Dissent Papers (eBook)

The Voices of Diplomats in the Cold War and Beyond

Hannah Gurman (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2012
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-53035-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Hannah Gurman is a clinical assistant professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she teaches history, literature, and culture of the United States in the world. Her writing has appeared in Salon and Foreign Policy in Focus, as well as The Journal of Contemporary History, Diplomatic History, and Small Wars Journal.

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Beginning with the Cold War and concluding with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hannah Gurman explores the overlooked opposition of U.S. diplomats to American foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century. During America's reign as a dominant world power, U.S. presidents and senior foreign policy officials largely ignored or rejected their diplomats' reports, memos, and telegrams, especially when they challenged key policies relating to the Cold War, China, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The Dissent Papers recovers these diplomats' invaluable perspective and their commitment to the transformative power of diplomatic writing.Gurman showcases the work of diplomats whose opposition enjoyed some success. George Kennan, John Stewart Service, John Paton Davies, George Ball, and John Brady Kiesling all caught the attention of sitting presidents and policymakers, achieving temporary triumphs yet ultimately failing to change the status quo. Gurman follows the circulation of documents within the State Department, the National Security Council, the C.I.A., and the military, and she details the rationale behind "e;The Dissent Channel,"e; instituted by the State Department in the 1970s, to both encourage and contain dissent. Advancing an alternative narrative of modern U.S. history, she connects the erosion of the diplomatic establishment and the weakening of the diplomatic writing tradition to larger political and ideological trends while, at the same time, foreshadowing the resurgent significance of diplomatic writing in the age of Wikileaks.

Autor

Hannah Gurman is clinical associate professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is the author of The Dissent Papers: The Voices of Diplomats in the Cold War and Beyond (Columbia University Press, 2012) and editor of Hearts and Minds: A People’s History of Counterinsurgency (The New Press, 2013). Her writing has appeared in American Quarterly, Diplomatic History, and the Journal of Contemporary History, as well as the Nation, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy in Focus, Salon, and Huffington Post.

Inhalt

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Pen as Sword: George Kennan and the Politics of Authorship in the Early Cold War2. "Learn to Write Well" The China Hands and the Communist-ification of Diplomatic Reporting3. Revising the Vietnam Balance Sheet: The Rhetorical Logic of Escalation Versus George Ball's Writerly Logic of Diplomacy4. The Other Plumbers Unit: The Dissent Channel of the U.S. State DepartmentConclusion. The Life After: From Internal Dissenter to Public ProphetNotesBibliographyIndex

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.1.2012
• Zusatzinfo: 11 illus.
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► 20. Jahrhundert bis 1945
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• ISBN-10: 0-231-53035-8 / 0231530358
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-53035-4 / 9780231530354