Political Science 138B
Term Paper AssignmentAs noted in the syllabus, your term paper should be 15-20 pages long, and should deal with a specific problem relating to international politics, 1914 to the present. Your goal is to study a particular episode in international politics that took place during that period on the basis of original documents. That means that you will not be using as your main source for this paper books and articles written by historians and political scientists. Original documents are materials produced as part of the policy making process: records of meetings, correspondence between high government officials and ambassadors in the field, and the like. Those records were generally secret at the time and were only made available many years later.
Again, as stated before, the problem you choose to investigate should therefore be fairly narrow. If it is too broad, you'll never be able to finish a document-based analysis before the end of the quarter. To give focus to your work, you will take some claim about that episode that some scholar has made and see whether that claim is correct or not. That claim should have a certain broader--that is, a certain theoretical--significance, which you should try to bring out.
In the paper itself, you should begin by spending no more than a page or two laying out the problem. You raise a question--"this is what these people say, but are they right?"--and you'll then answer it, and answer it systematically. You will not just be writing a descriptive paper on a particular topic; your paper must be analytical, laying out the problem and reaching a conclusion by examining the evidence and making the best judgment you can. Please raise the question as succinctly as you can at the very start of your paper; there is no need to waste time with a lengthy general introduction. But since this is a political science course, you should try to bring out the broader significance of the issue at hand--that is, how (very briefly) it relates to some more general, theoretical issue (for example, questions about the role of the balance of power, or of moral considerations, in shaping foreign policy). In the body of the paper, you will be developing an argument based on the evidence you find in the sources you read. Most of that evidence should be from primary sources, although you can use some evidence that is cited by scholars in secondary sources. But if you do that, make sure you are citing real evidence--that is, documents that those scholars themselves cite in footnotes--and are not just citing their opinions. Finally, at the end of the paper, you should spend no more than a page or two summing up what you've shown--are the claims you referred to at the outset correct or not?--and drawing out, again very briefly, the broader significance of your findings.
Since this is an academic paper, please be sure that give references (in footnotes) for the evidence you cite to back up what you say. You can use any format you like, providing that you are consistent from footnote to footnote, and as long as the notes enable the reader to look up the sources without too much trouble. The papers have to be well-written. Proofread to make sure there are no typos and no spelling or grammatical mistakes. If English is not your native language, be sure you have a native speaker go over it before you hand it in. Papers are due in my office (if I'm there) or in my box in the political science department (if I'm not in my office) on Friday, June 14, the last day of the final period.
Before you commit yourself to a project, please make sure you have enough documentary material to work with--that is, enough to support a project of this sort. This means that your topic should relate to a period for which documentary evidence of the kind you need is available (which in general means up to around 1970). That material should obviously also be in a language you can read. If English is the only language you read, that does not mean, however, that you will be limited to topics relating to American or British foreign policy. There are collections of translated documents, and you can also study the foreign policy of a non-English speaking country by looking at American and British records--you can, for example, study French policy after 1945 by looking at what French leaders told their British and American counterparts in highly confidential meetings in the early postwar period.
You should know about the great collections of diplomatic documents many major governments publish about thirty years after the events they cover. For the United States, the basic collection is called Foreign Relations of the United States (JX 233 A3 in YRL; there is a second non-circulating collection in the Law Library), or FRUS. FRUS has at least one volume per year for every year the course covers; for the Cold War period, there are a whole bunch of volumes for each year, or series of years, dealt with in this collection. In addition, there are certain "special" volumes or series of volumes, covering such things as the Paris Peace Conference (D642 .U5), the Yalta Conference (D734.A1 U58, in both URL and Powell) or the Potsdam Conference (D734.B4 U58 in YRL; JX1417 .U55b 1960 in Law).
The British have two major official publications: for the interwar period, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, edited by E.L. Woodward and Rohan Butler (DA566.7 .G79d in YRL), and for the postwar period, Documents on British Policy Overseas (DA588 .D63). That latter collection is still very incomplete, but there are five volumes on 1945, four on the early 1950s, and a couple on the 1968-1975 period.
