John Lewis Gaddis

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale. We Now Know: Rethinking the Cold War History came out in 1997.

One of the difficulties with weapons is that they do not automatically self-destruct once they have fulfilled their function. The problem particularly afflicts Americans who, taking advantage of lax gun-control laws, tend to buy whatever they think they need to defend themselves. But as the danger recedes, they frequently forget about the lethal arsenals they have accumulated. Stored carelessly in closets and sock drawers, an appalling number of rifles, shotguns and handguns are used for purposes that their owners never intended. The means of defence outlive the need for it, often with disastrous results.

For nearly six decades, the figure of George Kennan has loomed over US foreign policy. Long before his death in 2005, at the age of 101, he had become a professional wise man: institutes and...

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US/USSR: remembering the Cold War

Anatol Lieven, 16 November 2006

America’s struggle with the Soviet Union and Communism during the Cold War is the key founding myth of the modern American state – a state in many ways utterly different from the one...

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Khrushchev’s Secret

Neal Ascherson, 16 October 1997

Most of us grew up – or were born – during the Cold War. We were formed by a quite extraordinary period, by events which did not take place rather then events which did. We never...

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The Forty Years’ Peace

Keith Kyle, 21 October 1993

Early in 1983, when the newly founded Social Democratic Party was acquiring policies by holding study groups, one of these was devoted to East-West relations. At its first session a musty-looking...

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