Contesting France: Intelligence and US Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War (Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations) - Softcover

Perlman, Susan McCall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009054635 ISBN 13: 9781009054638

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

Contesting France reveals the untold role of intelligence in shaping American perceptions of and policy toward France between 1944 and 1947, a critical period of the early Cold War when many feared that French communists were poised to seize power. In doing so, it exposes the prevailing narrative of French unreliability, weakness, and communist intrigue apparent in diplomatic dispatches and intelligence reports sent to the White House as both overblown and deeply contested. Likewise, it shows that local political factions, French intelligence and government officials, colonial officers, and various trans-national actors in imperial outposts and in the metropole sought access to US intelligence officials in a deliberate effort to shape US policy for their own political postwar agendas. Using extensive archival research in the United States and France, Susan McCall Perlman sheds new light on the nexus between intelligence and policymaking in the immediate postwar era.

About this title

About the Author

Susan McCall Perlman is Professor of History and Intelligence Studies at the National Intelligence University. She has published widely on US foreign relations and intelligence and is the 2020 recipient of the Robert Beland Excellence in Teaching Award.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009054635
• ISBN 13: 9781009054638
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 287