In addition to the official documents published by the British government, many British documents have been published in facsimile and are available here. The series is called: British Documents on Foreign Affairs--Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print. (The "Confidential Print" was a selection of documents that was printed and circulated to key government officials, both inside and outside the Foreign Office.) Here are some of the holdings in this series we have here at UCLA. Note that the asterisk in the call number means that these volumes are shelved separately from other large books. Some of them, in fact, are not even shelved with the others in the large books section, mainly on the 4th floor of YRL; many of them are to be found in the "shift shelves" just in from the windows on the western side of the 5th floor of YRL.
Part II, From the First to the Second World War
Series A, the Soviet Union, 1917-1939. 15 vols. (* DK266.A3 B68 1984)
Series B, Turkey, Iran, and the Middle East, 1918-1939, 35 vols. (*DS63.2.G7 B75 1985)
Series E, Asia, 1914-1939, 50 vols. (*JZ632 .B755 1991)
Series F, Europe, 1919-1939, 67 vols. (* JZ632 .B756 1990)
Series I, The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, 15 vols. (* JX632 .B772 1989)Part III, 1940-1945
Series A, The Soviet Union and Finland, 8 vols. (* JX632 .B7762 1997)
Series E, Asia, 8 vols. (* JZ632 .B765 1997)
Series F, Europe, 26 vols. (* JZ632 .B766 1997)Part IV, From 1946 through 1950
Series A, Soviet Union and Finland, 1946, 3 vols. so far (* JZ632 .B77 1999)
Series E, Asia 1946, 7 vols. so far (* JZ632 .B775 2000)
Series F, Europe 1946, 12 vols. so far (* JZ632 .B776 2000)There's also an important collection of German documents: Documents on German Foreign Policy;the volumes in English translation cover 1933-41 (JX691 .A5 1949 in YRL). The volume dealing with the Czech crisis of 1938 is being put on reserve in the Powell Library.
For those of you who are doing a paper on the Cold War period, you might want to take a look at the guide I put on my website. That guide focuses on the nuts-and-bolts aspects of doing historical work in this area that you might find useful. The section on primary source research has links to many sources available online, and explains in some detail how those sources are to be used. Also, remember that you can get leads to sources by looking at books and articles written by scholars on the subject and seeing which sources they use. Part II of that guide will tell you how to go about locating such works. Those guidelines are quite general, and you might find them of use even if you're not doing your paper on the Cold War period.
The topics listed below will give you a general idea of the sort of thing expected. Please feel free to choose your topic from one of those below. If you would like to write on another topic, it would probably be to your interest to talk about it with me or with Arif to make sure you're on the right track.
Please note, finally, that some of the topics listed below are rather extensive, and if you choose one of them, you don't have to answer every question given in the description of the topic. You can be selective and narrow it down to whatever you can deal with effectively in a paper of the length required. The books I've put in Powell are mostly on two-hour reserve, so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting hold of them.
Possible Topics:
1. John Mearsheimer, in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (pp. 253-254) (D397 .M38 2001) says that "the United States entered World War I in good part because it thought that Germany was gaining the upper hand on the Triple Entente and was likely to win a war and become a European hegemon." (The link is a copy of that part of the book on pdf; open it with Adobe Acrobat.) Is it true that the American decision to intervene was rooted to a considerable extent in concerns about the balance of power in Europe? To get leads, you might want to check out the sources Mearsheimer cites in the footnote appended to this passage, and see which primary sources those authors used. (The footnote is included with the pdf link just given.) Wilson's papers are another important source: The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols. (but only a few dealing with the period you'd be interested in for this paper) (E660 .W69pa). Be sure to use the index!
2. A.J.P. Taylor, in The Origins of the Second World War (p. 248), says (referring to the Czech crisis of 1938) that "The Sudeten Nazis, like the Austrians before them, built up the tension gradually without guidance from Hitler." Choose either the case of the Austrian Nazis or the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. Is this claim accurate in the case you're studying? The Documents on German Foreign Policy (JX691 .A5 1949 ), series D, vol. 2 (which has been put on reserve in Powell), has some relevant material on the Czech crisis; use the synopses at the outset to figure out which documents are relevant. The documents assembled from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials might also be relevant: Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 8 vols. (Powell D804.G3 U5 1946. plus YRL and SRLF).. Reports you find in British or even American sources might also be revealing.
