Books in the Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations series

Historians have long ignored America's record of diplomatic indiscipline. Rogue Diplomats redresses that deficiency, demonstrating that titanic accomplishments such as the Louisiana Purchase resulted in great part because diplomats refused to follow instructions.

In 1971, Americans made two historic visits to China that would transform relations between the two countries. One was by US official Henry Kissinger; the other, earlier, visit was by the US table tennis team. Historians have mulled over the transcripts of Kissinger's negotiations with Chinese leaders. However, they have overlooked how, alongside these diplomatic talks, a rich program of travel and exchange had begun with ping-pong diplomacy. Improbable Diplomats reveals how a diverse cast of Chinese and Americans - athletes and physicists, performing artists and seismologists - played a critical, but to date overlooked, role in remaking US-China relations. Based on new sources from more than a dozen archives in China and the United States, Pete Millwood argues that the significance of cultural and scientific exchanges went beyond reacquainting the Chinese and American people after two decades of minimal contact; exchanges also powerfully influenced Sino-American diplomatic relations and helped transform post-Mao China.

"In this illuminating and comprehensive account, Talbot C. Imlay chronicles the life of Clarence Streit and his Atlantic federal union movement in the Unites States during and following the Second World War. The first book to detail Streit's life, work and significance, it reveals the importance of public political cultures in shaping US foreign relations. In 1939, Streit published Union Now which proposed a federation of the North Atlantic democracies modelled on the US Constitution. The buzz created led Streit to leave his position at The New York Times and devote himself to promoting the union. Over the next quarter of a century, Streit worked to promote a new public political culture, employing a variety of strategies to gain visibility and political legitimacy for his project and for federalist frameworks. In doing so, Streit helped to shape wartime debates on the nature of the post-war international order and of transatlantic relations"--

Contesting France reveals the untold role of intelligence in shaping American perceptions of and policy toward France between 1944 and 1947, a critical period of the early Cold War when many feared that French communists were poised to seize power. In doing so, it exposes the prevailing narrative of French unreliability, weakness, and communist intrigue apparent in diplomatic dispatches and intelligence reports sent to the White House as both overblown and deeply contested. Likewise, it shows that local political factions, French intelligence and government of¿cials, colonial of¿cers, and various trans-national actors in imperial outposts and in the metropole sought access to US intelligence of¿cials in a deliberate effort to shape US policy for their own political postwar agendas. Using extensive archival research in the United States and France, Susan McCall Perlman sheds new light on the nexus between intelligence and policymaking in the immediate postwar era.

This book examines how education contributed to the creation of US empire in the Philippines. Sarah Steinbock-Pratt demonstrates how, in the classroom, American individuals challenged official narratives of empire, and how daily interactions created imperial realities on the ground that often diverged from the dictates of the colonial state.

Drawing on recently declassified personal papers and interview material, Aurelie Basha i Novosejt provides a new analysis of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's decisions during the Vietnam War, revealing little-known misgivings he held toward the direction, strategy, and politics of the conflict.

South Vietnam and the Global Sixties. History - other areas, South-East Asian history, Diplomatic, international history

Israel's Armor analyzes the 'special relationship' between the United States and Israel. It fills a gap in the literature by providing a foundational history of the Israel lobby and its influence on American foreign policy in the first generation of the Palestine conflict.

This book explores the history of science in American foreign relations since World War II. From atomic energy and space sciences to genetic engineering and global warming, Greg Whitesides demonstrates that the sciences were central to American diplomacy during and after the Cold War.

Shows how migration influenced American foreign policy in Cuban-American relations during the Cold War. Drawing on multi-archival research, this study demonstrates how the US government reformulated its Cuban policy in response to the emergence of the Cuban-American community as a new, politically mobilized constituency.

The book provides a deep examination of the meanings Israelis and Americans invested in the relationship between their countries, and explains how these meanings changed through time. For researchers and students of international relations, diplomatic history, and those studying America and the Middle East.

This book uses new Vietnamese sources to challenge conventional scholarship and the popular image of the Vietnamese revolution and the Vietnam War. It is valuable for scholars, students, and general readers interested in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, American foreign relations, revolutions and communism.

This book addresses enduring questions about American political culture and statecraft. Its critique of Wilson's diplomacy highlights the limits of his definition of American internationalism, notably with respect to religion and race. This book will be of interest to graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses on US foreign relations, diplomatic, presidential, and political history.

This book surveys the Vietnamese communist experience during the Vietnam War (1954-75) with a focus on high-level decision-making. Written in an accessible, narrative style geared toward non-experts, the book presents a history of Vietnamese communist strategy, decision-making, and policies, including key battle plans.

As US-Cuban diplomatic relations thaw in the twenty-first century, America's Forgotten Colony examines the ambivalent relationship between Americans and Cubans on the Isle of Pines in the twentieth century. Accessible to specialists, students, and general readers, this book shows how US influence adapted and endured prior to Cuba's revolution.

The Defiant Border explores why the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands have remained largely independent of state controls from the colonial period into the twenty-first century. It will appeal to scholars of South Asia, decolonization, and the Cold War and to general readers seeking historical context for the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan.

This book is a history of the Cold War in Mexico, and Mexico in the Cold War. It uses declassified Mexican and US intelligence sources and Cuban diplomatic records to challenge earlier interpretations that depicted Mexico as a peaceful haven and a weak neighbor forced to submit to US pressure.

Interprets American nationalism as an external demarcation process and early US foreign policy as a vital instrument of nation-building. It introduces a new perspective on the ideological foundations of American foreign relations and the origins and nature of American nationalism, making it relevant to all historians of the early republic.

Interprets American nationalism as an external demarcation process and early US foreign policy as a vital instrument of nation-building. It introduces a new perspective on the ideological foundations of American foreign relations and the origins and nature of American nationalism, making it relevant to all historians of the early republic.

Vietnam's Lost Revolution employs archival material from Vietnam to examine the First Republic of Vietnam's Civic Action program, designed to recast the newly independent state as a modern, anticommunist nation. This book engages with topics like nationalism, post-colonialism, and development in its examination of events that led to the Vietnam War.