Cold War Studies at Harvard University
Cold War Studies at Harvard University |
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Issue 1 |
Issue 2 |
Issue 3 |
Issue 4 |
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Volume 1 |
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Volume 2 |
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Volume 3 |
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Volume 4 |
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Volume 5 |
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Volume 6 |
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Volume 7 |
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Volume 8 |
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Volume 9 |
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Stalin at the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conference Geoffrey Roberts |
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This article presents new evidence from the Russian Foreign Ministry archive regarding Josif Stalin's participation in the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences. The article shows that the published Soviet records of these wartime summits are incomplete and inaccurate in a number of respects. These omissions and distortions were motivated by political considerations, and the correction of them facilitates a more complete rendition of Stalin's statements at the three conferences. Of particular importance is evidence that Stalin during the war strongly favored the dismemberment of Germany. Not until later did he begin to propagate the myth that he had always supported German unity. |
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In the Shadow of the Bomb: U.S.-Soviet Biomedical Relations in the Early Cold War, 1944–1948 Nikolai Krementsov |
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The deterioration of U.S.-Soviet scientific relations in 1946–1948 traditionally has been seen as simply a consequence of the growing political conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Scientific activities with direct military applications—most clearly manifested in the nuclear bomb—have been depicted as the primary motive for a variety of Cold War science policies, ranging from restrictions on international cooperation to the veil of secrecy placed over military-related scientific research. This article explores U.S.-Soviet relations in oncology in 1944–1948 and shows that science became an integral part and an instrument, rather than a mere reflection, of the Cold War confrontation. Science played a central role in the formulation of certain Cold War policies and informed Soviet decision-making on a wide range of policy issues that were essential to the growth of the Cold War. In this context, the symbolic value of science as a propaganda tool became no less important than its military applications. |
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“No Fixed Values”: A Reinterpretation of the Influence of the Theory of Guerre Révolutionnaire and the Battle of Algiers, 1956–1957
Christopher Cradock and M.L.R. Smith |
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The so-called Battle of Algiers (1956–1957) was a pivotal event in the history of French decolonization and was controversial because it involved brutality and the use of torture. The tactical success of the French Army in the battle has been credited to the theory of guerre révolutionnaire, which evolved in French military thinking after the army's debacle in Indochina. The theory situated anti-colonial insurgencies within the Cold War struggle of Western values against Communism. This article reevaluates earlier claims about the theory's efficacy and shows that ultimately the methods used by the French during the Battle of Algiers can be explained more by factors related to the contingent historical experiences of the French army than by the influence of guerre révolutionnaire. |
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Review Essay: Clandestine Agent: The Real Agnes Smedley Arthur M. Eckstein |
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This essay reviews a new biography of Agnes Smedley, a radical American writer and journalist who secretly worked for the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party on various endeavors, including espionage. When Smedley was accused in the late 1940s of having been a Soviet spy, she staunchly denied the allegations and depicted herself as an innocent victim of a McCarthyite smear. Ruth Price, the author of the new biography, initially expected to find that Smedley had indeed been unjustly accused of spying for the Soviet Union. But as Price sifted through newly available materials from Russia and China, she made the disconcerting discovery that Smedley had in fact eagerly served as an agent of influence and spy for the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists. This case illustrates some of the complexities that arise when assessing why certain Western intellectuals and government officials decided to become spies for the Soviet Union. |
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Sino-Soviet Relations and the Emergence of the Chinese Communist Regime, 1946–1950: New Documents, Old Story Sergey Radchenko |
