New Books in Diplomatic History

The assassination of the Armenian-Turkish activist Hrant Dink in 2007 raised uncomfortable questions about a historical tragedy that the leaders of the Turkish Republic would like people to forget: the Armenian genocide. In his new book Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Century of Genocide (Oxford UP, 2015), the journalist/historian Vicken Cheterian offers a scholarly, yet high readable account of this injustice and the century-long silence surrounding it. With engaging prose, he explains how and why this genocide took place, including a description of the violence that Kurds carried out against Armenians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also helps readers better grasp the continuities in how Sultan Abudhamid II, the Young Turks, and Mustafa Kamal's Turkish Republic employed violence to deal with their "Armenian problem" and other "internal enemies" such as Greeks, Assyrians, and the Yezidis.Not one to mince words, Cheterian offers a fascinating description of the Turkish efforts to delegitimize Armenian identities and silence international discussion of the genocide. He also reveals the complexities of how Armenians across the globe, including those of Armenian descent in Turkey, have struggled to raise international awareness about the genocide and make contemporary Turkish leaders confront the past. Just as important, he gives readers a "human feel" for the suffering of the Armenians by delving into the complexities of historical memory and the issue of "forced conversions." He also takes readers on a guided tour of the Middle East that makes reference to architecture and landmarks to illustrate just how far the Turks have gone to erase historical memories of Armenians.The continuing debates about the appropriateness of using the term "genocide" to describe the Turkish treatment of the Armenians should not overshadow Cheterian's accomplishments. He makes a strong case that Turks will not build a genuine democracy until their leaders begin to confront the past in honest ways and stop tolerating their "deep state's" ongoing war against Armenians. The recent cracks in the global silence on the Armenian genocide raise an important question: Just how much will the increased willingness of Turks to identify with their Armenian heritage and speak about the genocide influence Turkish foreign policy and domestic development in the years ahead? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft‘s first book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press, 2015) provides a range of thoughtful, well-researched responses to this question. By exploring the ways in which dancer’s bodies were operationalized and “deployed” on behalf of the US State Department during the Cold War as well as at the dawn of the 21st century, Dancers as Diplomats centers the work of dancers and choreographers as ambassadors, provocateurs and global leaders. Including more than 70 interviews with dancers who traveled on these international tours, the book centers the voices of artists actively engaged in this very particular kind of cultural work.Clare Croft is a historian, theorist, and dramaturg, working at the intersection of dance studies and performance studies. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American dance, cultural policy, feminist and queer theory, and critical race theory. Professor Croft holds a PhD in theatre history and criticism with an emphasis in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas-Austin and an MA in performance studies from New York University. Dr. Croft is Assistant Professor of Dance in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tabetha Ewing‘s Rumor, Diplomacy and War in Enlightenment Paris (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2014) is all about the on dit, the word on the street that everyday Parisians might have picked up, and/or spread around town in the 1740s. Focused on rumor during the War of Austrian Succession that lasted from 1740-1748, Ewing’s is a book that examines a range of urban voices and opinions across a pivotal decade of the Enlightenment.Taking very seriously the landscapes of gossip and fantasy, Rumor, Diplomacy, and War is intriguing in its subject matter and its methodology. Interested in the circulation of speech and ideas, Ewing tracks a variety of bruits–open and clandestine media, royal efforts to release and police information about matters of state and military conflict, and oral and written forms of communication. All this, with the aim of exploring a distinctively early-modern brand of political participation, and an “inchoate citizenship” that existed in the decades before the French Revolution. Questions of national identity, loyalty to the regime (or not), and political expression/representation were in the air during these years of war and Enlightenment. Ewing’s is a book that shows us how much historians can hear if we listen carefully. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In December 2014, Cuba and the United States announced their renewed efforts to normalize relations. Diplomatic ties were severed in 1961 following the rise of Fidel Castro and the intensification during the Cold War. An economic and intellectual embargo was instituted by President Kennedy, arguing that Cuba needed to be sealed from the free world in order to induce regime change and contain communist influence.The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 nearly brought the world to nuclear ruin. Negotiations between The United States and the Soviet Union averted disaster, and crystalized the necessity for antagonistic powers to maintain a line of communication. Thus, despite the embargo, Fidel Castro frequently expressed a desire to return to normalcy with the United States. Both sides have a long history of communicating in secret over a range of issues, including refugee policies and air piracy. William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University, and Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., are co-authors of the new book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). LeoGrande and Kornbluh detail efforts for both sides to reconcile their opposing ideological positions in the hope of, as Raul Castro articulated, rebuilding the bridge of friendship between Cuba and the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Barnhisel‘s new book, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (Columbia UP, 2015) examines how modernism was defanged, re-packaged, and resold during the Cold War. Barnhisel, an Associate Professor at Duquesne University, reveals that–from its incendiary beginnings–modernism was made safe for the bourgeois West thanks to the intervention of unlikely contributors like the CIA, the Department of State, and even major corporations. Barnhisel’s extensive archival research unearths the thinking that went into the repurposing of modernism to support American cold-war ideology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should we look back at President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy legacy? As muddled? Visionary? Or simply uninspired? To answer these questions, James D. Boys