Topics

1. The Origins of the “Containment” Strategy: Truman, Kennan, and Initial U.S. Strategy Documents before NSC-68—1946 to January 1950
    
2. Truman’s NSC–68: The New U.S. Grand Strategy—April 1950
    
3. NSC-68: Current Trends, New Defense Requirements, and Follow-on Directives—1950
    
4. The Korean War—1950 to 1953
    
5. Truman and Eisenhower: Western and Soviet Bloc Alliances and Turbulence—1950 to 1957
    
6. Two Eisenhower Arms Control Proposals: Atoms for Peace—1953, Open Skies—1955
    
7. Two U.S. Nuclear Deterrence Doctrines: “Massive Retaliation” and “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD)—1952 to 1968 (and Beyond)
    
8. Khrushchev and the Limits of Soviet “Peaceful Coexistence”—Secret Speech, Suez, Hungarian and Polish Revolutions—1956 to 1960
    
9. Kennedy: Cold War Crises and Khrushchev—1961 to 1963
    
10. Radical China: Mao’s Disasters, Lin Piao’s Doctrine, and Sino-Soviet Tensions—1960s
     
11. Vietnam Becomes a Central Front in the Cold War—1950s to 1960s
     
12. The Soviet-Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Brezhnev Doctrine of Soviet Imperialism, and Pro-Communist “Wars of Liberation”—1968
     
13. Looking Back and Ahead