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Andrei Ledovskii, a long-time Soviet diplomat with a particular expertise on East Asian affairs, and several other Russian specialists on Soviet policy in the Far East have published a massive collection of declassified documents about Soviet policy vis-à-vis China in the first five years after World War II. The authors seek to show that the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war was attributable to Soviet fraternal help, that Josif Stalin wholeheartedly embraced the Chinese Communists' struggle for power, and that the Sino-Soviet alliance from beginning to end enjoyed unstinting Soviet support. But in fact the documents reveal that Stalin's policy toward the Chinese Communists was opportunistic and utilitarian, that he refrained from decisively supporting the Communists in the Civil War until almost the end, and that all the talk of proletarian internationalism in the Sino-Soviet alliance was but a cloak for Soviet expansionist ambitions in East Asia. |
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The Missiles of November, December, January, February . . .: The Problem of Acceptable Risk in the Cuban Missile Crisis Settlement |
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This article examines how the Kennedy administration assessed the risk posed by Soviet short-range missiles in Cuba and the associated combat troops, particularly in the months after the peak of the Cuban missile crisis. The issue had a strong domestic political subtext that played out for months. Missiles in Cuba had been a topic of discussion well before the dramatic events of October 1962, and the dispute about them dragged on well past the famous "thirteen days." Many studies assume a final resolution to the crisis that did not actually exist. The evidence from this period indicates that domestic political considerations were a fundamental factor in Kennedy's decision-making and apparently induced him to take a slightly harder line in the post-crisis negotiations with the Soviet Union than he otherwise might have. But the evidence also suggests that Kennedy was more willing than some of his advisers and many Congressional critics to accept a degree of permanent military risk in Cuba.
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"Pearl Harbor in Reverse": Moral Analogies in the Cuban Missile Crisis |
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During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the argument that U.S. air strikes against Soviet missile sites in Cuba would be morally analogous to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had a major impact on policymaking. The invocation of this analogy contributed to President John F. Kennedy's decision to forgo an immediate attack on the missiles and to start instead with a naval blockade of the island. The "Pearl Harbor in reverse" argument is an example of an important phenomenon that has received little attention in foreign policy analysis—the moral analogy. Fusing together elements of moral and analogical thinking, the moral analogy can be a powerful force in shaping policy preferences, as it was in October 1962.
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Sino-Cuban Relations during the Early Years of the Castro Regime, 1959–1966 |
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China's relations with Cuba in the first half of the 1960s—when the Sino-Soviet split was rapidly intensifying—were important to both Beijing and Havana as well as to the world Communist movement. The Sino-Cuban relationship during this period moved from one of intimate comradeship to deterioration and finally a bitter separation. Although Fidel Castro's ties with Mao Zedong survived the immediate start of the Sino-Soviet rift, Castro's dependence on the Soviet Union ultimately doomed his courtship of China. Castro's vehemently anti-Chinese speech in March 1966 marked the end of Sino-Cuban amity. The Sino-Cuban case sheds valuable light on the tensions that bedeviled the international Communist movement after the Sino-Soviet divide flared to the surface.
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Flashpoint Austria: The Communist-Inspired Strikes of 1950 |
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Austria is frequently overlooked by Cold War historians, but this small landlocked country was the site of a number of East-West confrontations during the decade of occupation by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1955. This article focuses on two of those incidents. In September and October 1950, Austria's Communist Party, supported by Soviet occupation forces, triggered a series of violent demonstrations throughout the country, ostensibly objecting to a new Wage and Price Agreement. Whether these strikes were part of a planned attempt to overthrow the central government is a question still debated. The article assesses the different views on this matter and the evidence available. |
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Review Essay: Cold War Legacies: The Migration and Transformation of Popular/ Unpopular Culture |
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This article reviews two recent collections of essays that focus on the role of popular culture in the Cold War. The article sets the phenomenon into a wide international context and shows how American popular culture affected Europe and vice versa. The essays in these two collections, though divergent in many key respects, show that culture is dynamic and that the past as interpreted from the perspective of the present is often reworked with new meanings. Understanding popular culture in its Cold War context is crucial, but seeing how the culture has evolved in the post–Cold War era can illuminate our view of its Cold War roots. |
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Forum: Perspectives on Resistance with the People |
