This is Noam Chomsky's description of the evolution of American foreign policy and ideology between the early 1970s and Ronald Reagan's first term. He dissects assumptions about US commitment to human rights during the Carter administration, its relation to the Middle East, especialy Israel and the Palestinians, as well as the ways the public intelligensia dealt with information on these topics that was to the contrary of official policy.

This book examines the contention that current US-Russia relations have descended into a ‘New Cold War’. It examines four key dimensions of the original Cold War, the structural, the ideological, the psychological, and the technological, and argues that the current US-Russia relationship bears little resemblance to the Cold War. Presently, the international system is transitioning towards multipolarity, with Russia a declining power, while current ideological differences and threat perceptions are neither as rigid nor as bleak as they once were. Ultimately, when the four dimensions of analysis are weighed in unison, this work argues that the claim of a New Cold War is a hyperbolic assessment of US-Russia relations.

Examines United States foreign policy from the Vietnam era to the Reagan years, including discussions on policy decisions in Indochina, the Middle East, Central America, East Timor, and with the Soviet Union.

This comprehensive study of China's Cold War experience reveals the crucial role Beijing played in shaping the orientation of the global Cold War and the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The success of China's Communist revolution in 1949 set the stage, Chen says. The Korean War, the Taiwan Strait crises, and the Vietnam War--all of which involved China as a central actor--represented the only major "hot" conflicts during the Cold War period, making East Asia the main battlefield of the Cold War, while creating conditions to prevent the two superpowers from engaging in a direct military showdown. Beijing's split with Moscow and rapprochement with Washington fundamentally transformed the international balance of power, argues Chen, eventually leading to the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the decline of international communism. Based on sources that include recently declassified Chinese documents, the book offers pathbreaking insights into the course and outcome of the Cold War.

The 2014 crisis in Ukraine sent a tottering U.S.-Russian relationship over a cliff - a dangerous descent into deep mistrust, severed ties, and potential confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War period. In this incisive new analysis, leading expert on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, Robert Legvold, explores in detail this qualitatively new phase in a relationship that has alternated between hope and disappointment for much of the past two decades. Tracing the long and tortured path leading to this critical juncture, he contends that the recent deterioration of Russia-U.S. relations deserves to be understood as a return to cold war with great and lasting consequences. In drawing out the commonalities between the original cold war and the current confrontation, Return to Cold War brings a fresh perspective to what is happening between the two countries, its broader significance beyond the immediate issues of the day, and how political leaders in both countries might adjust their approaches in order, as the author urges, to make this new cold war "as short and shallow as possible."

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman's Shadow Cold War delves deeper into the era to examine the competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution. When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition. Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.

For more than a century, energy and its procurement have been central to the U.S. position as a world power. How can U.S. relations with established producer nations ensure the stability of energy supplies? How can non-OPEC resources best be brought to the international marketplace? And what are the risks to international security of growing global reliance on imported oil? n Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy, Jan H. Kalicki and David L. Goldwyn bring together the topmost foreign policy and energy experts and leaders to examine these issues, as well as how the U.S. can mitigate the risks and dangers of continued energy dependence through a new strategic approach to foreign policy that integrates both U.S. energy and national security interests. Contributors include Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, Kevin A. Baumert, Michelle Billig, Loyola de Palacio, Jonathan Elkind, Michelle Michot Foss, Leon Fuerth, Lee H. Hamilton, Evan M. Harrje, John P. Holdren, Paul F. Hueper, Amy Myers Jaffe, J. Bennett Johnston, Donald A. Juckett, Viktor I. Kalyuzhny, Melanie A. Kenderdine, William F. Martin, Charles McPherson, Kenneth B. Medlock III, Ernest J. Moniz, Edward L. Morse, Julia Nanay, Shirley Neff, Willy H. Olsen, Bill Richardson, John Ryan, James R. Schlesinger, Gordon Shearer, Adam E. Sieminski, Alvaro Silva-Calderón, Luis Téllez Kuenzler, J. Robinson (Robin) West, Daniel Yergin, and Keiichi Yokobori.