Robert J. McMahon is the Mershon Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio State University. He is the author of several books on U.S. foreign relations, including The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction, The Limits of Empire: The United Staes and Southeast Asia Since World War II, and The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan. He served as the president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2001. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.