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Gary Bruce's volume in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Resistance with the People: Repression and Resistance in Eastern Germany, 1945–1955, provides an overview of the East German state security apparatus (Stasi) from the mid-1940s, when secret police organs were set up in eastern Germany by the Soviet occupation forces, through the mid-1950s, when the size of the Stasi sharply increased, allowing it to become a massive surveillance and repressive apparatus. Bruce examines the origins of the Stasi, the role of the state security organs in the outbreak and suppression of the East German uprising of June 1953, and the subsequent evolution of the Stasi under Walter Ulbricht, who removed his rivals from the state security apparatus and then reestablished it as a separate ministry responsible for "combatting all internal and external enemies" of the Communist regime. Two prominent experts on East German history offer their perspectives on Bruce's book and the role of popular resistance under Communist rule. |
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A Most Special Relationship: The Origins of Anglo-American Nuclear Strike Planning |
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This article examines a hitherto unexplored aspect of the Anglo-American "special relationship," the development of arrangements to coordinate U.S. and British forces in a joint nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. During the early Cold War, British political leaders and military officers struggled for a closer relationship with the U.S. Air Force in the hope of gaining greater insight into U.S. war plans, predicated as they were on nuclear strikes launched from bases in England. U.S. willingness to supply nuclear (and later thermonuclear) bombs for delivery by British bombers prompted bilateral talks from 1956 about their deployment in a joint air offensive. This prospective partnership raised difficult issues for the UK Air Staff, which was committed to the maintenance of an independent nuclear deterrent and countervalue rather than counterforce targeting. Nevertheless, the advantages of joint strike planning were such that by 1962 Bomber Command's planning had become fully integrated with that of Strategic Air Command. |
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The Tito-Stalin Split: A Reassessment in Light of New Evidence |
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This article reassesses the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 based on findings from former East-bloc archives. In particular, it shows that the version propagated in the official Yugoslav historiography, suggesting that the break with Moscow arose because of Yugoslavia's distinct path toward socialism, is incorrect. Instead, Josip Broz Tito's unwillingness to give up on his territorial and political ambitions in the Balkans, especially Albania, despite Moscow's objections is the main factor that ultimately sparked the conflict in 1948. Yugoslavia fell afoul of Moscow's policy of enforced Sovietization of the socialist camp, though not because of a long-term Soviet plan or because of particular animosity toward the Yugoslav leadership. Rather, Tito's independent foreign policy provided a welcome pretext to clamp down on Yugoslavia and thereby tighten Soviet control over the other East European states. |
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The Johnson Administration, the Shah of Iran, and the Changing Pattern of U.S.-Iranian Relations, 1965-1967: "Tired of Being Treated like a Schoolboy" |
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This article explores a key period in the relationship between the United States and Iran in the shadow of the Vietnam conflict and the overarching Cold War. It shows how U.S.-Iranian relations shifted considerably from early 1965—when the shah of Iran stepped up his efforts to reduce his dependence on the United States—to November 1967, when U.S. economic development assistance to Iran formally ended. The Johnson administration's overwhelming concern with the Vietnam conflict led to the neglect of potentially critical foreign policy issues and allies, but the lack of success in Vietnam simultaneously accentuated the importance of maintaining key alliance relationships, especially with Iran. The article underscores the centrality of domestic political considerations in forming and understanding foreign policy, both in the United States and in other countries. It also suggests that Third World leaders understood the nature of the Cold War and used the superpower conflict to their advantage to a much greater degree than previously recognized. |
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Choosing Peace: Hanoi and the Geneva Agreement on Vietnam, 1954-1955 |
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Based largely on new documentary evidence from Vietnam, this article examines North Vietnamese policymaking immediately after the signing of the 1954 Geneva accords. The article demonstrates that leaders in Hanoi sought to abide by the accord on Vietnam because they genuinely believed that implementation would produce national reunification peacefully and in accordance with the interests of the "socialist revolution." To that end, they instructed all operatives and supporters in both halves of Vietnam to undertake no activity that might sabotage and otherwise undermine the Geneva accord or provoke or justify non-compliance by the enemy. This stance disappointed revolutionaries in the South, who considered the French, the Americans, and their indigenous "lackeys" incapable of respecting the Geneva agreement. |
