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This chapter examines how, in the post-Cold War era, the United States' alignment with Taiwan and alliance with Japan again have figured prominently among issues affecting U.S.-China security relations. While they are far from being allies, the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are not enemies either, but rather major economic partners who have also cooperated to some degree in addressing an increasing range of international problems. But there are still security tensions between the two sides over issues such as relations across the Taiwan Strait, and both nations practice coercive diplomacy toward the other, sometimes tacitly, sometimes less so. The chapter considers how the legacies of these Cold War alliances—particularly the U.S.–Taiwan relationship and the U.S.–Japan security treaty—have affected U.S.–China relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This chapter details the 1976 Argentine coup d’état. When the commanders of the three branches of the Argentine service announced the inauguration of the “National Reorganization Process,” few Argentines expressed genuine surprise as it was an open secret that military preparations for a political takeover had advanced to the final stage, with meticulous orders distributed to units across Argentina. When the military assumed power on March 24, 1976, U.S. ambassador Robert C. Hill offered full and definite support. This support for the Argentine military takeover exemplified a defining feature of U.S. policy toward Latin America during the Cold War: quiet cultivation of strong ties with politically ambitious Latin America militaries to protect U.S. national security.

This chapter considers the end of the Cold War as well as its implications for the September 11 attacks in 2001, roughly a decade after the Cold War ended. While studying the Cold War, the chapter illustrates how memory and values as well as fear and power shaped the behavior of human agents. Throughout that struggle, the divergent lessons of World War II pulsated through policymaking circles in Moscow and Washington. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, governments around the world drew upon the lessons they had learned from their divergent national experiences as those experiences had become embedded in their respective national memories. For policymakers in Washington, memories of the Cold War and dreams of human freedom tempted the use of excessive power with tragic consequences. Memory, culture, and values played a key role in shaping the evolution of U.S. national security policy.

This chapter examines the indicators used by the Reagan administration to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1988. Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency in 1981 after an election campaign that expressed alarm over a “window of vulnerability” that endangered U.S. national security. Reagan's national security strategy featured schemes such as the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The chapter considers U.S. perceptions of Soviet military capabilities, military doctrine, and behavior during the period based on predictions derived from the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. It also explores how, when, and to what extent U.S. perceptions of Soviet intentions changed in order to elucidate the broader changes that eventually led to the end of the Cold War.

This chapter studies the origins and failure of America's first nonproliferation proposal, the Baruch Plan, and the Truman administration's abandonment of nonproliferation from 1949 to 1953. It observes that the U.S. government officials believed that weapons rather than treaties ensured U.S. security and made no pretense of sharing American know-how with the rest of the world. The chapter notes that national security managers feared communist ideas more than Soviet arms and Byrnes hoped to convince the American and Western European publics that an effective nuclear nonproliferation agreement could not be negotiated with the Soviets. It notes that Truman worked to solidify U.S. nuclear superiority with little concern for nonprolifieration.

Chapter Two examines efforts by the FBI, CIA, local law enforcement, and U.S. politicians to portray travel to Cuba by American dissidents as a threat to U.S. national security. Alleging covert Cuban involvement in left-wing political bombings, espionage, street demonstrations, and growing interest in socialism among the American public, U.S. officials claimed that Cuba’s support for American radicals posed an internal security threat. Lurid media coverage focused on the Venceremos Brigade and Black Panther Party, which were accused of violating the U.S. travel ban to Cuba to receive training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro’s government. The imagined perils of contact between Cuba’s revolutionaries and American radicals, however, lay in their ideological, not military, potentials. In 1976, the FBI summed up a decade of investigations, concluding that the communist nation had been the single greatest foreign influence on domestic radicalism during the 1960s.

When buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other securities, individuals seeking advice typically turn to broker-dealers or investment advisers before they invest. In many cases, brokers and advisers perform similar functions but they are regulated differently under laws enacted during the Great Depression. Regulators are considering ways to harmonize the regulation of these professionals, but harmonization is fraught with difficulties. This chapter discusses the debate over harmonization and explains how the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the courts, and Congress have responded. The chapter concludes with insights into considerations that will likely determine how the harmonization debate will be resolved.

