_____________________________________________________________

H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE Arnold Offner, _Another Such Victory: President Truman
and the Cold War, 1945-1953_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Roundtable Editor: Thomas Maddux <Thomas.Maddux@csun.edu>

Reviewers: Mark Byrnes, Carolyn Eisenberg, Eduard Mark, Andrew Rotter,
William Stueck, Vladislav Zubok

________________________________________________________________ Introduction:

The H-Diplo roundtable on Professor Arnold Offner's recent study returns
to the old battleground of the Cold War more than ten years after its
conclusion. In the commentary on Professor Offner's reassessment of
President Truman and the Cold War, a number of the issues that divided
specialists on the Cold War are revisited, re-evaluated, and placed into a
new perspective under the impact of the end of the conflict and the
emergence of primary sources from the Soviet Union and its Cold War
allies. Since the present intrudes into discussions of the past by
historians, there are also some comparisons of President Truman and
President George W. Bush.

Professor Offner's book and the commentary explore many issues including

1.) Offner's central thesis on the nature and impact of Truman's
perspective, values and decisions on the emergence, nature and extent of
the Cold War. The commentators explore all areas of this issue, raising
questions about how much Truman shaped U.S. policy, about the relationship
of style and policy, and about the psychological dimensions of
decision-making.

2.) Discussion on the degree of Truman's responsibility for the Cold War
inevitably leads to evaluation of the nature of the conflict and the role
of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong and China. The
availability of new documents and assessments on the communist side has
shifted the debate somewhat in this roundtable but major disagreements,
reflecting the revisionist-post-revisionist debate of the 1970s persist on
somewhat different grounds with respect to the nature of Stalin's
objectives, tactics, and relationship with Mao.

3.) Some Cold War issues receive less attention in this roundtable, such
as the role of atomic diplomacy in Truman's policies, or the influence of
open door economic considerations, and other issues receive continuing or
expanded coverage such as Truman's policies in Asia and the question of
whether or not Truman had viable alternatives to the policies pursued with
respect to China before and after Mao's victory and the Korean War.

4.) The cultural turn hasn't made much of a dent in this roundtable either
in Offner's study or the commentary despite some suggestions that
categories of race and gender should be included, particularly in an
evaluation of Truman's use of words.


Thomas Maddux

CSU Northridge

Thomas.Maddux@csun.edu


Roundtable Participants:

Professor Arnold Offner is the Cornelia F. Hugel Professor of History and
head of the Department of History at Lafayette College. His major field of
teaching has been U.S. foreign policy and political history and in 1999 he
received the Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award from Lafayette College.
He is past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign
Relations. His major publications have focused on U.S. foreign policy from
the 1930s through the Korean War starting with _American Appeasement:
United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938_ (1969), and _The
Origins of the Second World War: American Foreign Policy and World
Politics, 1917-1941_ (1975). Professor Offner has edited _American and the
Origins of World War II, 1933-1941_ (1971), and is co-editor of _Victory
in Europe, 1945: From World War to Cold War_ (2000). Professor Offner's
SHAFR presidential address, "'Another Such Victory': President Truman,
American Foreign Policy, and the Cold War," published in _Diplomatic
History_, 23, No. 2(Spring 1999), offers an early statement of his
conclusion on Truman's Cold War leadership.

Mark Byrnes is an Associate Professor at Wofford College in Spartanburg,
South Carolina. Byrnes completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at
Austin in 1993 with a dissertation under the direction of Robert A.
Divine. He is currently revising his dissertation into a book manuscript,
_Interests and Ideals: The Truman Administration, Spain and Yugoslavia,
1945-1953_ for the University of Missouri Press. Brynes has published _The
Truman Years, 1945-1953_ (London: Longman Press, 2000) and several
articles including "'Overruled and World Down': Truman Sends an Ambassador
to Spain," _Presidential Studies Quarterly_, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (June 1999),
263-279.

