Date:Tuesday, February 2, 2021, 12:15pm to 1:45pm

Location: Online Event (Zoom)

Cold War Studies Seminar; sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and co-sponsored 

by the Korea Institute’s SBS Foundation Research Fund

Samuel F. Wells Jr.

Senior Fellow in History and Public Policy (and Deputy Director Emeritus),

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Samuel F. Wells Jr. is a Cold War Fellow in the History and Public Policy Program

at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he founded 

the International Security Studies Program and served as associate director

and deputy director. His publications include The Strategic Triangle:

France, Germany, and the United States in the Shaping of the New Europe (2006).

After World War II, the escalating tensions of the Cold War shaped the international system.

 Fearing the Worst explains how the Korean War fundamentally changed postwar 

competition between the United States and the Soviet Union into a militarized confrontation

that would last decades. Samuel F. Wells Jr. examines how military and political events

interacted to escalate the conflict. Decisions made by the Truman administration 

in the first six months of the Korean War drove both superpowers to intensify their 

defense buildup. American leaders feared the worst-case scenario?that Stalin was 

prepared to start World War III?and raced to build up strategic arms, resulting in a struggle

they did not seek out or intend. Their decisions stemmed from incomplete interpretations

of Soviet and Chinese goals, especially the belief that China was a Kremlin puppet.

Yet Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sung all had their own agendas, about which the United States

lacked reliable intelligence. Drawing on newly available documents and memoirs?including

previously restricted archives in Russia, China, and North Korea?Wells analyzes

the key decision points that changed the course of the war. He also provides vivid profiles 

of the central actors as well as important but lesser known figures. Bringing together studies

of military policy and diplomacy with the roles of technology, intelligence, and domestic 

politics in each of the principal nations, Fearing the Worst offers a new account 

of the Korean War and its lasting legacy.