Foreign Policy at the Periphery

The Shifting Margins of US International Relations since World War II

Edited by Bevan Sewell and Maria Ryan

Narrated by Gary Roelofs

Available from Audible

Book published by The University Press of Kentucky

As American interests assumed global proportions after 1945, policy makers were faced with the challenge of prioritizing various regions and determining the extent to which the United States was prepared to defend and support them. Superpowers and developing nations soon became inextricably linked and decolonizing states such as Vietnam, India, and Egypt assumed a central role in the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. As the twentieth century came to an end, many of the challenges of the Cold War became even more complex as the Soviet Union collapsed and new threats arose.

Featuring original essays by leading scholars, Foreign Policy at the Periphery examines relationships among new nations and the United States from the end of the Second World War through the global war on terror. Rather than reassessing familiar flashpoints of US foreign policy, the contributors explore neglected but significant developments such as the efforts of evangelical missionaries in the Congo, the 1958 stabilization agreement with Argentina, Henry Kissinger’s policies toward Latin America during the 1970s, and the financing of terrorism in Libya via petrodollars. Blending new, internationalist approaches to diplomatic history with newly released archival materials, Foreign Policy at the Periphery brings together diverse strands of scholarship to address compelling issues in modern world history.

Bevan Sewell is assistant professor in American history at the University of Nottingham and the author of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and US Economic Policy in Latin America and coeditor of Projecting American Foreign Policy: Power and Intervention.

Maria Ryan is assistant professor in American history at the University of Nottingham. She is the author of Neoconservatism and the New American Century.

REVIEWS:

“These essays reflect very serious scholarship, attention to all available sources, and judicious recognition and use of the key secondary sources. In short, they are models of traditional (in the best sense) historical scholarship.”

—Lloyd C. Gardner, author of Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare

“Even after the United States became a global superpower, some regions of the world remained peripheral to American interests. What set these areas apart? And why did the U.S. eventually become drawn into their affairs? In this smart collection of original essays, an all-star lineup of historians answers these questions, and more, and uncovers the powerful dynamics that have shaped America's rise to globalism.”

—Andrew Preston, Cambridge University