Traces the development and evolution of the Cold War from a primarily US perspective, including its roots before and during World War II, through the postwar period to the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991.
Goals, Topics, and Objectives
- Setting the Stage: Deteriorating US-Russian Relations, Early 1900s
- The Seeds of Conflict: US-Soviet Relations, 1917-1918
- The United States and the Siberian Expedition
- The Wilson Administration and the White Russians
- The Failure of the Wilson Policy
- Non-Recognition, 1921-1933
- US-Soviet Cultural Contacts, 1920s
- US-Soviet Economic Contacts, 1920s
- US-Soviet Diplomatic Accommodation and Recognition, 1933
- The Onset of World War Two and US-Soviet Relations
- The Big Three and Wartime Grand Strategy
- The End of the War, Eastern Europe, and US-Soviet Relations
- The Early Cold War and the Korean War
- The United States and Southeast Asian Intervention
- The Rise and Fall of Detente
- The Reagan Revolution
- The End of the US-Russian Cold War?
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
1. Outline time and chronology in the History of the United States and the Cold War.
2. Identify, summarize, and analyze major elements of the History of the United States and the Cold War.
3. Analyze cause and effect in the History of the United States and the Cold War.
4. Trace elements of change and continuity in the History of the United States and the Cold War.
5. Emphasize parallelism by describing the impact of major events, personalities, and places upon the History of the United States and the Cold War.
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
1. Explain the reasons for the deterioration of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
2. Analyze the poor state of diplomatic relations between the United States and the early Soviet Union in 1917-1918.
3. Identify the reasons for entry of American troops into Siberia.
4. Explain the factors causing the Wilson Administration to support the White Russians in the Russian Civil War.
5. Analyze the reasons for the failure of Wilson's Russian policy by 1921.
6. Identify the reasons for U.S. diplomatic non-recognition of the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1933 as well as continued unofficial contacts between the two countries.
7. Analyze the cultural contacts between the U.S. and the USSR in the 1920s and their potential impact on future diplomatic relations between the two countries.
8. Explain the economic contacts between the U.S. and the USSR in the 1920s and early 1930s as well as the potential impact of these contacts on future diplomatic relations between the two nations.
9. Identify the reasons for eventual diplomatic accommodation between the U.S. and the USSR that resulted in establishing official relations in 1933.
10. Analyze the reasons for attitudes in the U.S. and the Soviet Union changing by the onset of World War Two and the impact those changes had on U.S.-Soviet relations.
11. Explain the reasons for the Big Three's Grand Strategy during World War Two and the potential problems for the future that were embedded in that strategy.
12. Explain why the United States and the Soviet Union divided so sharply over the postwar disposition of Eastern Europe and how those disagreements helped rekindle the Cold War.
13. Identify the reasons for the reemergence of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War in the late 1940s, especially the role of the Korean War in that phenomenon.
14. Analyze U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, especially how that policy led to U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia.
15. Explain how U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia led to detente.
16. Explain both the successes and failures of detente, including myths that led to right-wing reaction against the policy in the United States.
17. Identify the myths and realities of the "Reagan Revolution" and the reasons that the Soviet Union came to an end by 1991.
18. Analyze whether or not the US-Soviet Cold War really came to an end in 1991 and the continued impacts of the conflict on the United States into the early 21st Century.
Assessment and Requirements
Assessment of academic achievement will be identified and implemented by the class instructor. Methods will include, but will not be limited to, individual projects, vocabulary, class participation (discussion and critiques), and tests.
These texts are only suggestions. Individual instructors may choose different texts. Carol Melton, Between War and Peace: Woodrow Wilson and the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, 1918-1921(Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2001). ISBN: 978-086-554-692-9 Norman Saul, Friends or Foes? The United States & Russia, 1921-1941 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2006). ISBN: 978-070-061-448-6 Edward Bennett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Search for Victory: American-Soviet Relations, 1939-1945 (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1990). ISBN: 978-084-202-247-7 Warren Cohen, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume IV: America in the Age of Soviet Power, 1945-1991 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993). ISBN:978-052-148-381-0
Outcomes
- Social Sciences
- Humanities and Fine Arts
- Civil Society and Culture - U.S. and Global
- Category 4: Social Sciences
- Category 5: Humanities and Fine Arts