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Begin New Search Topic Cold War Political Geography United States

1. On Sovereignties and Solidarities

Author:
Julio César Guanche Zaldívar and Sara Kozameh
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
Abstract:
The United States must abandon Cold War-era foreign policies and accept that Cuba is a sovereign nation free to define its political future— even if that means continuing socialism.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Sovereignty, Socialism/Marxism, and Capitalism
Political Geography:
United States and Cuba

2. Considering the "Zero Option"

Author:
Mike Sweeney
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Defense Priorities
Abstract:
The strategic importance of the Middle East has declined, but Washington has so far inadequately adjusted. Diversification of energy sources and reduction in external threats to the region make the Middle East less important to U.S. interests.
Topic:
Cold War, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and Middle East

3. India, The United States, Australia and the Difficult Birth of Bangladesh

Author:
Ric Smith
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Ric Smith has masterfully woven archival material, memories of his own time as a foreign service officer, and conversations with other officers of the then Department of Foreign Affairs to recount the crisis in East Pakistan in 1971 and the difficult birth of Bangladesh. Smith highlights the Cold War incongruities of the crisis, including the Soviet Union’s support for democratic India’s position during the crisis, while the United States supported the military regime in Pakistan. The episode also stands as an example of Canberra diverging from Washington on an issue that was garnering political and media attention in Australia. Australia was able to pursue a policy toward the region that was independent from the United States, accepting early that East Pakistan was “finished” and that there was a need to address an unfolding humanitarian crisis. Smith’s book imparts important lessons about diplomacy for Australia: It is not only possible for Australia’s politicians and diplomats to take independent positions on major international problems, but they are sometimes respected by their allies when they do so.
Topic:
Cold War, Human Rights, Democracy, Geopolitics, and Military Intervention
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, Europe, India, Asia, Soviet Union, and Australia

4. Fall 2019 edition of Strategic Visions

Author:
Alan McPherson
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Strategic Visions
Institution:
Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Temple University
Abstract:
Contents News from the Director ……………………… 2 Announcing the Immerman Fund ………. 2 Fall 2019 Colloquium …………………... 2 Fall 2019 Prizes ………………………… 3 Spring 2020 Lineup …………………….. 4 Note from the Davis Fellow …………………. 5 Fall 2019 Interviews …………………………. 6 Nan Enstad ………………………………6 Thomas Schwartz ………………………. 9 Book Reviews ………………………………...12 Great Power Rising: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy Review by Stanley Schwartz ……12 Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood in the 1950s Review by Abby Whitaker ………14 Armageddon Insurance: Cold War Civil Defense in the United States and Soviet Union, 1945-1991 Review by Michael Fischer ……..16 France and the American Civil War: A Diplomatic History Review by James Kopaczewski …18 “Celebrating Campaigns & Commanders: 66 Titles in 20 Years!” …………………..20 “One Must Walk the Ground”: Experiencing the Staff Ride ……………..21 Announcing the Edwin H. Sherman Prize for Undergraduate Scholarship in Force and Diplomacy………………………….24
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Civil War, Cold War, Children, and History
Political Geography:
United States, Soviet Union, and Global Focus

5. The Power of Ideas That Won the Cold War is Still Needed

Author:
Christopher Datta
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
To win the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan did something for which he is never credited: he dramatically increased the budget of the United States Information Agency, the public diplomacy arm of our struggle against communism. Senegal, in September of 1999, was about to hold a presidential election. Because of USIA's long history of promoting journalism in Senegal, the embassy decided to work in partnership with the local Print, Radio and Television Journalists Federation to hold a series of workshops on the role of journalists in covering elections. USIA was uniquely organized to promote democratic development through the long term support of human rights organizations, journalism, programs that helped build the rule of law, educational programs that encouraged the acceptance of diversity in society and, perhaps most importantly, through partnering with and supporting local opinion leaders to help them promote democratic values that stand in opposition to ideologies hostile to the West.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Human Rights, Elections, Democracy, Rule of Law, Ideology, Networks, and Journalism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, United States, Europe, Iran, Soviet Union, West Africa, Syria, and Senegal

