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161. The Defense Monitor: Nuclear Recollections

Author:
Bruce Blair
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Defense Information
Abstract:
Rear Adm. Eugene (Gene) Carroll, our beloved colleague who passed away this February, often shared with me his recollections of the role he once played in planning for nuclear war. As quoted in his obituary in the Washington Post, Gene once wrote: “During the horrible confrontation with the Soviet Union we called the Cold War, I frequently stood nuclear alert watch on aircraft carriers. For a period of time my assigned target was an industrial complex and transportation hub in a major city in Eastern Europe … My bomb alone would have resulted in the death of an estimated 600,000 human beings. Multiply that by 40 or 50 times and you can understand what two carriers alone would have done.”
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Soviet Union

162. Changing Korean Perceptions of the Post-Cold War Era and the U.S.-ROK Alliance

Author:
Choong Nam Kim
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
For half a century the United States and South Korea have been united in an alliance that has simultaneously contained North Korea and projected American power into Northeast Asia. Now that alliance is being questioned by many South Koreans, whose country has developed from a poor, authoritarian state into the world's 11th largest economy and a vital democracy. Along the way South Koreans' views of themselves and of other nations have changed. Improved relations with China and Russia, and a policy of engagement with North Korea, have reduced the country's dependence on the United States and South Koreans' tolerance for what they view as American arrogance and unilateralism. Indeed, Koreans today view their Cold War allies (the United States and Japan) more negatively than their Cold War enemies (North Korea and China), a situation that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. The poorly coordinated North Korea policy of Seoul and Washington appears to be a direct cause of anti-Americanism, which will grow unless the two countries develop a more equal, mutually acceptable relationship.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Israel, South Korea, and North Korea

163. From Alliances to Ambivalence: The Search for a Transatlantic Agenda In the 21st Century

Author:
Jackson Janes
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
During the Cold War, European-American relations were often marked by differences over tactics, but we did share for the most part a strategic goal that was to be achieved on the basis of the twin principles of deterrence and détente. Yet there are some that would argue that this past year has been different; that the transatlantic rift goes deeper and will last longer. If the Americans and Europeans cannot find common ground in certain regulatory areas, it may be that we will agree to disagree on the use of GMO's, technological standards, or Anti-trust legislation. This could lead to more competition but also to duplication in an increasingly interwoven global market. Yet, because we face a vastly more complicated environment today than during previous years — full of threats and opportunities — it will remain a challenge for the coming decade to strategize as to how transatlantic political policy problems can best be dealt with.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

164. The Nuclear Dimension of U.S.-Russian Relations: Missile Defense, Arms Control and 'Loose Nukes'

Author:
Rose Gottemoeller
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
The United States and Russia are entering an important stage following the Presidential summit of May 2002. Since Presidents Bush and Putin first started getting to know one another last year, they have been declaring the onset of a fundamentally new relationship, based on a new framework for strategic cooperation. Both leaders have declared that the Cold War is over and that our two countries can exist as friends.
Topic:
Cold War, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Asia

165. The United States and Russia in Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran

Author:
Fiona Hill
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
Before 1991, the states of Central Asia were marginal backwaters, republics of the Soviet Union that played no major role in the Cold War relationship between the USSR and the United States, or in the Soviet Union's relationship with the principal regional powers of Turkey, Iran, and China. But, in the 1990s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union coincided with the re-discovery of the energy resources of the Caspian Sea, attracting a range of international oil companies including American majors to the region. Eventually, the Caspian Basin became a point of tension in U.S.-Russian relations. In addition, Central Asia emerged as a zone of conflict. Violent clashes erupted between ethnic groups in the region's Ferghana Valley. Civil war in Tajikistan, in 1992-1997, became entangled with war in Afghanistan. Faltering political and economic reforms, and mounting social problems provided a fertile ground for the germination of radical groups, the infiltration of foreign Islamic networks, and the spawning of militant organizations like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The IMU first sought to overthrow the government of President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan, later espoused greater ambitions for the creation of an Islamic caliphate (state) across Central Asia, and eventually joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan. With the events of September 11, 2001 and their roots in the terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, Central Asia came to the forefront of U.S. attention.
Topic:
Cold War and Religion
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, United States, China, Europe, Iran, Central Asia, Turkey, Asia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Taliban, and Soviet Union

