History 485

Devine

Fall 2015

Final Exam Study Questions

 

 

The final exam will consist of two parts: SEVEN short essay questions and ONE long essay question. 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; 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, I expect that you will be able to answer them with more than just a superficial response. Be sure to include as much specific evidence as possible to explain and support what you assert.

 

  1. 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.
  2. How did concerns about France affect the Truman administration’s decision whether to support Ho Chi Minh?
  3. Why did U.S. support for South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem prove problematic?
  4. How did Vietnam’s history affect the way the Vietnamese – both North and South – perceived U.S. intervention in their country? Why did the Vietnamese see the nature of the conflict differently than did the Americans?
  5. Why did Ho Chi Minh embrace Leninism? Why did he believe that it was useful in the Vietnamese context?
  6. What role did the NLF (“Viet Cong”) play in the Vietnamese struggle for reunification and independence? Why is it misleading to characterize the NLF as simply a puppet of the North Vietnamese government?
  7. Beginning on page 78, Hunt discusses “four key decisions” Johnson made on Vietnam.  What were they and why were they significant?
  8. 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?
  9. Why was the 1968 Tet Offensive a significant benchmark in the Vietnam War?
  10. How did the US perception of Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan differ from what in fact were the Soviet motives for doing so?
  11. 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?
  12. Why was Afghanistan so politically unstable in the 1970s?  What roles did Amin, Daoud, Karmal, and Taraki in creating this instability?
  13. What was the significance of UN Resolution 242?  Why did Arabs and Israelis interpret it differently?
  14. 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.
  15. 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)
  16. How did the 1967 Six Day War affect the Arabs?  How did it change the balance of power in the Middle East?
  17. 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?
  18. Why did President Anwar Sadat of Egypt initiate the 1973 war against Israel?  Did he achieve his purpose?
  19. What role did the US play in the 1973 war?  Why did Nixon delay momentarily before coming to the aid of Israel?
  20. What were the achievements and shortcomings of 1979’s Camp David Accords?
  21. What factors led to the Iranian Revolution of 1978?  Why was the Shah’s rule resented by so many different groups in Iran?
  22. Why did the Ayatollah Khomeini believe it was in his interests to keep the American hostages?  Why, ultimately, did he release them?
  23. 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?
  24. 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? 
  25. Why was Ronald Reagan so anti-communist?  Why was his anticommunism different from that of Richard Nixon?
  26. 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”?
  27. Why did Reagan face such opposition from conservative pundits and the foreign policy establishment when he began to negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev?
  28. 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”?
  29. How did Cold War anti-communism shape (and, arguably, distort) American policy in Central America?
  30. 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?
  31. Why was Reagan able to escape relatively unscathed from the Iran-Contra scandal (unlike Nixon, who did not survive the Watergate scandal)?
  32. 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)?
  33. 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?
  34. What was the “revolution in military affairs”? (Kaplan, 16) How did it employ new technology to change the U.S. military strategy?
  35. 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?
  36. 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)?
  37. 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?
  38. 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?
  39. 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?
  40. What influence did Natan Sharansky have on George Bush’s thinking and policy making?
  41. 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? 
  42. Why does Kaplan argue that policymakers in the Bush administration were “fantasists”?
  43. 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?
  44. 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?