6. Structural Dissonance: The U.S.-PRC Defense Relationship, 1979-1989

Author:
Eric B. Setzekorn
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In the decade between U.S. diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979 and the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) pursued a military engagement policy with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The 1979-1989 U.S.-PRC defense relationship was driven by a mutually shared fear of the USSR, but U.S. policymakers also sought to encourage the PRC to become a more deeply involved in the world community as a responsible power. Beginning in the late 1970s, the U.S. defense department conducted high level exchanges, allowed for the transfer of defense technology, promoted military to military cooperation and brokered foreign military sales (FMS). On the U.S. side, this program was strongly supported by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who worked to push skeptical elements in the U.S. defense bureaucracy. By the mid-1980s, this hesitancy had been overcome and the defense relationship reached a high point in the 1984-1986 period, but structural problems arising from the division of authority within the PRC’s party-state-military structure ultimately proved insurmountable to long-term cooperation. The 1979-1989 U.S.-PRC defense relationship highlights the long-term challenges of pursuing military engagement with fundamentally dissimilar structures of political authority.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Diplomacy, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
United States, China, Europe, Asia, Soviet Union, and North America

7. Ministers For Foreign Affairs 1972-83

Author:
Melissa Conley Tyler and John Robbins
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) is pleased to present the latest book in the Australian Ministers for Foreign Affairs series. In May 2016 the AIIA held a one-day forum to examine the achievements of Australia’s foreign ministers between 1972-83. This forum and publication is the third book in the AIIA’s Australian Ministers for Foreign Affairs series following on from Ministers for Foreign Affairs 1960-72 and R.G. Casey: Minister for External Affairs 1951-60.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Diplomacy, Human Rights, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Indonesia, Asia, and Australia