3. In an article called "Guilty Men" that he wrote in a book called Paths to War (Powell D741 .P32 1989), Sidney Aster says (p. 250) that "apologists for Munich have argued that British defence weaknesses and the need to buy time for the rearmament programme dictated foreign policy. Unfortunately, nowhere in Chamberlain's public utterances nor in his private correspondence is there a shred of supporting evidence." Is this in fact true? Aster had also argued (p. 249) that some people claim that "the strongest defence of the Munich agreement was the parlous state of British rearmament" at the time, but that such "considerations counted for much in Chamberlain's mind at the time." Again, is that claim correct? Extracts from Chamberlain's diaries and letters appear in Keith Feiling's The Life of Neville Chamberlain (DA585.C3 F3 in Powell); see esp. pp. 359-360. That passage from the Feiling book (pp. 359-360) is quoted on that page of the Aster article I just cited (p. 250), but with a key sentence from the Feiling text deleted there; be sure to take note of the effect of that deletion. To get leads, you might want to check the articles by Roy Douglas and John Dunbabin in Mommsen and Kettenacker, The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (Powell D741 .F37 1983), esp. pp. 83, 180-181, 185-186.4. Here is a claim--or really a series of claims--from a book by Richard Overy, The Origins of the Second World War (2nd edition) (p. 92): "The British position in the Far East [in 1940-41] was militarily untenable. Britain, as a result, avoided doing anything that might incite the Japanese. The British even argued for giving Japan a free hand in China if that would divert her for the time being away from the British Empire. The United States, while objecting to such a blatant appeasement of Japan, nevertheless sought throughout 1940 and 1941 to find grounds for full negotiations with the Japanese on terms acceptable to both sides." Is it true that the British had adopted a policy of "blatant appeasement of Japan"? Is it true that the Americans were tougher than the British on Far Eastern questions at this time? Is it true that the Americans sincerely sought a negotiated settlement with Japan? Don't try to answer all of these questions. For the sake of focus, and because time is limited, just focus on one of them. And it would also make sense to limit your research to a particular specific period (by focusing, for example, on 1940, or even on the period from July to December 1941). A key volume in the British Documents on Foreign Affairs dealing with this issue has been put on reserve in Powell (* JZ632 .B765 1997 vol. 4).
5. Overy goes on to say in that same passage that "not even the more conciliatory Japanese leaders were prepared at the time to consider forgoing any of the gains they had already made" (p. 92). To support that general argument, he says in particular (p. 93) that "In October 1941 the new Prime Minister, General Tojo, put Japanese demands to the United States for a free hand in Asia. It was agreed in secret that if America should refuse, which was likely, war would be started on 8 December." Are those claims correct? One of the key collections here is N. Ike, Japan's Decision for War (Powell D754.J3 I26). Don't forget that you can use American and British sources to get at these issues, especially since Overy talks about demands being put to the American government--evidence of that should be in the American records, esp. FRUS.
6. Also on the issue of British policy on the Far Eastern question, is it correct to say (as Waldo Heinrichs does in Threshold of War, pp. 209-210, Powell D753 .H38 1988) that British officials "needless to say" wanted to avoid war in the Pacific? Or is Reynolds's account, in The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 143, 237-238, 246-249 (D750 .R48 1981) that the British wanted to "backdoor" the United States into the war, correct? In addition to the sources noted above, you might want to look at the Churchill War Papers, vol. 3 (Powell DA 566.9 C5 A251993).
7. Many people argue that at Yalta, the western governments in effect accepted Soviet control of Poland-that the Yalta agreement, as Edward Rozek put it, was a "death warrant for Poland." Are those claims correct? Your basic source here is FRUS: Yalta (D734.A1 U58, in both URL and Powell).
8. What do you make of Gar Alperovitz's thesis in his book Atomic Diplomacy (Powell E813 .A456a) and in particular his argument about the U.S. taking a hard line at the Potsdam Conference because of the bomb? FRUS Potsdam can be one of your basic sources here.
