Ambassador Kenneth Moorefield’s offers a first-person account of his experiences during the Vietnam War as both a soldier and a diplomat, culminating in his evacuation from the Saigon Embassy in 1975.

The article then describes his post-war efforts to aid Vietnamese refugees and American veterans, followed by his return to Vietnam in 1995 to establish diplomatic and economic ties.

This podcast was produced by NotebookLM.

This book focuses on the Biden Administration approach to dealing with global change. As in our earlier book entitled The Obama Administration Confronts Global Change, this book addresses how President Biden and his Administration came to terms with a world in significant change, one indeed which was entering a new historical era.

In this volume we have included essays which we have published on Second Line of Defense or Defense.info from 2021 through 2024. We looked at the various aspects of Biden Administration policy dealing with a world in change.

When Biden came to office, in many ways his approach was simply that “America is back.” Whereas Trump had crystallized his approach as making America great again, Biden was bringing America back.

The phrase itself is quite revealing. Associated with this was the assumption that they were replacing an administration with strong isolationist learnings and America was now back leading its global allies.

In his speech at the State Department on February 4, 2021, President Biden delivered his assessment of America’s role in the world and how his administration was going to “bring America back.”

“As I said in my inaugural address, we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s. American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy.”

Did Biden and his Administration in fact do that?

This book analyzes the Biden administration’s approach to global affairs, examining its security agenda, relationships with allies and adversaries, and responses to international crises.

The book examines the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the handling of the Ukraine situation leading up to and following Russia’s invasion, and the challenges posed by rising authoritarian powers like China and Russia.

The book explores issues such as defense spending, economic competition, and shifting dynamics in regions like the Middle East and Central Asia, assessing the efficacy and long-term consequences of American foreign policy decisions.

The book also includes perspectives on domestic factors influencing America’s global standing and potential future trajectories.

Carlos Gaspar, senior researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI NOVA) and political advisor to the first three elected Presidents of the Portuguese Republic between 1977 and 2006 commented on the book:

“Kenneth Maxwell is the doyen of historians of the revolution, decolonization and Portuguese democracy and as such was honored at the conferences held in Portugal and Brazil to commemorate the 50th anniversary of 25 April.”

In 2024, Maxwell travelled to Brazil, to the United States and to Portugal to give three keynote lectures at three different occasions. The first was done in the University of São Paulo (USP) and focused on the international dimension of the Portuguese revolution in 1974.

He would return to that theme but explore additional dimensions in his keynote presentation at an October 2024 conference in Lisbon.

And in between, he would return to Harvard University and participate in an international colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Art and Literature. His lecture focused on a subject which encompassed how the rebuilding of Lisbon after the great earthquake in 1755 fit into to the rebuilding of two other greater European cities, namely London and Paris.

This book contains the full text of these lectures along with associated materials with regard to the conferences themselves.

Each lecture is presented in a separate chapter and after that chapter, which is provided in English, the next chapter provides the same material in Portuguese.

The book begins with a prologue essay which Dr. Maxwell wrote after visiting Portugal in 1964. This essay provides a sense of Portugal a decade before the 1974 revolution.

Carlos Gaspar highlighted the importance of the book: “Kenneth Maxwell returns to these themes in his latest interventions on the Portuguese revolution published in this book, which also includes an essay on Portugal written in October 1964, as well as historical essays on relations between Portugal and Brazil and on the reconstruction of London, Lisbon and Paris in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries respectively, uniting the Marquis of Pombal and the Baron of Haussmann in the same class of visionaries who restored the capital of the state after a catastrophe – the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 and the Paris Commune in 1871.”

And he concluded his forward to the book as follows:

“E. H. Carr wrote that facts without their historian are dead and meaningless. Kenneth Maxwell has ensured that the first democratic revolution of the 20th century and its international consequences are alive and kicking.”

This podcast was generated by NotebookLM and has insights and some limitations associated with an AI tool.

Perspectives on Portuguese History: The 2024 Lectures by Professor Kenneth Maxwell