Skip to main content

Bloomsbury Home

Douglas MacArthur

Statecraft and Stagecraft in America's East Asian Policy

Russell D. Buhite (Author)
Douglas MacArthur cover

Douglas MacArthur

Statecraft and Stagecraft in America's East Asian Policy

Russell D. Buhite (Author)

Description

Buhite offers a trenchant evaluation of Douglas MacArthur's career in east Asia and his role in some of the most important military and diplomatic issues of the twentieth century. Concise and highly readable, this biography considers diplomatic fact in light of psychological insight, and asks us to look anew at both MacArthur and American involvement in the region. From Manila to Washington, with Tokyo and Seoul in between, readers follow the course of American foreign diplomacy in East Asia via MacArthur's own career. This fascinating intersection of personality and policy would make for newsreel footage and newspaper headlines, such as when he waded ashore Luzon Island in the Philippines and sent Washington provocative communiqués about the People's Republic of China. Yet, as Buhite shows, grand gestures are not the substance of great foreign policy, and MacArthur's reputation merits critical reassessment. This is a must read for those interested in diplomatic and military history.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Measure of the Man
Chapter 2: The Philippine Years
Chapter 3: "I Shall Return"
Chapter 4: Victory in Japan
Chapter 5: Korea: Background to War
Chapter 6: Hubris Unbounded
Chapter 7: Strategic Myopia
Chapter 8: An Appraisal

Product details

Published Apr 18 2008
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 208
ISBN 9798216254034
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Series Biographies in American Foreign Policy
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

RB
Author

Russell D. Buhite

Reviews

  • A short, spirited, and persuasive study of General Douglas MacArthur's long career in Asia. . . . Buhite offers a balanced, accessible critical history of the General's life in Asia and the Pacific that should be especially useful for students in military and diplomatic history classes.

    The Journal Of Military History

  • This is an engrossing and finely crafted work that convincingly portrays Douglas MacArthur as a master actor on the world stage and a less than impressive military figure in his favorite area of the world—East Asia. Vain, a narcissist, paranoid, and ever controversial, the general, according to Russell Buhite, had severe pathological personal problems that combined with elements of greatness to make him all the more complex and worthy of study. This book would be excellent for classroom use as well as for the general reader and specialist alike.

    Howard Jones, research professory, University of Alabama

Environment: Staging