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Review Essay: Historical Memory and the End of Communism |
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In critiquing a recent book by Charity Scribner, Requiem for Communism, this article addresses fundamental questions about collective memories of Communism and the Soviet bloc: Why and how is "the past" remembered selectively? What happens when forgotten events are brought back to the fore of collective consciousness? What are the actual mechanisms of remembering? Who are the often invisible gatekeepers that direct the paths of our memories? Who are the influential rulers of memory attempting to shape our mnemonic repertoire? Scribner's book indirectly touches on these issues, though not in a fully satisfactory way, especially with regard to working-class life under Communism. Although the book does have some strong points, it too often fails to take account of how people in the region (as opposed to leftist intellectuals in the West who "knew" Communism vicariously) experienced manual labor during the Communist era and how they remember it now. |
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Transparency and Security Competition: Open Skies and America's Cold War Statecraft, 1948-1960 |
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In recent years, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the role of transparency in international relations. U.S. efforts during the early Cold War to press for greater openness as a way of reducing tensions with the Soviet Union are often cited by specialists on military transparency. Yet the ill-fated Open Skies proposal has not been thoroughly investigated. This article draws on primary documents from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to show that proponents of transparency have generally drawn the wrong conclusions about Open Skies. The U.S. proposal for a system of aerial observation was part and parcel of a strategy to contain and ultimately defeat the Soviet Union. Consequently, Open Skies does not conform to the logic of transparency as a confidence-building measure; it instead affirms basic realist thinking about the competition for security between rivals. Future scholarship that appreciates how the quest for a more open world is affected by the competition for security would improve our understanding of the causes, consequences, and limitations of transparency. |
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Malaya, 1948: Britain's Asian Cold War? |
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In 1948, at a time of severe economic austerity, the British Labour government committed itself to a costly and protracted campaign against a Communist foe in the Far East, despite not having any U.S. support for the endeavor. Clement Attlee’s government in Britain argued that the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) was necessary to counter Soviet attempts to use the local Communist party in support of Moscow’s expansionist designs. Subsequently, many commentators and historians accepted this judgment, at least to some degree. In reality, the rebellion, far from being carefully coordinated or meticulously organized, was inadequately planned and poorly executed. The 1948 insurrection cannot be understood without recognizing the influence of indigenous pressures and internal developments, which were more crucial than the external Cold War dimension.
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The Czechoslovak Special Services and Their American Adversary during the Cold War |
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U.S. intelligence officials in early postwar Czechoslovakia had access to some of the Czechoslovak government’s highest-ranking individuals and plenty of time to prepare for the looming confrontation with the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Yet the Communist takeover in February 1948 took them by surprise and undermined their networks. This article discusses the activities of four Czechoslovak security and intelligence agencies to demonstrate that the scale of the U.S. failure in Prague in 1945–1948 was far greater than often assumed, especially if one considers the substandard size and quality of Czechoslovakia’s Communist-dominated special services after the war. |
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Review Essay: The Security Forces and Polish Communism: Reclaiming History from Myth |
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This article provides a critical review of Oczami Bezpieki (Through the Eyes of the Security Service), an overview of post-1945 Poland based on secret police files by Slawomir Cenckiewicz. The essay sheds light on the ongoing controversies surrounding the secret police ªles that still can cause turmoil in Polish politics. The article discusses the aggressive strategies of the Communist-era security apparatus in three areas considered in the volume: penetration of émigré communities in the United States; attempts to neutralize opposition to the Communist regime from 1968 through the 1980s; and the manipulation of the Roman Catholic Church. The documents demonstrate how obsessively the security forces kept track of opposition activities. |
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China's Elite Politics and Sino-American Rapprochement, January 1969-February 1972 |
