Cold War Liberalism

‘This cohesive and highly readable collection skillfully dissects Cold War liberalism and charts its morphing into post-Cold War neoliberalism. Bessner and Brenes have brought together a brilliant array of scholars, who collectively identify the myriad problems Cold War liberals created and the troubling legacy so evident today.’ David Milne, University of East Anglia‘This sharp and coherent collection makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of Cold War liberalism. Through a series of thoughtful and well-crafted essays, it shows how liberal thinkers—deeply wary of mass politics—were often willing to compromise liberal principles in defense of liberal goals.’ Helena Rosenblatt, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Daniel Bessner is the Anne H. H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. He is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual; the co-editor, with Michael Brenes, of Rethinking US World Power: Domestic Histories of US Foreign Relations; and the co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the 20th Century.

Michael Brenes is the co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University. He has authored and edited several books, including For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy and, with Daniel Bessner, Rethinking US World Power: Domestic Histories of US Foreign Relations.