Carolyn Eisenberg is Professor of History at Hofstra University. Eisenberg
received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1971. Eisenberg's _Drawing
the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949_ (Cambridge
University Press, 1996) received The Stuart L. Bernath Prize of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the 1996 Herbert
Hoover Book Award of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association.
Eisenberg's teaching specializations include U.S. history, 20th Century
Policy and Nixon.

Dr. Eduard Mark has written extensively on the origins of the Cold War. He
works for the historical program of the Department of the Air Force, where
he is currently writing two histories about national security policy in
the early Cold War. One deals with the defense of Western Europe, the
other with plans and preparations for the strategic air offensive against
the Soviet Union. Mark is the author of _Aerial Interdiction: Air Power
and the Land Battle in Three American Wars_ (Washington, D.C.: Center for
Air Force History, 1994) and _Defending the West: The United States Air
Force and European Security, 1946-1988_ (Washington, D.C.: Air Force
History and Museum Program, 1999) as well as a number of articles on the
origins of the Cold War such as "American Policy toward Eastern Europe and
the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1946: An Alternative Interpretation,"
The Journal of American History, Vol. 68 (Sept. 1981), 313-336, and
"October or Thermidor: Interpretations of Stalinism and the Perception of
Soviet Foreign Policy in the United States, 1927-1947," The American
Historical Review, Vol. 94 (Oct. 1989), 937-962. His most recent essays
include "The War Scare of 1946 and Its Consequences," Diplomatic History,
Vol. 21 (Summer 1997), 383-415, and "Revolution By Degrees: Stalin's
National Front Strategy for Europe, 1941-1947," _Working Paper_, Cold War
International History Project

Andrew Rotter is Professor of History at Colgate University. Rotter
obtained his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1981 and teaches U.S.
diplomatic history, recent U.S. history and the Vietnam War. Rotter has
published _The Path to Vietnam_ (Cornell University Press, 1987), _Light
at the End of the Tunnel: A Vietnam War Anthology_, 2nd edition (Scholarly
Resources Press, 1999), and, most recently, _Comrades at Odds: Culture and
Indo-U.S. Relations, 1947-1964_ (Cornell University Press, 2000). Rotter
has also written several influential articles, most notably "Gender
Relations, Foreign Relations: The United States and South Asia,
1947-1964," _Journal of American History_, Vol. 81 (September 1994),
518-42, and "The Gendering of Peoples and Nations" in James Merrill and
Thomas G. Paterson, eds., _Major Problems in American Foreign Relations
since 1914_, Vol. II (2000).

William Stueck is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the
University of Georgia. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University in
1977. His publications to date have focused on the period 1945 to 1953 and
include, _The Road to Confrontation: American Policy toward China and
Korea, 1947-1950_ (University of North Carolina, 1984), _The Wedemeyer
Mission: American Politics and Foreign Policy during the Cold War_
(University of Georgia, 1984), _The Korean War: An International History_
(Princeton University Press, 1995), and most recently, _Rethinking the
Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History_ (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2002). He also has published articles on the
Carter and Reagan administrations. His current research is for a
historical survey of US-Korean relations.

Vladislav Zubok received his Ph.D. from the Institute for the U.S. and
Canada Studies of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow and has been a Research
Fellow with the National Security Archive. He is currently an Associate
Professor of History at Temple University. He was a Senior Series
Consultant and on-air commentator for the CNN Cold War production in
1998-1999. Zubok is the co-author with Constantin Pleshakov of _Inside the
Kremlin's Cold War. From Stalin to Khrushchev_ (1996) which won the Lionel
Gelber Prize as the best English-language book on international relations
in 1996. He has co-authored several other works and essays including "Why
Did the Cold War End in 1989? Explanations of 'The Turn'" in Odd Arne
Westad (ed.), _Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations,
Theory_ (London, 20002), "Stalin and Nuclear Weapons" and "Khrushchev and
Nuclear Weapons" (with Hope Harrison) in John Lewis Gaddis et. al.,
(eds.), _Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb_ (London, 1999).

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