8. Dancing the Cold War: An International Symposium

Author:
Lynn Granola
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
David Caute, in The Dancer Defects, a wide-ranging volume about the Cold War struggle for supremacy in many realms of cultural activity, devotes his one chapter on dance to the high-profile defections that, beginning with Rudolf Nureyev’s “leap to freedom” in 1961, captured so many headlines. But as we will see in the next two days, there was more – far more – to the story than defections and far more even than ballet, although ballet certainly played a big part in Cold War battles for supremacy. Musicals like West Side Story and dances like the Twist belonged as much to the Cold War imaginary as events at the Bolshoi or the old Met that began with the playing of national anthems and even, on occasion, the display of national flags. Movie theaters and television were also battlegrounds, with millions of Americans tuning in to the Ed Sullivan Show for their first glimpse of real Russian dancers. Although the United States and the USSR were the main protagonists of the Cold War, they were not its only ones. The ideological struggle that was said to pit capitalist freedom against communist oppression took place on many fronts and involved allies, clients, and surrogates of those countries in different parts of the world. The two powers dueled at festivals in Africa, Western Europe, and the Middle East. Master teachers and choreographers were dispatched, and students sent to metropoles. Companies large and small embarked on long tours, spreading the gospel of dance along with a dose of ideology, earning foreign currency for their governments or budget relief for themselves, and contributing to the international visibility of the dance boom. Many breathed a sigh of relief when they returned home, but over the years the exposure to other repertories and other training regimes could be felt in the globalization of works, performance styles, and techniques. In the Cold War struggle for hearts and minds, people outside the corridors of power played a huge part. When the Moiseyev Dance Ensemble first toured the United States, the dancers were mobbed when they bought teddy bears for their children; Americans invited them home, believing that people-to-people diplomacy was the way to peace. Dancers were diplomats; in their dresses and pumps they met artists and dignitaries. They performed in opera houses and on improvised stages, giving full-scale performances and lecture- demonstrations – sometimes to people who had never glimpsed ballet or modern dance before, or witnessed performances by a company of African- American virtuosi. At a time before mass air travel, they traversed oceans and continents, encountered strange foods, languages, and customs. They became members of a global dance culture. The cultural Cold War has become a minor cottage industry. But when Naima Prevots published Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War in 1998, it was the first book to examine the phenomenon with respect to dance. Since then a number of scholars have followed in her footsteps, and several will be giving papers on their work at this symposium. Dancing the Cold War had its inception two years ago when the late and sorely missed Catharine Nepomnyashchy and I curated a symposium on Russian movement cultures of the 1920s and 1930s. The event was multidisciplinary in that it prominently featured both visual iconography and film. This time, in addition to film, photographs, and memorabilia, we will be hearing from dancers from ten US companies who took part in multiple Cold War tours, as well as Soviet-trained artists who have pursued post-Cold War careers outside Russia. We are also fortunate in being able to share Cold War images from the remarkable collection of Robert Greskovic and to show a film of Balanchine’s Western Symphony, specially loaned to us by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which was made in Paris in 1956 with Cold War dollars. Tonight we begin with another Cold War film, Plisetskaya Dances, about the legendary Bolshoi ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya. It was made in 1964 by Moscow’s Central Documentary Film Studio and introduces us to the star who blazed so brightly over the international dance firmament. In Moscow she danced Swan Lake for innumerable foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro (shown on the symposium program and poster after a performance). Abroad she danced it to ecstatic crowds. We know from her memoir, I, Maya Plisetskaya, that her path was not easy. Her father was killed in the late 1930s, and she danced her first Dying Swan (or something that approximated it) at an outdoor concert in the city of Chimkent before an audience of political exiles, including her mother. She was denied permission to take part in the Bolshoi’s 1956 tour of London because one of her father’s brothers had settled in New York, had children, and grown prosperous. None of this appears in the film, of course. What you see instead is the magnificent Bolshoi ballerina, with her outsized temperament and splendid jumps, a dancer who had scaled the heights of international fame but remained at heart deeply Russian.
Topic:
Cold War, Arts, Culture, and Dance
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, Soviet Union, Cuba, and North America

9. Ministers For Foreign Affairs 1960-1972

Author:
Melissa Conley Tyler, John Robbins, and Adrian March
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Australian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
he Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) is pleased to present the second book in the Australian Ministers for Foreign Affairs series. In February 2013 the AIIA held a one-day forum to examine the achievements of Australia’s foreign ministers between 1960 and 1972. This forum and publication followed on from R.G Casey: Minister for External Affairs 1951-1960, and examined the next decade in Australian foreign policy. This newest volume brings together Australia’s most eminent academics and experts in international relations, former senior diplomats and government officials to explore the major issues that confronted the seven foreign ministers during the period of 1960-1972. The book has been edited by Melissa Conley Tyler, John Robbins and Adrian March.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Regional Cooperation, United Nations, International Affairs, and Vietnam
Political Geography:
United States, China, Indonesia, Asia, and Australia

10. Fall 2017 edition of Strategic Visions

Author:
Alan McPherson
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Strategic Visions
Institution:
Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Temple University
Abstract:
Contents: News from the Director ...................... 1 A Quarter-Century of Thanks....... 1 A Half-Year of Help ........................... 1 SV’s New Look .................................... 2 Fall 2017 Colloquium ...................... 2 Fall 2017 Prizes .................................. 3 Final Words .......................................... 4 Spring 2018 Lineup .............................. 5 Note from the Davis Fellow............... 6 Book Reviews.......................................... 7 Jeffrey Engel’s When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War. By Brian McNamara. ............................ 7 Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire. By Alexandre Caillot. ............................ 9 Meredith Hindley’s Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II. By Mathias Fuelling. .......................... 11 Jeremi Suri’s The Impossible Presidency. The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office. By Manna Duah. .................................. 13
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Military Affairs, Empire, and American Presidency
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Middle East, North Africa, and Global Focus