166. U.S. Policy Toward the Former Yugoslavia

Author:
Steven E. Meyer
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
As long as the Cold War framed the international arena, relations between the United States and Yugoslavia were—for the most part—fairly clear and predictable. Both sides played their assigned roles well in the larger East-West drama. For the U.S., Yugoslavia—after Tito and Stalin split in 1948—was the useful, even reliable, strategically-placed, communist antagonist to the Soviet Union. Certainly, Washington complained at times about Yugoslavia's preference for nonalignment and lamented the fact that it was not part of the Western alliance. The fact that Yugoslavia was indeed a communist state that Moscow could not control, however, more than compensated for these “short comings.” As a reward, the U.S. courted Tito, provided economic aid, and paid virtually no attention to how he ran the country—even his brutal rise to power after World War II was of little consequence.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Cold War, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Washington, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia

167. The Politics of European Enlargement: NATO, the EU and the New U.S.-European Relationship

Author:
Howard J. Wiarda
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the main issues in Eastern and Central Europe, and in U.S. and European policy toward the area, have focused on achieving peace and stability, building democracy, accomplishing economic and institutional reform, accelerating growth and modernization, and anchoring and integrating the countries of the area into Europe and its two great “clubs”: the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It could be said that the last three goals listed–democracy, economic and institutional reform, and European integration–were all means to the end of achieving peace and stability in this critical area, not known historically for its stable, peaceful politics, as well as to the end of securing a buffer zone on Europe's eastern frontiers that would also function as a means to hem in and limit any future Russian resurgence. What may have begun in strategic planners' eyes as a means to an end, however, has since then taken on a life of its own.
Topic:
International Relations, NATO, Cold War, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and North Atlantic

168. Euro-Focus, September 11, One Year Later A Fading Transatlantic Partnership?

Author:
Simon Serfaty
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
One year ago, the two summits scheduled by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) for the end of 2002 were expected to start the final phase of the Euro-Atlantic vision: two institutions with overlapping sets of members engaged in missions that might not always be pursued in common but would always remain compatible in their goals and complementary in their methods. Instead, as the year has unfolded since September 11, that vision has become increasingly blurred. Now, there is a sense that the two sides of the Atlantic are drifting away from the lofty goals they set after World War II and during the Cold War, and sought to reassert after the Cold War. The relationship is not only said to be lacking coherence; it is also said to be losing its necessity, as Americans and Europeans no longer share values or even interests—and, even when they do, lose their commonalities in the increasing capabilities gap that divides them.
Topic:
NATO, Cold War, Economics, Politics, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

169. Special Policy Forum Report: Battling for the 'Hearts and Minds' of Middle Easterners, Post-September 11: A Year-End Assessment

Author:
Martin Kramer and Mouafac Harb
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Public diplomacy in the Middle Eastern context is not a new problem. Every non-Muslim state that has projected its power into the Middle East has had to win over the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim population under its control. Muslim Middle Easterners have always viewed the projection of non-Muslim power into the region with suspicion. Nevertheless, America does not have to reinvent the public diplomacy wheel. The United States should learn from the history of the European experience in the Middle East and from its own successful public diplomacy efforts in the Cold War era.
Topic:
Security, Cold War, and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, America, Europe, Middle East, and Arab Countries

170. After 9/11: Preventing Mass-Destruction Terrorism and Weapons Proliferation

Author:
Michael Barletta (ed.)
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Abstract:
The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, is a watershed date in the history of the United States after the Cold War. Since 1989, policymakers, analysts, and historians have been unable to name the period of history the United States entered after 1989. The best that they could muster was “the post-Cold War period.” That short-lived era in U.S. history is now over. What we will name this period and how we will characterize it are not yet clear. But it will be a very different period for the United States and its role in the world.
Topic:
Cold War, National Security, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States