Mel Leffler News Today

Podcasts. In our final program looking back for president george w. Bushs decision to increase troop levels in iraq, scholars offered their analysis of the surge. From Southern Methodist university this is almost two hours. So its my pleasure to introduce the chair of this panel who is the executive director of the center at the university of texas at austin. And he has, i think, not unique but certainly worth while perspective, duel perspective of being a person who has both studied Decision Ma...

Sti perspective of a person who has studied decisionmaking in the white house. And a valuable member of really making the Network Connections and the interviews that are the underlying factor and underlying base of this project work. Will, i thank you for that, and i turn the mic over to you. [ applause ] all right. Thank you very much, jeff. Im honored to be moderating this panel here with four very dear friends and valued colleagues. There is a concern afoot that as a moderator i might let it ...

Thank you, jeff. Im honored to moderate this panel with four dear friends and valued colleagues. There is a concern afoot that as a moderator i might let it go to my head and try to interject myself too much in the discussion. So i will sit down there while they make their presentations and will come back up here during the actual q a time. You have the detailed bios of the speakers in your program so i will not repeat those first is professor richard emerman. His bio says he recent retired from...

Graham wilson discuss the relationships between president reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as the relationship between george h. W. Bush and mr. Gorbachev. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. We have a great panel. And so Philip Zelikow is going to chair the panel. I think Everybody Knows philip. He has written a terrific book on the end of the cold war, principal author of 9 11 Commission Report and many other books. And he is now in the midst of writing a terrific book on sort of decisi...

Philip zellerco will chair the panel. I think Everybody Knows philip. He has written a terrific book on the end of the cold war, principal author of 9 11 Commission Report and many other books. And he is now in the midst of writing a terrific book on sort of decisions for war. And in ways that illuminate old crises and old decisions like going to war in 1898 or wilsons decision for war in world war i. Hes sort of brilliantly reassessing these decisions. Were all looking forward to philips next b...

Commission report, and many other books. And he is now in the midst of writing a terrific book on sort of decisions for war. And in ways that illuminate old crises and decisions like going to war in 1898, wilsons decision for war in world war i. He sort of brilliantly reassessing these decisions. Were all looking forward to philips next book. At the same time, hes doing about a dozen other things that none of us can keep track of. Sometimes we dont know about. Philip, thank you. Thank you. I act...

Lifetime e a took place a lifetime ago. And its collapse seems so unimaginable. If i can indulge you for a second, the year before the collapse, i had organized a conference. Withe was more associated the cold war. Some of you were there. Of talk aboutt the integration of europe. , knownial the soviet was talking about the reunification of germany. Off desk also the time john and bill had begun their series on sovietamerican relations, the first time sovietamerican scholars got together. Scott a...

Four decades or even more, its a little short of remarkable that were marking 25 years since the fall of the berlin wall. Its remarkable because on the one hand we can recall that event so vividly, but on the other hand, it sometimes seems like it took place a lifetime ago. Its also remarkable because for those of us who pursued our degrees and published our first books during the preceding decades, in some cases before the construction of the wall [ laughter ] its collapse seemed so unimaginabl...

Will, within the communist world would react to remove those like gorbachev who tried to push the world forward through with reform. And ultimately, we see this fear coming true in august of 1991 when there was a conservative coup, at that point without very likelihood of success. But nonetheless, the great fear that that could generate into civil war, Ethnic Violence and the like. So i argue that there are really two moments, therefore, when president bush essentially took off the hypocratic gl...

Scholarship about the causes for the fall of the wall but the proximate causes, the short term events are not wellknown in the nongerman speaking world and so i decided for the anniversary to try to put together that story as best i could and then of course as always happens when you start researching something it becomes more complicated than you expected. It ended up being a fascinating rg 31 so let me just gallop through some of the ideas in my book and then if we have questions we can talk m...