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31. The North Korean Air Force: A Declining or Evolving Threat?

Author:
Noam Hartoch and Alon Levkowitz
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests during the Kim Jong-un era have strengthened the country’s military power, deterring South Korea, Japan and, in particular, the United States. While North Korea's nuclear and missile capabilities are rapidly improving, parallel developments aren’t occurring in the traditionally technical air and air defense forces. Plagued with aging airframes, technical problems, parts shortages and budget shortfalls, the North Korean Air Force no longer challenges the South Korean and American air forces. This paper examines the North Korean Air Force, analyzing its organization and deployment, air defense and early warning capabilities, aircraft acquisition, and aircraft production. Shortfalls in each of these areas caused Pyongyang to develop, test, and operate an increasingly sophisticated drone fleet. While North Korea won’t be able to build a state-of-the-art aircraft industry, it will nonetheless find creative ways to strengthen its air force capabilities.
Topic:
Nuclear Power, Weapons, Drones, Missile Defense, and Air Force
Political Geography:
Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea, Poland, Soviet Union, New Zealand, and United States of America

32. Russia and USA: Rhetoric and Reality

Author:
Dmitry V. Shlapentokh
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
Abstract:
Moralization is an essential part of any geo-political game, and that is especially the case with countries such as the United States and Russia. Presently, Washington has become especially prone to playing the morality card. At least, that is the case with Hillary Clinton supporters who stated that the ugliness of Donald Trump is clearly manifested by his desire to overlook the noble principles on which American foreign policy has rested since the founding fathers designed it. Consequently, Trump’s desire to befriend Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian Russian President, is a clear departure from his basic principles. Moscow also likes to assure that Russia always follows high moral principles in its foreign policy design. Still, Kremlin residents mostly limited moralizing to an internal audience, whereas people in Washington made the moralization publicly known to an international audience, urbis and orbis, so to speak. A closer look at the Soviet/Russia and the U.S. relationship could reveal that it is not high principles, whatever they might be in the context of the prevailing ideological shibboleth, but rather it is pragmatism that defines their relationship. The image of both countries has followed the pragmatic model. This implies that the U.S. and Russia could well cooperate in the future despite hostile rhetoric that dominated discourse in Moscow and Washington – a rhetoric that might not disappear completely in the future.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, and History
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Soviet Union, North America, and United States of America

33. The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe, by Zeynep Bulutgil

Author:
Benjamin Lieberman and Zeynep Bulutgil
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
In The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe, Zeynep Bulutgil questions prevailing interpretations of the origins of ethnic cleansing and provides an innovative interpretation that will itself prompt further debate about the balance between factors that might block ethnic cleansing as well as active causes of cleansing. The work poses an important and often overlooked question: instead of focusing on factors that have caused ethnic cleansing, why not instead also chart factors that have precluded ethnic cleansing?
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, History, Book Review, and Ethnic Cleansing
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia

34. Runs, Hikes, & Cops in Bohemia

Author:
Peter Bridges
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
After five good years in our Rome embassy, my family and I were transferred in late 1971 to the American embassy in Prague. This was three years after the Soviet army had crushed Alexander Dubček’s “socialism with a human face.” It had not crushed the Czechs and Slovaks. We made a number of friends; we had never known a people with such a liking for Americans; but the StB, the Státní bezpečnost or state security police, were an oppressive presence. People understandably had their heads under their wings. It was only later, in 1976, that future President Václav Havel and others organized the Charter 77 dissident movement.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Sports, Surveillance, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Soviet Union, Czech Republic, and United States of America

35. Reminiscences of life under communism: Soviet Show trials

Author:
Norma Brown
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
It was early-1980s Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known under communism, practically on the doorstep of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but so deep in the slough of communism that nobody would have considered it possible that a monumental change was in the offing. Bustling Moscow, where my then-future husband was serving at the same time, had a reasonable KGB to foreigner ratio. In the backwater of the one-time capital of the Russian Empire, the ratio was out of sight, more than 10-1. Still, it didn’t matter if you had five KGB thugs in black leather jackets dogging your footsteps or fifty. They always got what they wanted in the Soviet Union.
Topic:
Communism, Diplomacy, Courts, Surveillance, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

36. Cuban Missiles and Operation Dragon Rouge

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and 1964’s Belgian paratroop drop from U.S. C-130s in the Congo were the most interesting events in my five year intelligence career. Lowly intelligence analysts like me working for the U.S. Information Agency had to sit in the Director’s chair about three weekends every year as part of the job. Our building near the White House was almost empty on weekends. Nobody else was on duty except the front door guards and the cable/code room guys. If some critical action telegram came in during Saturday or Sunday, my job was to phone the Director on his red, secure phone immediately, wherever he might be.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Soviet Union, Cuba, Caribbean, North America, and United States of America

37. The phenomenon of Transnistria as a model of post-Soviet diversity policy

Author:
Alexander Osipov and Hanna Vasilevich
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This text discusses the structure and content of diversity policy in the so-called Transnistrian Moldovan Republic (TMR), an unrecognized state that broke away from Moldova during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The case of Transnistria is particularly useful as an example for analyzing the origins, structure, contents and effects of the post-Soviet ethno-cultural policy in a comparative perspective. Moreover, the model of Transnistrian state- and nation-building, since it is not explicitly based on privileging a core ethnicity, differs from nearly all countries and de facto states of the post-communist space. The working paper describes the TMR normative framework pertinent to the management of ethnic and linguistic diversity and analyzes the patterns of its implementation. The authors analyze the reasons why ethnic diversity has never been a challenge to the Transnistrian statehood and its stability while different ethnicities and languages are treated differently. The Transnistrian phenomenon is also considered from the perspective of the effectiveness and efficiency of post-Soviet diversity policies.
Topic:
International Relations and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Soviet Union

38. Diplomatic Experience That Never Fades

Author:
A. Yakovna
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Success multiplied by intuition is behind many discoveries. This fully applies to British historian Prof. Gabriel Gorodetsky* who has written numerous scholarly works including The Precarious Truce: Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1924-1927, Stafford Cripps’ Mission to Moscow, 1940-1942, etc. Prof. Gorodetsky came across the diaries of Ivan Maisky,** Soviet Ambassador to London while preparing official Soviet-Israeli documents for publication and was immediately interested. Before him few historians had paid attention to this unique historical document. in fact, Stalin never encouraged officials to keep diaries; this explains why they are few and far between in soviet archives.
Topic:
Communism, Diplomacy, and History
Political Geography:
Israel and Soviet Union

39. Vienna Snow and Soviet Meltdown

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Vienna was snowed in when I first visited there in 1972. Twenty years later I was back in Vienna to relax and to direct the Regional Program Office’ excellent staff. Then Moscow melted and the Office had huge amounts of new work to help set up new embassies in former communist countries and to produce translations in languages for the Baltics, the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Soviet Union, Austria, and Vienna

40. Old Times on the Soviet Desk

Author:
Peter Bridges
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Back in the late 1950s, when Stalin was not long gone and the Soviet state remained our militarily powerful and dangerous adversary, the State Department’s basic office for dealing with the Russians was a Soviet desk composed of just four members of the Foreign Service and four from the Civil Service, the latter including an archivist and two stenographers. There were of course other Washington offices that had to do with the USSR, in State as well as in CIA, Commerce, the FBI, the Pentagon, and USIA; but we were the primary interface wth the two embassies, the Soviet in Washington and ours in Moscow. Shortly before Christmas in 1957 I became the junior Foreign Service officer on the Soviet desk, after completing the then three-month orientation course for new FSOs at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America