The Donkey, the Carrot, and the Club: William C. Bullitt and Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1948

This study focuses on the life of William C. Bullitt, perhaps the most charming, devious, and thoughtful person in Soviet-American relations in the interwar and early postwar years. Cassella-Blackburn introduces Bullitt as a young patrician who persistently pushed his views concerning Russia on the Wilson Administration. His thoughtfulness and persistence landed him the position as leader of a mission to the Bolsheviks in early 1919. He attempted to isolate the Bolsheviks within the Liberal world order while the Bolsheviks were weak.

Fourteen years later, an older more politically suspect Bullitt clawed his way into the Roosevelt Administration where he could once again try to isolate the former Bolsheviks, now Soviet leadership. When it became obvious that the Soviets as Marxist-Leninists could never fit into such an order, Bullitt began a personal crusade to isolate and contain them. With the help of George F. Kennan, and many of those who would become the leadership in American efforts against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Bullitt educated the American public that the Soviets were the true enemy to all that Americans held dear.