Legal, foreign policy, and operational harms call into question the narrative that the United States is better off as a result of inhumane detainee treatment. This chapter explores how the life cycle of norms applies to policy and whether a new normative consensus has been reached on the issue of detainee treatment. It concludes by offering several policy recommendations and future avenues of research for scholarship.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between Laos and U.S. policy. The U.S. policy toward Laos under Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy shaped America’s approach to Southeast Asia during the cold war. Laos was the testing ground for counterinsurgency and nation-building programs that emerged in Vietnam, and many of the features that distinguished later programs—support of unpopular but pro-Western despots, matches between U.S. civilian and military bureaucracies, and ignorance of the needs and problems of the native populations—first became known in Laos. Indeed, Laos occupied more of Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s time than Vietnam. The “Kingdom of a Million Elephants” was considered essential to America’s national security and a vital piece in the fight between communism and anticommunism.

This chapter explores the distributional effect of a change from the existing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) U.S. Social Security system to one that combines both PAYGO and investment-based elements. The shift to the personal retirement account (PRA) system is potentially more significant for blacks than it is for whites in combating poverty in old age. Individuals with higher earnings and benefit levels receive more weight in the internal rate-of-return calculations. Furthermore, higher income groups tend to receive benefit increases from a PRA system relative to the Social Security system that are larger than those of lower income groups. All demographic and income groups can benefit from an investment-based system with a lower saving rate than the projected long-run PAYGO tax, and that the potential reductions in poverty are the largest for those most at risk of poverty.

This chapter traces the evolution of Japan’s cabinet system in the first years of the “1955 System,” during which time a seniority system for cabinet ministers became established. Because Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers monopolized ministerial portfolios, appointment to a cabinet post became simply another wrung on the perpetually ruling party’s internal promotional ladder. And yet because the LDP was, in essence, a “federation of factions” united for purposes of campaign and legislative strategy, rather than a unified national party, Machiavellian machinations played a role in deciding the party’s president, who doubled as prime minister. Yet, under the surface, differences in style and outlook pitted rival camps of “ex-bureaucrats” and “career politicians,” and the need to maintain balance among intraparty factions dictated frequent cabinet changes, and often, the appointment of ministers with dubious qualifications. At the same time, the autonomy of cabinets in executive affairs was called into question by the actions of an activist government bureaucracy and a hegemonic party that preapproved all major policy departures. Meanwhile, prime ministers and cabinets were forced to respond to challenges produced by high-speed economic growth and dissatisfaction with institutional arrangements put in place during the American-led occupation.

The present chapter explores RAND’s development of analytical management techniques for military purposes and the diffusion of these methodologies from the military context into broader social welfare policy-making applications. It concentrates on three main issues, first providing a brief discussion of RAND’s history, focusing on the processes of intellectual production at RAND and the ways in which the creation of techniques there was shaped by a military context. Second, the chapter traces the dissemination of RAND’s systems methodologies from the corporation’s quasi-academic setting to the highest echelons of the U.S. national security structure. Finally, it examines where and how RAND’s methodological innovations diffused beyond the military establishment into programs of the “Great Society.” In general, the chapter traces the consequences of Cold War technical development for American democracy and argues that the widespread adoption of centralized, elitist policy making in the federal government may have contributed to the alienation many Americans feel toward the national government.

Clark Clifford had spent the better part of a lifetime cultivating and living off his reputation, and he had become one of the most powerful and respected men in Washington. Unfortunately for Clifford, a reputation is a fragile thing in Washington, especially when tarnished by scandal—the BCCI scandal. BCCI, otherwise known as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani named Agha Hasan Abedi. The bank catered mostly to the wealthy rulers of the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. It was, however, unwilling to be acquired and filed suit against Bert Lance, Abedi, BCCI, and a group of Arab investors for violating U.S. security laws by failing to disclose that they had been operating as a group in their attempt to gain a controlling interest in Financial General. In February 1978, Lance asked Clifford to defend them in the lawsuit.

This chapter discusses Eisenhower's televised efforts to “calm” the American public after the Sputnik launch. He gave a series of nationally televised speeches on science and national security, assuring the public that there was no crisis, that no rash action or legislative program was needed. General Andrew Goodpaster noted that this effort—dubbed as Operation Confidence—aims to restore the public confidence in the U.S. national security, and prevent “crash programs that would be unnecessary, that would be very wasteful and misdirected.” By setting the proper tone and invoking the right words, he hoped to banish the Sputnik issue from the news.