KC Johnson

History 3450: U.S. Foreign Relations

Tuesdays & Thursdays at 2.15pm

This course explores American foreign relations from the Progressive Era to the present day.

Requirements:

• Exams—Midterm & final (50%)
• NSC Group Participation (30%)
• Quizzes [each class before midterm] (10%)
• Participation (10%)

Contact Info:

Office: Boylan 1127a (Thursdays, 1-2, and by appointment)

email: kcjohnson9@gmail.com; cell: 207-329-8456

All journal articles will be emailed, and each class also will feature additional reading from primary sources. In-class handouts and in-class power-points will be posted on the website as the course proceeds.

PowerPoints & Handouts

Schedule:

August 29.  Introduction

August 31. Progressivism & Foreign Affairs (1902-1914)

• Daniel Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History (1982)
• Nancy Mitchell, “The Height of the German Challenge: The Venezuela Blockade, 1902–3,” Diplomatic History 20 (1996), pp. 185-210.
• Mary Barton, “The Global War on Anarchism: The United States and International Anarchist Terrorism, 1898–1904,” Diplomatic History 39 (2015), pp. 303-330.

September 5. World War I (1914-1918)

• Ross A. Kennedy, “Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and American National Security,” Diplomatic History 25 (2001), pp. 1-32.
• M.B. Biskupski, “The Diplomacy of Wartime Relief: The United States and Poland, 1914–1918,” Diplomatic History 19 (1995), pp. 431-452.
• Michael Adas, “Ambivalent Ally: American Military Intervention and the Endgame and Legacy of World War I,” Diplomatic History 38 (2014), pp. 700-12.

September 7. The League of Nations Controversy (1919-1920)

• Gerwarth and Manela, “The Great War as a Global War: Imperial Conflict and the Reconfiguration of World Order, 1911–1923,” Diplomatic History 38 (2014), pp. 788-800.
• Emily Rosenberg, “World War I, Wilsonianism, and Challenges to U.S. Empire,” Diplomatic History 38 (2014), pp. 852-863.
• League-related documents & maps

September 12. The Peace Progressives & U.S. Foreign Policy (1921-1929)

• B.J.C. McKercher, “’A Certain Irritation’: The White House, the State Department, and the Desire for a Naval Settlement with Great Britain, 1927–1930,” Diplomatic History 31 (2007), pp. 829-863.
• Jaime Aguila, “Mexican/U.S. Immigration Policy prior to the Great Depression,” Diplomatic History 31 (2007), pp. 207-225.

September 14. Great Depression and International Affairs (1929-1935)

• William Walker III, “Crucible for Peace: Herbert Hoover, Modernization, and Economic Growth in Latin America,” Diplomatic History 30 (2006), pp. 83-117.
• Joseph Fronczak, “Local People’s Global Politics: A Transnational History of the Hands Off Ethiopia Movement of 1935,” Diplomatic History 39 (2015), pp. 247-274.

September 19. FDR & the Axis Threat (1935-1939)

• Eric Paul Roorda, “Genocide Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy, the Trujillo Regime, and the Haitian Massacres of 1937,” Diplomatic History 20, pp. 301-320.
• Kevin Smith, “Reassessing Roosevelt’s View of Chamberlain after Munich: Ideological Affinity in the Geoffrey Thompson-Claude Bowers Correspondence,” Diplomatic History 33 (2009), pp. 839-64.

September 26. The United States and the World at War (1939-1941)

• Noriko Kawamura, “Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s Decision to Go to War with the United States: Reexamined,”Diplomatic History 31 (2007), pp. 51-79.
• Douglas M. Charles, “Informing FDR: FBI Political Surveillance and the Isolationist-Interventionist Foreign Policy Debate, 1939–1945 Diplomatic History 24 (2000), pp. 211-232.

September 28. World War II (1941-1945)

• Sarah Ellen Graham, “American Propaganda, the Anglo-American Alliance, and the ‘Delicate Question’ of Indian Self-Determination,” Diplomatic History 33 (2009), pp. 223-259.
• Geoffrey Roberts, “Stalin at the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences,” Journal of Cold War Studies 9 (2007), pp. 6-40.
• Johan Matz, “Sweden, the United States, and Raoul Wallenberg’s Mission to Hungary,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14 (2012), pp. 97-148

October 3. No class

October 5. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1945-1947)

• Melvyn Leffler, “The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-48,” American Historical Review 89 (1984).
• Marc Trachtenberg, “The United States and Eastern Europe in 1945: A Reassessment,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, pp. 94-132.

October 10. The United States and the Militarization of the Cold War (1947-1952)

• Steven Casey, “Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and the Politics of Mobilization, 1950–51,” Diplomatic History (2005).
• Robert Frazier, “Kennan, ‘Universalism,’ and the Truman Doctrine,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 11, pp. 3-34.
• Deborah Larson, “The Origins of Commitment: Truman adn West Berlin,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13 (2011), pp. 180-212.

