Study Guide for Gillon, The American Paradox, Chapter 1

• Note chapter title.
• George Kennan – who was he, why did American officials turn to him, how did he answer, and how did his answers impact American foreign policy?
• Historians’ different interpretations and approaches to the history of the Cold War
• Tensions between U.S. and U.S.S.R before World War II
• Mistrust between the two nations during the war
• Two nations’ differing “visions of the postwar world”: American goals vs. Soviet goals
• WWII’s devastation of Europe and Soviet Union, and what that meant for American foreign policy
• Stalin’s broken promise at Yalta Conference, and Soviets’ movement into Eastern Europe
• U.S. and Soviet suspicions of each other in 1945 and 1946; what does “security dilemma” mean?
• How was Truman different from Roosevelt, in terms of knowledge, personality, and approach?
• Potsdam Conference: American concessions, and Stalin’s broken promises
• Failure of international cooperation on atomic weapons
• The paradox/contradiction/ambivalence in Americans’ attitudes toward foreign policy (Gillon covers this point several times throughout the chapter and emphasizes it in the last section “Debating Containment”)
• Henry Wallace’s letter
• The Greece and Turkey situation, and Truman’s response (speech): The Truman Doctrine and its significance
• The Marshall Plan, motives behind it, and its effects (on Europe, and on Soviet-U.S. relations)
• Significance of the National Security Act
• Isolationism to internationalism: NATO
• Truman support of creation of Israel
• Conservative & liberal arguments against the containment policy