History 485
Devine
Spring 2011
Final Exam Study
Questions
The final
exam will consist of three parts: SEVEN short essay questions and TWO long
essay questions. In Part One, I will
give you ten short essay questions; you will choose seven to answer. In Part Two, I will give you three long essay
questions based on Daydream Believers; you will answer one. In Part Three, I will give you three long
essay questions; you will answer one.
The exam questions will be taken from the questions below. There will be no questions on the exam that
do not appear below. Since you have the
questions ahead of time, it is
expected that you will answer with more than just a superficial response. Be sure to include as much specific evidence
as possible to explain and support what you assert.
- Why is it hard to explain the
origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis without first knowing about the Bay of
Pigs invasion?
- According to Mark White, what
were the likely motivations Nikita Khrushchev had for placing missiles in
Cuba?
- What was “Operation Mongoose” and
why was it significant in Cuban-American-Soviet relations?
- What were the terms of the final
settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Why did the Jupiter Missiles in Turkey prove crucial in “closing
the deal”?
- What strengths and weaknesses did
John F. Kennedy show in his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Why does Mark White believe his crisis
diplomacy was better than his pre-crisis diplomacy?
- Mark White argues in his
conclusion to Missiles in Cuba
that both positive and negative consequences resulted from the missile
crisis. What were the most notable
of these consequences?
- How did the United States first
become involved in Indochina? Explain how the policies the Roosevelt and
Truman administrations pursued led to U.S. involvement.
- How did concerns about France
affect the Truman administration’s decision whether to support Ho Chi Minh?
- Gareth Porter argues that the
primary goal of US policy in Asia was not containing communism in
Southeast Asia (Vietnam) or stopping “falling dominos,” but rather keeping
steady pressure on China. How effective is he at supporting this argument
with specific evidence?
- Why did U.S. support for South
Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem prove
problematic?
- Why is it important to be aware
of Vietnam’s history when trying to comprehend that nation’s understanding
of the conflict with the United States?
- Why did Ho Chi Minh embrace
Leninism? Why did he believe that it was useful in the Vietnamese context?
- Beginning on page 78, Hunt
discusses “four key decisions” Johnson made on Vietnam. What were they and why were they
significant?
- Beginning on page 99, Hunt
reviews the four major criticisms of Johnson’s conduct of the war. What
are they and to what extent are they justified?
- What arguments have revisionist
historians made to defend their position that U.S. intervention in Vietnam
was a “necessary war”? (See Hess, chapter 2.)
- How did the US perception of Soviet motives
for invading Afghanistan differ from what in fact were the Soviet motives for doing so?
- How did the Soviets in turn misperceive the US response to Moscow’s
invasion of Afghanistan? Why did
the Soviets believe that the US response revealed Washington’s adherence
to a “double standard” for superpower behavior?
- Why was Afghanistan so
politically unstable in the 1970s?
What roles did Amin, Daoud,
Karmal, and Taraki in
creating this instability?
- What was the significance of UN
Resolution 242? Why did Arabs and
Israelis interpret it differently?
- Choose one of the three following Cold War case studies and
explain how misperceptions and concern about credibility shaped U.S.
foreign policy: 1) Bay of Pigs Invasion; 2) Vietnam; or 3) the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan.
- What were the United States’
three broad objectives in the Middle East during the 1960s and why was it
so difficult to achieve (or even to pursue) all three simultaneously? (See
Hahn Chapter 4)
- How did the 1967 Six Day War affect
the Arabs? How did it change the
balance of power in the Middle East?
- How did Israel’s victory in the
Six Day War end up producing unintended consequences? Why, arguably, had maintaining its own
security become more difficult for Israel after the Six Day War?
- Why did President Anwar Sadat of
Egypt initiate the 1973 war against Israel? Did he achieve his purpose?
- What role did the US play in the
1973 war? Why did Nixon delay
momentarily before coming to the aid of Israel?
- What were the achievements and
shortcomings of 1979’s Camp David Accords?
- What factors led to the Iranian
Revolution of 1978? Why was the
Shah’s rule resented by so many different groups in Iran?
- Why did the Ayatollah Khomeini
believe it was in his interests to keep the American hostages? Why, ultimately, did he release them?
- Why did many nations welcome the
Iran-Iraq war? Why did it only
provide short-term, but not long-term stability in the region? How did the
outcome of the war set the stage for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait?
- Why was the Carter administration
unprepared for the Iranian Revolution and indecisive in its response to
it? Why did most observers consider Jimmy Carter’s handling of the Iranian
hostage crisis to have been ineffectual?
- Why was Ronald Reagan so
anti-communist? Why was his
anticommunism different from that of Richard Nixon?
- How did Ronald Reagan’s view of
the Cold War differ fundamentally from the more traditional balance of
power view espoused by Nixon, Kissinger, and others in the “foreign policy
establishment”?
- Why did Reagan face such
opposition from conservative pundits and the foreign policy establishment
when he began to negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev?
- What was Reagan’s strategy for
hastening the collapse of Communism?
What specific steps did he take to shove the Soviet Union into the
“dustbin of history”?
- How did Cold War anti-communism
shape (and, arguably, distort) American policy in Central America?
- In hindsight, the entire
Iran-Contra affair seems like a fiasco that reveals incredibly poor
judgment and a cavalier disregard for the law on the part of several
Reagan administration officials and even the President himself. How did the administration get involved
in this series of ill-advised decisions?
- Why was Reagan able to escape
relatively unscathed from the Iran-Contra scandal (unlike Nixon, who did
not survive the Watergate scandal)?
- What was the substance of George
Schultz’s “pitch” to Mikhail Gorbachev regarding the world’s economic and
technological future? Why was this an effective tactic to use with Gorbachev (as
opposed to lecturing him on why the Soviet system wasn’t any good)?
- According to Kaplan, how had the
end of the Cold War changed America’s place in the world and made it more
difficult to project its power? Why
does he believe the Bush administration’s “go it alone” policies failed to
comprehend the realities of the post-Cold War world?
- What was the “revolution in
military affairs”? (Kaplan, 16) How did it employ new technology to change
the U.S. military strategy?
- What were the pros and cons of
the new style of warfare associated with the “revolution in military
affairs”? What did it do well? What
did it not do well?
- How did the Clinton
administration deal with North Korea?
Why does the author consider Clinton’s diplomacy relatively
effective (as opposed to George W. Bush’s)?
- What were some of the practical
problems that made Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) systems ineffective and
cost inefficient? Why did politicians still continue to support this
weapons program?
- What were some of the key
mistakes the United States made in the early days of the Iraq occupation
that led to the subsequent violent insurgency?
- President Bush equated the
holding of free elections with “democracy.” Why does Kaplan argue that the two were
not synonymous? How could free
elections actually undermine the development of democracy?
- What influence did Natan Sharansky have on
George Bush’s thinking and policy making?
- How did Realists and
Neo-Conservatives differ in their views of how to conduct foreign policy?
What was most important to Realists? What was most important to
Neo-Conservatives?
- Why does Kaplan argue that
policymakers in the Bush administration were “fantasists”?
- What alterative approaches does
Kaplan offer to what he believes are the failed policies of the Bush
administration? Why are history, technology, and culture key concepts to
consider when developing alternatives?
- Why are Randolph Bourne’s
criticisms of the progressives who supported World War I also applicable
to “left Wilsonians” or liberals who supported
the Iraq War in 2003?