COLD WAR IN THE AMERICAS

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COLD WAR IN THE AMERICAS
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Readings

• Smith, Talons, chs. 5-8

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CHRONOLOGY OF COLD WAR

• 1941-45 World War II (Europe and Asia)
• 1946 Churchill speech on iron curtain
• 1947 Truman Doctrine
• 1948 Berlin airlift
• 1949 Soviet atomic bomb, Communist victory in
  China
• 1950-53 Korean War
• 1965-75 Vietnam War
• 1962 Cuban missile crisis
• 1989 Collapse of Berlin Wall
• 1990-91 Implosion of Soviet Union

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The U.S. and the Cold War

• Credos and Rules of the Game
• Bipolar conflict
• Arms race and mutual assured destruction (MAD)
• The need for containment of Soviet expansion
• Geopolitics, dominoes, and the Third World
• Marxism and the developing world

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Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953
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Allied leaders meeting at Yalta, 1945
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Harry S. Truman, 1948
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Mao Zedong, 1966
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Shaping U.S. Policy

• Monroe redux cordoning off the Americas
• Economic aid the Alliance for Progress
• Purging the body politic
• Containing revolution
• Guatemala (1954)
• Bay of Pigs (1961)
• Dominican Republic (1965)
• Chile (1973)
• Grenada (1983)
• Central America (1980s)

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The Kennedy White House John Jr. advising his
father
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Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
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Reflections

• Reality vs. ideology
• Imagining alternatives (?)
• On the language of war