During the first two decades following India’s independence, the CIA had a complex, and often conflicted relationship with the ruling Congress party and the Indian media. Despite public and private criticisms levelled at the Agency by Jawaharlal Nehru, a number of CIA covert operations in the subcontinent were undertaken with the full knowledge and support of India’s intelligence service and senior figures within the Congress Party: In Kerala, in the late 1950s, the CIA worked with the Congress Party to destabilise a democratically elected communist administration; following an abortive Tibetan uprising in 1959, India’s Intelligence Bureau chose to ‘look the other way’ as CIA aircraft transited through Indian airspace in support of Agency sponsored resistance operations in Chinese-controlled Tibet; and CIA operatives spirited the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and into northern India. This chapter probes the genesis and evolution of the CIA’s relationship with India during the Agency’s so-called ‘golden age’ in the long 1950s, when a series of major US covert operations were conducted across the globe, in places such as the Congo, Guatemala, Iran, Indonesia, and Tibet.

On 20 October 1962, a border dispute between India and the People’s Republic of China erupted into open warfare, leaving the Indian Army reeling and the country’s political leadership in a state of panic. A State of Emergency was declared, a National Defence Fund established, and recruiting stations for India’s armed forces were flooded with eager volunteers. This chapter dissects the impact of joint covert action operations undertaken by India and the United States in the wake of Sino-Indian hostilities. It examines how and why the CIA assisted the IB in equipping and training a clandestine warfare unit tasked with monitoring Chinese military supply routes into Tibet and oversaw the insertion of nuclear-powered surveillance equipment on two of India’s Himalayan peaks to collect data on Chinese atomic tests. Coming at a point when new mechanisms for the implementation of covert action where being introduced by Whitehall, including the Counter Subversion Committee and the Joint Action Committee, the chapter also analyses how the border war was approached by Whitehall as an opportunity to test new British covert capabilities and to roll-back communism in South Asia.

This chapter examines the origins and consequences of national security institutions in the United States during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. It explains the political logic shaping continuity and change in institutional design. The limited threat of bureaucratic punishment during Eisenhower and Kennedy prompted both to maintain integrated institutions through most of their presidencies. In contrast, fears that bureaucratic leaks would derail passage of his transformative social and economic legislation led Lyndon Johnson to adopt fragmented institutions. These fragmented institutions came at a cost: They degraded the quality of information that the bureaucracy provided. As a result, Johnson based the most consequential foreign policy choice of his presidency – the escalation in Vietnam – on incomplete and biased information. The analysis suggests that the costliest American foreign policy miscalculation of the Cold War was in part a tragic consequence of how Johnson resolved the trade-off between good information and political security.

Why did Nikita Khrushchev send missiles to Cuba? This chapter argues that Cuba was important to him for two reasons: it bolstered his self-perception as an equal to the United States and addressed his concerns over a potential US invasion of Cuba, which would affect his reputation in the revolutionary world. He faced a challenge from Mao Zedong, who wanted to wrest the mantle of revolutionary leadership from the Soviets. Yet, having come to the brink over Cuba, Khrushchev backed off, understanding that reputational concerns were not as important as the imperative of avoiding a global nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis provides not just a useful window into understanding Khrushchev's American policy, with its perennial fears of humiliation and sensitivity to slights, but also a crucial snapshot of Sino-Soviet relations on their downward slide towards an outright confrontation.

This chapter accounts for the twists and turns of Soviet–American and Sino-Soviet relations in 1960–61. Khrushchev's primary concern was resolving the Berlin issue, and he hoped that the new US president, John F. Kennedy, would be more amenable to finding a solution than Eisenhower had been. China continued to be a problem for Khrushchev. During the November 1960 Moscow conference of Communist parties, he faced Chinese resistance and criticism but ultimately prevailed in having the conference adopt a declaration that largely ignored Beijing's objections. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Soviet leader became increasingly concerned with the prospect of Cuba's survival. Berlin, Cuba, and other global issues were at the center of his discussions with Kennedy in Vienna in June 1961. The summit ended on a sour note, but despite Khrushchev's bluster and his optimistic evaluation that the chances of a war with the United States stood at merely 5 percent, he proved unwilling to push his luck over Berlin and ultimately authorized the building of the Berlin Wall to stem the flow of refugees and stabilize a highly volatile situation in East Germany.

The Deal New regulated banks, transportation, and energy among other industries, in the 1930s. In the 1970s, there was a mostly bipartisan effort to reduce regulation in those industries. Although Ronald Reagan is known as the deregulation president, it was Jimmy Carter that started deregulation in each of those industries. Alfred Kahn, whom Carter appointed to lead the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), together with recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, advised Senator Ted Kennedy on how to deregulate airlines. The deregulation of truck, railroad, bus, and transportation, along with natural gas deregulation, followed. Deregulation was based on policy evidence that changes in those industries made it possible to lessen regulation and depend on markets to achieve greater efficiencies. By comparison, Congress decision to reduce regulation of savings and loan banks, based on industry lobbying, ended in disaster as S&Ls failed because of risky behavior and Congress had to bail them out. On balance, the regulation that occurred rebalanced the mix of government and markets in order to achieve a more robust economy.

The George W. Bush administration spread democracy via its “Global War on Terror.” After the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, the administration fought wars to overthrow totalitarian regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. The same mistakes were made in each: a failure to provide sufficient forces, a failure to plan for the postwar situation, a failure to prevent looting in both capitals, a failure to negotiate a peace with the overthrown regimes. The US waged conventional and counterinsurgency campaigns in each nation. Defeat in Iraq was averted by Bush’s “surge” of additional troops and a Sunni uprising against Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the economy boomed under Bush, until the housing bubble burst in 2008. The greatest global economic crisis since the Great Depression followed.