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| Western scholars have long assumed that Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai encountered opposition within the Chinese leadership when they sought to improve relations with the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formerly secret documents and first-hand accounts published in China over the last two decades cast doubt on this assumption. Drawing on newly available Chinese sources, this article examines China's policymaking process vis-à-vis the United States during the crucial period from January 1969 to February 1972. The article shows that the highest Chinese officials (especially Mao, Lin Biao, and Zhou) agreed that improvements in U.S.-China relations would be desirable to offset the threat from the Soviet Union. |
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Belated Decolonization and UN Politics against the Backdrop of the Cold War: Portugal, Britain, and Guinea-Bissau's Proclamation of Independence, 1973-1974 |
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When a guerrilla movement opposing Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau issued a unilateral declaration of independence in September 1973, it created a dilemma for Portugal's allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although Britain, like other NATO countries, wanted to keep Portugal within the alliance, British officials were exasperated by the Portuguese regime's refusal to let go of its colonies in Africa. When the United Nations (UN) took up the issue of Guinea-Bissau, Britain came under intense pressure from Portugal to proffer its support. Declassified documents from the British National Archives underscore the difficulties that ensued. British officials were mindful of their relationship with Portugal, but they were unsure of the intentions of the other Western permanent members of the UN Security Council and were worried about damaging Britain's broader position in Africa. This dilemma was not resolved until April 1974 when a military coup in Lisbon led to the Portuguese withdrawal from Guinea-Bissau. |
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Strategy, Ideology, and Human Rights: Jimmy Carter Confronts the Left in Central America, 1979-1981 |
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| This article discusses the Carter administration's policies toward Nicaragua and El Salvador after the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua in July 1979. These policies were influenced by the widespread perception at the time that Marxist revolutionary forces were in the ascendance and the United States was in retreat. Jimmy Carter was trying to move away from traditional American "interventionism" in Latin America, but he was also motivated by strategic concerns about the perception of growing Soviet and Cuban strength, ideological concerns about the spread of Marxism-Leninism, and political-humanitarian concerns about Marxist-Leninist regimes' systematic violations of human rights. |
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Review Essay: Containment Strategies in Perspective |
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| John L. Gaddis's classic 1982 book Strategies of Containment, now out in a revised and expanded edition, characterizes the Cold War strategies of successive U.S. administrations as either symmetric or asymmetric. The new edition of the book retains this distinction and applies it to the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Gaddis incorporates a few findings from research that has appeared since 1982, but the original text has undergone fewer revisions than one might have expected. Gaddis's general approach, and many of his specific claims, are bound to provoke objections, but historians and political scientists will find his analysis stimulating and provocative. |
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Moscow's Proxy? Cuba and Africa 1975-1988 |
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| This article explores the role that Cuba played in Africa after its dispatch of 36,000 soldiers to Angola in late 1975 and the first few months of 1976. The article focuses on the two most important aspects of Cuba's policy in Africa after 1976: its intervention in Ethiopia in 1977–1978; and its continuing presence in Angola, a presence that continued until 1991. The article analyzes Cuba's motivations, the extent to which Fidel Castro's policy was a function of Soviet demands, and the effect of Cuba's policy in Africa on relations with the United States. The concluding section offers an assessment of the costs and benefits of Cuba's policy. |
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Mao, Tibet, and the Korean War |
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| In October 1950 the Chinese leader Mao Zedong embarked on a two-front war. He sent troops to Korea and invaded Tibet at a time when the People's Republic of China was burdened with many domestic problems. The logic behind Mao's risky policy has baffled historians ever since. By drawing on newly available Chinese and Western documents and memoirs, this article explains what happened in October 1950 and why Mao acted as he did. The release of key documents such as telegrams between Mao and his subordinates enables scholars to understand Chinese policymaking vis-à-vis Tibet much more fully than in the past. The article shows that Mao skillfully used the conflicts for his own purposes and consolidated his hold over the Chinese Communist Party. |
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Tibet and Chinese-British-American Relations in the Early 1950s |
