click here .
Recommended:
Michael Cox, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, et. al., “Special Forum: The Marshall Plan and the Origins of the Cold War Reassessed,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 1, 2005. Available through Project Muse.
Susan Strange, “States, Firms and Diplomacy,” International Affairs 68, no. 1, 1992. Available through JSTOR.
October 25
Interpreting the Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chaps 1, 10. Available through D2L.
Melvin P. Leffler, "The Cold War: What Do 'We Now Know'?" American Historical Review 104, no. 2, 1999. Available through JSTOR.
George F. Kennan (“X”), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 7, 1947. Available through ABI Inform-Proquest.
Joshua Botts, “‘Nothing to Seek and... Nothing to Defend’: George F. Kennan’s Core Values and American Foreign Policy, 1939-1993,” Diplomatic History 30, no. 5, 2006. Available through Wiley Online.
Robert Frazier, "Kennan, 'Universalism,' and the Truman Doctrine," Journal of Cold War Studies 11, 2, 2009.Available through Project Muse.
David N. Gibbs, “Reassessing Soviet Motives for Invading Afghanistan: A Declassified History,” Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 2, 2006. For full text, click here.
Recommended:
Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: The Roaring of the Cataract (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 408-38. Available through D2L.
Bruce H. Lester, “Recent Scholarship and Findings about the Korean War,” American Studies International 36, no. 3, 1998. Available through Wilson Online.
Second short paper assigned; due November 1 .
November 1
Interpreting the Cold War II
Layne, Peace of Illusions, chaps. 2, 3, 4.
Robert Buzzanco, “What Happened to the New Left?: Toward a Radical Reading of American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 4, 1999. Available EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier.
Geir Lundestad, “‘Empire by Invitation’ in the American Century,” Diplomatic History 23 no. 2, 1999. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier.
Recommended:
Stephen Weissman, "An Extraordinary Rendition [on the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba]," Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 2, 2010. Available through EBSCOhost-EJS.
November 8
Elite Organizations and Foreign Policy
Stephen Gill, The Trilateral Commission and American Hegemony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 143-202. Available through D2L (reading list as part 1, and part 2).
Andrew Williams, "Before the Special Relationship: The Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Rumor of Anglo-American War," Journal of Transatlantic Studies 1, no. 2, 2003. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Premier.
Lawrence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), pp. 117-87. Available through D2L.
Matthew Evangelista, “Second Guessing the Experts: Citizens’ Group Criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Estimates of Soviet Military Policy,” International History Review 19, no. 3, 1997. Available through JSTOR.
Recommended:
Robert Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs: The History of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
November 15
Searching for a Foreign Policy “Theme” in the Post-Cold War Era
Layne, The Peace of Illusions, chap. 5.
Susan Watkins, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” New Left Review, no. 54, 2008. Available through D2L.
Emily S. Rosenberg, “Rescuing Women and Children,” Journal of American History 89, no. 2, 2002. For full text, click here.
Tony Smith, “Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 2, 1999. Available through EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier.
Peter Gowan, “Western Economic Diplomacy and the New Eastern Europe,” New Left Review, no. 182, 1990. Available through D2L.
Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 2, 1999. Available through ABI Inform-Proquest.
Recommended:
Henri Houban, “A Marxist Analysis of Present-Day Globalization," Nature, Society, and Thought 19, no. 4, 2006. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Complete.
November 22
External Lobby Groups and US Foreign Policy
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, March 23, 2006. For full text, click here.
Robert Calder, Beware the British Serpent: The Role of Writers in British Propaganda in the United States, 1939-1945 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004), chap. Electronic book version available through UA Library, click here.
Max Holland, “I. F. Stone: Encounters with Soviet Intelligence,” Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 3, 2009. For full text, click here.
D. D. Guttenplan, “Red Harvest: The KGB in America,” The Nation, May 6, 2009 (in six parts). For full text click here.
Edward J. Epstein, “The Spy Who Came in to be Sold,” The New Republic, July 22, 1985. Full text available through EBSCOhost - Academic Search Complete.
“Life of Brian,” Economist, July 31, 1993. Full text available through EBSCOhost - Academic Search Complete.
November 29
Thanksgiving recess, no class.
December 6
The War on Terrorism
Max Paul Friedman, “Anti-Americanism and U.S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 32, no. 4, 2008. Full text available through Wiley Interscience.
Bruce Cumings, “The American Way of Going to War: Mexico (1846) to Iraq (2003),” Orbis 51, no. 2, 2007. Full text available through Science Direct.
Alfred W. McCoy, "Science in Dachau's Shadow: HEBB, Beecher, and the Development of CIA Psychological Torture and Modern Medical Ethics," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 43, no. 4, 2007. Full text available through Academic Search Complete (click on PDF Full Text, at top of page).
Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Second Edition (London: Pluto Press, 2003), pp. 3-40. For a digitized version of this book, click here.
R. Guy Emerson, "Radical Neglect? The 'War on Terror' and Latin America," Latin American Politics and Society 52, no. 1, 2010. Available through EBSCOhost-Academic Search Complete.
Recommended:
Alfred, W. McCoy, "The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb," Progressive, October 2006. Full text available through Academic Search Complete (click on PDF Full Text, at top of page).
Third short paper assigned; due December 10.