READING NOTES--Leffler, pp. 266-397

Chapter 7

• Throughout this chapter, does ML overstate the personal importance of Acheson? Did it really matter who the secretary of state was?
• To what extent were HST's domestic concerns reconcilable with his foreign policy agenda?
• 266-273--good scene-setting intro to climate of time
• 273-277--impt theme--role of fiscal concerns in shaping US national security policy in the early Cold War; would be tough to overstate this; HST at time was a firm believer in the balanced budget idea, yet at the same time wanted to increase defense spending
• 277--Harriman quote; given that it forms the basis for this book's title, why does ML give to it such a degree of importance?
• 277-286--read fairly closely; once again, we return to the importance of Germany
• 286-291--skim; diplomatic events in ME
• 291-298--read clsoely, but less for what was going on in China than for the domestic events that it caused. Was the approach offered by the China Lobby compatible with the isolationist sentiments of the pre-WWII period?
• 298--304--impt for continued, and growing connection, between policy toward Japan and policy toward SE Asia, what the historian Michael Schaller has called the "Great Crescent" theory of containing Asian communism
• 304-311--give this "budgetary conundrum," who had predominance over the making of policy?

Chapter 8

• NSC-68--I'll be going over the bureaucratic angle in class; by far the most important text is that of Ernest May; this site has a brief summary and some questions to consider about the document
• 312-314--again the personal angle--does ML overstate the effect of the shift from Kennan to Nitze?
• 314-323--some hard-core economics material here; skim it unless you're an Ec major and actually like this stuff!
• 323-333--this section is terribly impt; good illustration of the continued confusion through which HST policymakers approached nuclear policy, even after the tensions with the USSR had begun to harden
• 333-341--also impt; what accounted for the changing approach toward Japan?
• 341-344--skim; you probably know the basics of the McCarthy story
• 344-355--skimmable also; basic summary of diplomatic events around the globe late 1949
• 355-360--very impt; just how signficiant was NSC-68?

Chapter 9

• This chapter should be read quite closely; I won't be covering the Korean War in too much detail in class, and it's my expectation you'll get most of your coverage of the war from this chapter.