“ WHAT IF Stalin himself was the problem, though, and communism might be salvaged with different leadership? The men who sought to succeed him all believed the diagnosis to be accurate and the prescript… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The prudent leader dreads and reflects on everything that can happen to him but is bold when he is in the thick of action. Xerxes listens patiently, but objects that if you were to take account of eve… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Stalin fell into the trap the Marshall Plan laid for him, which was to get him to build the wall that would divide Europe. John Lewis Gaddis
“ From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly, repeatedly, and bloodcurdlingly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. Soviet missile capabilities were so far superior to those of the United States… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been born in revolution. Both embraced ideologies with global aspirations: what worked at home, their leaders assumed, would also do so for the rest of… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The most important one was the belief, which went back to Lenin, that capitalists would never be able to cooperate with one another for very long. Their inherent greediness—the irresistible urge to pl… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Several premises shaped the Marshall Plan: that the gravest threat to western interests in Europe was not the prospect of Soviet military intervention, but rather the risk that hunger, poverty, and de… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Secretary of State Acheson had even announced publicly that the American defensive perimeter did not extend to South Korea. John Lewis Gaddis
“ Its most memorable scene takes place in the piazza at Cesena early one morning in 1502, where the local governor, Remirro de Orco, is found in two pieces, with a bloody knife and a block of wood betwe… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The subject speaks its own importance, Hamilton announced in the first essay’s first paragraph, comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare o… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the cr… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The Cold War could have produced a hot war that might have ended human life on the planet. But because the fear of such a war turned out to be greater than all of the differences that separated the Un… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The Bolshevik Revolution, which had happened only a quarter century earlier, had in contrast involved the embrace of concentrated authority as a means of overthrowing class enemies and consolidating a… John Lewis Gaddis
“ That's why war--explicitly in Clausewitz, implicitly in Tolstoy--must reflect policy. For when policy reflects war, it's because some high-level hedgehog--a Xerxes, or a Napoleon--has fallen in love w… John Lewis Gaddis
“ The recognition of human insignificance did not, as one might have expected, enhance the role of divine agency in explaining human affairs: it had just the opposite effect. It gave rise to a secular c… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Stalin’s first move, uncharacteristically, was to apologize to the Chinese comrades for having underestimated them: Our opinions are not always correct, he told a visiting delegation from Beijing in J… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Jefferson was a genius, the historian Joseph Ellis has noted, at concealing contradictions within abstractions. The Virginian who insisted that all men are created equal arrived in Philadelphia attend… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Safety depends, Kennan told a National War College audience in December 1948, on our ability to establish a balance among the hostile or undependable forces of the world: To put them where necessary o… John Lewis Gaddis
“ Goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy, he admonished the House of Representatives in a speech of his own on July 4, 1821: She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She… John Lewis Gaddis
“ You must be strong, dear brothers and sisters… with the strength of faith…. You must be strong with the strength of hope…. You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death…. When we are stro… John Lewis Gaddis
