Discussion Questions—The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis
A. Who is John Lewis Gaddis and what are his qualifications for writing this book?
B. When was the book first published, and how was it received by reviewers?
Preface
1. Why did Lewis write the book, and who was his intended audience?
2. Why has new information become available about the Cold War?
3. What does the book not deal with?
4. How does Lewis view the Cold War?
5. How has he organized the book?
6. To whom is the book dedicated?
Prologue: The View Forward
7. What was George Orwell’s novel, 1984, about, and how was it received?
8. How did Ronald Reagan in 1984 present a vision that differed from Orwell’s work?
I. The Return of Fear
9. What is the central topic of Chapter One, The Return of Fear?
10. What did the United States and the Soviet Union have in common, and what were their significant differences?
11. At the end of World War II, what advantages did the Soviet Union have?
12. Describe Stalin’s postwar goals and how did he view capitalist nations; why were his expectations wrong?
13. Study the map on p. 13 and determine which nation gained the most new territory in Europe as a result of WWII?
14. Describe the traditional American beliefs about the nation’s role in the world prior to World War I; did that war fundamentally
change these belief? What did Franklin Roosevelt mean when he said, “We have profited by our past mistakes. This time we
shall know how to make full use of victory.” (p. 17)
15. What were Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s goals during WWII?
16. Describe the major differences between the Soviet Union and the United States and Great Britain that existed by the end of
of WWII that were the roots of the Cold War.
17. Explain the meaning of “security dilemma” (p. 27) and how Lewis uses this concept to explain the decisions and the results of
decisions made by Soviet and American and British leaders regarding situations in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and
Europe from 1945 to 1949.
18. How did George F. Kennan explain the behavior of Soviet leaders, and what did he propose when he advocated a “long-term
patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies”? (p. 29)
19. In 1947, James Forrestal, Truman’s Secretary of Defense, observed: “As long as we can outproduce the world, can control the
sea and can strike inland with atomic bomb, we can assume certain risks otherwise unacceptable.” (p. 35) Any yet between
1949 and 1950, the Cold War expanded in ways that significantly increased American fear. Describe the multiple ways
Americans responded to these new challenges.
20. Describe the roots of the Korean War. How did Truman perceive the invasion of South and how did he respond?
21. Study the map on page 44 and determine how far that the North Korean, the UN, and the Chinese forces advanced on the
Korean peninsula during the war; what strategy did General Douglas McArthur follow and what response did it elicit?
22. What warnings did Kennan give in 1947 and 1950? Are these warnings still relevant to our own time?
II. Deathboats and Lifeboats
23. What is the central topic of Chapter Two, Deathboats and Lifeboats?
24. Lewis uses a dramatic technique to introduce this chapter. Describe it.
25. What did Carl von Clausewitz’s warn nation’s about regarding war? How did the two 20th century world wars illustrate this
warning?
26. Lewis says that atomic weapons eventually changed human nature; how?
27. Describe Harry Truman’s view of atomic weapons. What policies did he establish in regard to the production and use of these
weapons? According to Lewis, what was so significant about Truman’s decisions?
28. What did the U.S. do to try to inform the Russians about the new weapons? How Stalin view atomic weapons and what
response did he make?
29. What were the barriers to Truman ordering the use of atomic bombs in Korea? What were the Soviet’s role in this war?
30. What are hydrogen bombs, and why did Truman state that America had to have these weapons? When did both countries
develop them?
31. How did Dwight Eisenhower’s views on atomic weapons differ from Truman’s? Why was the BRAVO test significant?
The Russian, Georgii Malenkov, and the Englishman, Winston Churchill, both saw the new weapons how?
32. Eisenhower ignored the views of experts such as Henry Kissinger and ruled out limited nuclear wars; he then insisted that the
U.S. plan for a full nuclear war. Why does Lewis state that “he was at once the most brutal and brilliant strategist of the
nuclear age” (p. 66)?
33. What advances in weaponry did the Soviets accomplish in the mid-1950’s?
34. Nikita Khrushchev used both bluffing (the Potemkin strategy) and threats against the West; why? What did he want?
35. Why did the U.S. develop spy planes and what was the significance of the U-2 incident in 1960?
36. What were the foreign policy failures of the early John Kennedy administration? What message did he send the Soviets?
37. According to Lewis, what was the main reason that Khrushchev decided to send missiles to Cuba? At the time, how did U.S.
leaders view this action?
38. Why was the arming of Cuba such a strong threat against the U.S.?
39. What did Kennedy promise to induce the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba? According to Lewis, what was so
significant about the Cuban missile crisis?
40. Upon Kennedy’s orders, Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, tried to devise a policy for limited nuclear wars; why did
he drop this idea, and what did he put in its place?
41. What agreements did the U.S. and the Soviet Union make in regard to nuclear weapons between 1963 and 1972?
42. According to Lewis, what was the most profound effect of nuclear weapons?
III. Command Versus Spontaneity
43. What is the central topic of Chapter Three, Command Versus Spontaneity?
44. Gaddis states that the Cold War was a competitive struggle to answer a question, “How best to organize human society”; what
does he mean?
45. Relying on communist theory, what did Nikita Krushchev predict about the contest between communist and capitalist
countries? How well off were Russians by the 1970’s?
46. What warning did the novel, Sybil, provide? Explain the Marxist communist theory. How is it related to the social welfare
states that appeared in Europe and the U.S.? How did World War I “fit” the theory?
47. Why does Gaddis claim that V.I. Lenin was an individual who changed the course of history? How did Woodrow Wilson
answer Lenin’s ideology?