October 12. The New Look (1953-1960)

• Matthew Connelly, “Taking off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict During the Algerian War for Independence,” The American Historical Review 105 (June 2000), pp. 739-769.
• Michelle Getchell, “Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala,” Journal of Cold War Studies 17 (2015), pp. 73-101.

October 17. Kennedy, Khrushchev, & the Cold War (1961-1963)

• David Coleman, “The Missiles of November, December, January, February . . . : The Problem of Acceptable Risk in the Cuban Missile Crisis Settlement,” Journal of Cold War Studies 9.3 (2007), pp. 5-48.
• Noam Kochavi, “Limited Accommodation, Perpetuated Conflict: Kennedy, China, and the Laos Crisis, 1961 – 1963,” Diplomatic History (2002).

October 19. Midterm

October 24. Foreign Policy and the Kennedy/Johnson Transition

• Thomas Allcock, “Becoming “Mr. Latin America”: Thomas C. Mann Reconsidered,” Diplomatic History 38 (2014), pp. 1017-34.
• Wien Arthus, “The Challenge of Democratizing the Caribbean during the Cold War: Kennedy Facing the Duvalier Dilemma,” Diplomatic History 39 (2015), pp. 504-31.

October 26. Vietnam & the Cold War (1965-1968)

• Francis M. Bator, “No Good Choices: LBJ and the Vietnam/Great Society Connection,” Diplomatic History 32 (2008).
• Pierre Aselin, ““We Don’t Want a Munich”: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy, 1965–1968,” Diplomatic History 36 (2012), pp. 547-81.
• Bernard Firestone, “Failed Mediation: U Thant, the Johnson Administration, and the Vietnam War,” Diplomatic History 37 (2013), pp. 1060-1089.

October 31. Nixon, Kissinger, & Reorienting the Cold War (1969-1973)

• Evelyn Goh, “Nixon, Kissinger, and the ‘Soviet Card’ in the U.S. Opening to China, 1971–1974,” Diplomatic History (2005).
• Robert McMahon, “The Politics, and Geopolitics, of American Troop Withdrawals from Vietnam, 1968–1972,” Diplomatic History (2010), pp. 471-83.
• Thomas Zeiler, “Requiem for the Common Man: Class, the Nixon Economic Shock, and the Perils of Globalization,” Diplomatic History 37 (2013), pp. 1-23.

November 2. The Rise & Fall of Human Rights Diplomacy (1974-1978)

• Barbara Keys, “Congress, Kissinger, and the Origins of Human Rights Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History 34 (2010), p. 823-851.
• Tanya Harmer, “Fractious Allies: Chile, the United States, and the Cold War, 1973–76,” Diplomatic History 37 (2013), pp. 109-143.
• Christian Peterson, “The Carter Administration and the Promotion of Human Rights in the Soviet Union, 1977–1981,” Diplomatic History 38 (2014), pp. 628-656.
• Pat Holt (Foreign Relations Committee staffer) oral history

November 7. Crisis Diplomacy (1979-1985)

• Rose McDermott, “Belief-Systems and Policy Choices,” Journal of Cold War Studies 4.4 (2002), pp. 29-59.
• Evan McCormack, “Freedom Tide,” Journal of Cold War Studies 16 (2014), pp. 60-109.

November 9. The United States and the End of the Cold War (1985-1989)

• Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 1),” Journal of Cold War Studies, 5.4 (2003), pp. 178-256.
• Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 2),” Journal of Cold War Studies 6.4 (2004), 3-64.

November 14. The New World Order (1989-1992)

• Jeremi Suri, Journal of Cold War Studies 4.4 (2002), pp. 60-92.
• Eandolph Kluver, “Rhetorical Trajectories of Tiananmen Square,” Diplomatic History 34 (2010), pp. 71-94.
• Batholemew Sparrow, “Realism’s Practitioner: Brent Scowcroft and the Making of the New World Order, 1989–1993,” Diplomatic History 34 (2010), pp. 141-175.
• Mary Elias Sarotte, “Not One Inch Eastward? Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Gorbachev, and the Origin of Russian Resentment toward NATO Enlargement in February 1990,” Diplomatic History 34 (2010), pp. 119-140.

November 16. From Clinton through 9/11

• Melvyn Leffler, “9/11 and American Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 29 (2005), pp. 395-413.
• 9/11 Commission, Strategic Recommendations

November 28: The Bush Years

Melvyn Leffler, “The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration: Memoirs, History, Legacy,” Diplomatic History 38 (2013),

November 30: The Obama Years

December 5. Group Presentations

December 7. Group Presentations

December 12. Review: Jeopardy!