has just written Clinton’s Grand Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Boys is associate professor of International Political Studies at Richmond University, UK, and visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London, UK.Wedged between two Bushes, Bill Clinton bursts onto the national stage with a reputation as a domestic policy wonk, but thin on foreign policy credentials. Boys examines the development of Clinton’s foreign policy beliefs, the people he surrounded himself with on the campaign trail, and how that team formulated his grand strategy. He explores the major crises that defined Clinton’s White House and how Clinton’s foreign policy shaped the George W. Bush presidency in often underappreciated ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle cried out “Vive le Quebec libre!” from the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall. The controversial moment became a myth almost instantly. The four words De Gaulle uttered remain emblematic of an extremely important moment in the histories of Quebec and Canada. Illustrative of the General’s penchant for political provocation and spectacle, they also hold a special place in his dramatic biography.David Meren‘s With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms in the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944-1970(University of British Columbia Press, 2012), is anchored by President de Gaulle’s famous cri du balcon. Situating the incident within the broader context of a complex “triangle” of relations between Canada, Quebec, and France, the book deepens our understanding of what De Gaulle said and the meanings his exclamation have carried since. At the same time, the book develops a much broader and richer historical picture of the relationship between these three societies, and their nationalisms, from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 1960s.With Friends Like These is an exciting example of an international history that interweaves the analysis of diplomacy, economic interests, and societal and cultural change over two and half decades. In our conversation, David and I discussed his methodology and the challenges of thinking together these three national communities within a rapidly shifting global context during the period. We also had a chance to talk about some of the legacies of the history of the Canada-Quebec-France triangle for contemporary political and cultural identities and exchanges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aristotle Tziampiris is The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation (Springer, 2015). Tziampiris is Associate Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International and European Affairs at the Department of International and European Studies at the University of Piraeus.The recent fiscal debt crisis in Greece has drawn world attention to the country’s position in global affairs. Rather than pursue the financial situation, Tziampiris investigates the foreign policy making of Greece, particularly its changing relationship with Israel and Turkey. Greece and Israel have had a distant relationship for much of the last 50 years, but recent politics for both countries have moved the two toward a budding friendship. Tziampiris bases his argument and key findings on high-level original interviews which lend the book a degree of legitimacy and significance. Based on these conversations with Greek and Israeli diplomats, he points to the Gaza Freeodm Flotilla as the point where leaders from the two countries began to rebuild their bi-lateral relationship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows anything about European history–and European diplomatic history in particular–who doesn’tknow a little something about the Congress of Vienna. That “little something” is probably that the Congress fostered a post-war (Napoleonic War, that is) settlement called the “Concert of Europe” that lasted, roughly, until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.That’s a good sound bite. But, as Brian Vick shows in his lively, fascinating bookThe Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press, 2014), a lot more than diplomatic toing-and-froing went on in Vienna. The diplomats and their huge entourages, well, partied a lot. The ate (generally well), drank (often too much) and “consorted” (to put it diplomatically). As Vick demonstrates, this setting has a distinct impact on the negotiations and their eventual outcome. In vino veritas? Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the annals of cold war history Italy is rarely seen as a crucial locale. In his stimulating new book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Kaeten Mistry reveals how events in Italy proved surprisingly crucial in defining a conflict that dominated much of the twentieth century. For the United States, it marked the first intervention in the postwar era to influence events abroad through political warfare, the use of all measures ‘short of war’ in foreign affairs. Drawing particular attention to the Italian election of 18 April 1948, he explains how the campaign for the first national election of the newfound Italian republic marked a critical defeat for communism in the early cold war. The United States utilized a range of overt and covert methods against Marxist political and social power. Political warfare seemingly outlined a way to tackle communist strength more widely.Analyzing American political warfare efforts against the Italian left allows Mistry to advance a number of important arguments. He shows how U.S. efforts were largely improvised and many key decisions ad hoc. While officials in Washington like George F. Kennan worked to institutionalize political warfare, Italian actors and a host of non-governmental organizations played a crucial role in the defeat of the Italian left, even if they did not always share the same agenda as American officials. Mistry emphasizes Italian agency, explaining how Christian Democrat Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi pursued his own agenda to protect national sovereignty. The Vatican had its own objectives, as did trade unions, citizen groups, and multinational corporations. Other actors held a less rigid view of the Cold War than their American counterparts. In short, political warfare was more than an American story yet U.S. officials and commentators lined up to praise the election campaign as a distinctly American success. Mistry argues that this ‘perception of success’ contributed to an expanded use of political warfare, as U.S efforts turned to subverting communist power in Eastern Europe and, later, the Global South.The work is a refreshing reminder of how foreign policy is rarely under the control of elite figures in Washington. Rather, it is subject to negotiation with various foreign and non-governmental actors. When viewed in this light, Mistry’s work is a useful reminder that governments will almost always invite trouble when they assume the ‘success’ of their efforts to shape events abroad, overlooking the role and motives of other peoples and groups, to make the case for intervention elsewhere. Enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices