Marine Corps Topics of Interest

Between the years 1969 and 1972, Nixon's national security team actively fostered the U.S. rapprochement with China. Tudda argues that Nixon, in bold opposition to the stance of his predecessors, recognized the mutual benefits of repairing the Sino-U.S. relationship and was determined to establish a partnership with China.

The Truman administration's decision to embark on an arms build-up in 1950 was a critical event. For the first time other than a World War, the United States became a global military presence. Unlike the World Wars, in this instance the deployment lasted decades, altering the nature of the Cold War and the United States' global role. Such a decision deserves a book dedicated to understanding the strategy and politics behind it. The Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race serves that purpose. The Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race reviews the state of American military affairs in the late 1940s and describes the role of atomic power in American strategy. It also outlines the factional fighting within the Truman administration over military spending and deployments and considers the Truman administration's perceptions of Soviet military power and intentions. The author presents a fascinating account of the strategy and politics behind the Truman administration's decision to engage in a massive arms build-up that initiated the Cold War arms race.

Condemned to Repeat It addresses historical myths that underwrote U.S. containment policy during the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet empire seemed to confirm the wisdom of U.S. containment policy and these 'lessons of history' as universal truths that still influence U.S. foreign policy thinking today.

This examination of a still controversial subject sheds new light on the undercover operations mounted by the CIA during the Cold War. Using a wide range of unpublished government records and documents, James Callanan traces the growth of the agency chronologically as it forged a covert action mission that sought to advance US foreign and defence policy in all corners of the globe.

In Spirits of the Cold War, Ned O’Gorman argues that the early Cold War was a crucible not only for contesting political strategies, but also for competing conceptions of America and its place in the world. Spirits of the Cold War is a researched account of the strategic debate of the early Cold War — a cultural diagnostic of American security discourse and an examination of its origins.

From the fall of Nazi Germany to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a cold war raged between the US and the Soviet Union. Though not a shot was fired, the hostility between the two superpowers threatened the globe with nuclear annihilation. Axelrod reveals the true story behind this globe-spanning battle of wills. He probes the pivotal events of the era: the Marshall Plan; the iron curtain; the Berlin airlift; the Cuban missile crisis; the rise and fall of Joesph McCarthy; the Korean War; the Vietnam War; the arms race.