9. In the "Truman Doctrine" speech of March 1947, the president announced that it was "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The "Truman Doctrine" is taken quite seriously in many works on the Cold War. But how seriously should it be taken? You can get at that issue by looking at American policy in areas where "free peoples" were in fact threatened with subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures, namely Czechoslovakia, Italy and Greece in 1947-48. Take one of those cases, and see what American policy actually was--that is, whether it was in line with the Truman Doctrine.
10. What does Melvyn Leffler, in his book A Preponderance of Power (Powell E813 .L45 1992), say about U.S. policy on Turkey (or on Korea, or on Italy) for at least part of the 1945-50 period? Taking one of those claims, show how it relates to his "security dilemma" interpretation of the Cold War (laid out most explicitly on p. 99 of the book), and then see whether those claims hold up in the light of the evidence, especially the evidence in FRUS.
11. I make the argument in the "Wasting Asset" article that American policy was heavily influenced by the balance of power in the 1949-54 period, and to support that general argument I talk about U.S. policy in three specific cases: Korea, Berlin, and Indochina. The argument is that policy was very restrained when the U.S. was weak in the beginning of that period, and much tougher after the U.S. had built up its power. You can test the general validity of that argument by seeing whether it applies to other cases, such as Yugoslavia, Turkey or Iran. What was the thinking about what the U.S. should do if the Soviets attacked any of those countries, and how did that thinking change over time? Did the big shift, if there was one, come with the change of administration in January 1953 (which would imply a "domestic politics" theory of foreign policy), or did the big change take place while Truman was still in charge (which would imply that international factors, and especially the balance of power, were crucial)? In addition to FRUS, you will be able to find material over the internet in the Declassified Documents Reference System. To see how to use that source, click here.
12. John Gaddis, in his book Strategies of Containment (Powell E744 .G24) considers (p. 175) the Eisenhower strategy of threatening a nuclear response to be a kind of bluff. Is this valid? To test that claim, take a look at one of the main crises that took place during this period--the ending of the Korean War, the Taiwan Straits crises of 1954-55 and 1958, and the Berlin crisis of 1958-59--and see what the evidence shows. Again, FRUS is your best bet here.
13. Stephen Ambrose, in his book Eisenhower: The President (pp. 215-216), gives a picture of the president as the driving force behind the NATO solution embodied in the Paris accords of late 1954. Is he right or wrong about this? In addition to FRUS, you could take a look at the Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower (17 vols., Powell D735.E36 A14 1970).
14. Ambrose also talks (ibid., p. 229) about how Eisenhower single-handedly managed to stand down the war hawks and preserve the peace in 1954. "Five times in 1954, virtually the entire NSC, JCS and State Department recommended that he intervene in Asia, even using atomic bombs against China." He then rattles off the five occasions when the experts "advised the President to launch an atomic strike against China," and says that each of these five times, Eisenhower "said no." Take just one of these occasions, and discuss whether his claim is basically correct or not.
15. Thomas Schelling, in his very important book Arms and Influence (Powell U104 .S322a) talks about crises as "contests in risk-taking." The Cuban missile crisis is one of the main examples he gives. We now have a lot of evidence on the crisis--above all, the transcripts of secretly--taped meetings at the top level of the U.S. government have now been published (May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes (Powell E841 .K4655 1997). Do you get the sense that the U.S. government was trying to outbid the Soviets in terms of toughness and resolve as a way of prevailing in the crisis? You can also focus on the issue of how tough the U.S. government in fact was, and in particular whether from the start (as people like Arthur Schlesinger in A Thousand Days and Theodore Sorensen in Kennedy argued), President Kennedy was opposed to the idea of a trade involving the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. (To get a sense for the theoretical importance of the issue, you might want to see what the political scientist Graham Allison had to say about it in the first edition of his famous book on the crisis, Essence of Decision,) Or you can study the role of moral considerations in foreign policy making by look at Schlesinger's claims about Robert Kennedy in his book Robert Kennedy and His Times (Powell E840.8.K38 S34 1979) and see whether they hold up in the light of the documents (the transcripts in the May and Zelikow book, and the minutes of ExCom meetings available both there and in other sources, like the Declassified Documents Reference System.
And I hope all this gives you some idea about the kinds of topics you can sink your teeth into for the purposes of this course. You should have fun writing this paper. You'll be able to see international politics for what it is almost first-hand.