48. What political system did Lenin and the Bolsheviks put in place? Why? Why did it appear in the years right after World War
II that the Marxist ideology was going to triumph?
49. In spite of its historical tradition of isolationism, why did the U.S. finally assume a world leadership role during the 20th
century? What organizations did Franklin Roosevelt propose to stabilize the world after World War II? Why did Stalin
refuse to participate in all of them except the United Nations?
50. How did Stalin, Churchill, and Truman express the fundamental conflict of ideas between 1946 and 1947? What did Charles
Bolen mean when he stated in 1947, “There are, in short, two worlds instead of one.”? (p. 98)
51. How did Stalin maintain his power and enforce communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe?
52. What goal did the U.S. establish for its policy toward Japan and Germany at the end of WWII? What conditions would it
have to help to establish in both countries? How did the Marshall Plan and NATO fit that goal?
53. After Stalin’s death in 1953, what happened as new Russian leaders tried to relax some of the Stalinist controls? What was
John Foster Dulles referring to when he called a speech by Nikita Khrushchev given in 1956, “the most damning indictment
of despotism ever made by a despot”? (p. 108)
54. How did Mao Zedong pattern his leadership in China after Stalin? What were the effects of his “Great Leap Forward”? Why
did the Western countries not know actual losses of life in the Soviet Union and China as the communist leaders sought to
collectivize their countries?
55. Why did Khrushchev approve Walter Ulbricht’s plan for a wall separating East and West Berlin in 1961? How did the U.S.
react to the building of the Berlin Wall?
56. Why did the Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, call the two decades between the 1950’s and the 1970’s “the Golden Age”
How did he explain this growth in productivity and prosperity in capitalist countries? How did Gaddis explain the success of
capitalists? According to him, what were the real costs of the communist revolution and expansion in the 20th century?
IV. The Emergence of Autonomy
57. What is the central topic of Chapter Four, The Emergence of Autonomy?
58. What happened to Khrushchev in 1964?
59. What were the key events in the 20th century that signaled the end of European colonial power in the world? Neither the U.S.
nor the Soviet Union tried to preserve European colonialism: why not?
60. Why was decolonization a special problem for the U.S. and what warning did Dwight Eisenhower give in 1954 about the
prospect of newly independent countries falling under communist rule?
61. Explain the idea of “non-alignment” and how Marshal Tito first used this strategy to enhance his power. How did Pakistan
and India position their countries in the Cold War conflict? Why did China move toward non-alignment?
62. How did Egyptian leader General Gamal Nasser’s policies initiate a crisis in the Middle East in 1956? Who was the winner in
this crisis?
63. Gaddis believes that some of the Third World nations successfully blackmailed both the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the
Cold War. Give examples of that blackmail and explain how it limited the power of both countries.
64. How did American leaders fail in regards to the Vietnam War?
65. How did both West Germany and East Germany force support from the U.S. and the Soviet Union? What did the Berlin Wall
symbolize?
66. What challenges did Charles DeGaulle present for the U.S. and Mao Zedong for the Soviet Union? What did both of these
leaders want?
67. How was unrest shown in both East European countries and in the U.S. in the late 1960’s? According to Gaddis, what were
reasons for this trend toward rebelling against established institutions? How was China’s Cultural Revolution similar and
different from other places? Why does Gaddis characterize the youthful rebels as “revolutionary romantics?” What did they
accomplish?
68. How were relations changing between China and the Soviet Union during the late 1960’s? What was the Brezhnev Doctrine?
What common interests developed between the U.S. and China and what new policies were instituted?
69. Why does Gaddis state that the Russians were very worried about maintaining their power by now?
70. What were Nixon’s goals when he came into the presidency in 1968? How much had he accomplished during his first term?
V. The Recovery of Equity
71. What is the central topic of Chapter Five, The Return of Equity?
72. Consider the two quotes at the beginning of the chapter and explain how each of them is related to the content of the chapter.
73. Describe the “third rate burglary” that occurred on June 17, 1972. According to Gaddis, what did the Watergate scandal
reveal about Americans?
74. What was the original purpose of the United Nations? How did Americans’ and Russians’ views of justice differ? Which
countries refused to support the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” passed by the UN in 1948?
75. Why was the UN largely ineffective in relation to its essential purpose? How did many of America’s leaders view it?
76. How did George F. Kennan’s changing views toward how American leaders should wage the Cold War reveal actual changes
in American foreign policy? What changes did these policy force in the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)?
Eventually, what did Kennan come to think about the policy he had recommended?
77. How did the two government reviews, NSC-68 and the Doolittle Report, explain America’s new approach to foreign policy?
How did Dwight Eisenhower view the new policy?
78. What does “plausible deniability” mean? In what instances did Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson employ
this idea? What was the main reason that Johnson chose to mislead the American people about the Vietnam War, and why
did his decision to mislead the nation damage its political institutions?
79. According to Gaddis, essentially what did Richard Nixon do that was wrong? How did Nixon deal with the challenge of
trying to end the Vietnam War? the existence of a Marxist government in Argentina? the leaking of government secrets to the
American media?
80. What did the Watergate crisis mean for the American political system?
81. How did the Watergate scandal affect the relationship between the presidency and Congress, and what laws did Congress pass
as a reaction to the events of the era? What did Henry Kissinger mean when he said, “Our domestic drama first paralyzed and
then overwhelmed us.”? (p. 177)
82. In considering issues that arose over Chili and Angola, why did Gaddis state, “It was if the nation had become its own worst