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The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who seized power in Beijing in 1949 viewed Tibet as Chinese territory. In this respect, they were no different from previous rulers of China. The chairman of the CCP, Mao Zedong, carefully devised a plan to re-annex Tibet, which had been effectively independent of China since 1911. The CCP's recent victory in the Chinese civil war gave Mao high confidence that he could reclaim Tibet without provoking outside intervention. Such a move not only would bring international political benefits but would also carry a symbolic meaning at home and thereby legitimize the rule of the CCP. Although Mao sent troops to Tibet, he also planned to rely on negotiations and coercive diplomacy. This article highlights the complicated relationships that emerged on the international scene as a result of China's actions in the early 1950s. |
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The Tibetan Rebellion of 1959 and China's Changing Relations with India and the Soviet Union Chen, Jian |
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| Tibet, which had enjoyed de facto independence from 1911 to 1950, was resubordinated to China in late 1950 and 1951 through a combination of political pressure and military force. On 10 March 1959 a mass revolt broke out in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Amid growing turmoil, the 14th Dalai Lama fled the capital. After Chinese troops moved into Lhasa on 20 March to crush the rebellion, the Tibetan leader took refuge in neighboring India. The Chinese People's Liberation Army quelled the unrest and disbanded the local government. This article looks back at those events in order to determine how the rebellion was perceived in China and what effect it had on relations with India. |
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Tibet's Cold War: The CIA and the Chushi Gangdrug Resistance, 1956-1974 |
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This article analyzes the Chushi Gangdrug Tibetan resistance as narrated primarily by Tibetan veterans. The article recounts the origins of the Tibetan resistance forces, their relationship with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, their eventual laying down of arms in 1974, and their legacy in the present-day exile community. Analyses of the Tibetan resistance and the guerrilla war must take account of cultural as well as political and historical factors. The war, pitting a voluntary Tibetan guerrilla movement against the Chinese Communist army, had implications well beyond Tibet and China. India, Nepal, and the United States all became involved. In addition to presenting the perspectives of the soldiers alongside those of the relevant states, the article situates its discussion within the latest anthropological literature on international relations and the Cold War. |
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U.S. Policy toward South Asia and Tibet during the Early Cold War |
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Events in South Asia in the 1950s and early 1960s had a long-term impact on the Cold War and on relations among the countries involved—China, India, Pakistan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. This article provides an overview of U.S. relations with South Asian countries during the early Cold War. It highlights the connections between U.S. policy priorities and commitments in South Asia on the one hand and developments in Tibet on the other. The article considers how U.S. policy priorities and actions in South Asia shaped, and were shaped by, China's reassertion of control over Tibet in the early 1950s and by the frictions that emerged between India and China in 1959 as a result of Beijing's brutal crackdown in Tibet. |
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The United States, Tibet, and the Cold War |
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This article examines U.S. policy toward Tibet from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1980s, especially the 1950s and 1960s. U.S. policy during this period operated on two levels. At the strategic level, the United States consistently supported China's claim of sovereignty over Tibet. But at the tactical level, U.S. policy varied a great deal over time, ranging from the provision of military and financial aid to Tibetan guerrilla forces in the 1950s and 1960s to the almost complete lack of official attention to Tibet in the 1970s and early 1980s. The article explains why the U.S. government has never accepted Tibet's claim to independence and why the question of Tibet, after falling into obscurity in the 1970s, reemerged on the U.S. agenda in the mid- to late 1980s. The article highlights the cynicism that has often characterized tactical shifts in U.S. policy. |
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Rethinking the Linkage between Tibet and the China-India Border Conflict: A Realist Approach |
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This article assesses the dynamic political and military relationships among Tibet, China, and India in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By examining the three governments' calculations and security interests, the article shows that the relationships among the three are best understood from a realist perspective. The focus in the article is on the Sino-Indian dispute over the territory known as "Assam Himalaya," located on the far eastern end of the Sino-Indian border, between southeastern Tibet and northeast India. The article covers a relatively lengthy period, from 1913 to 1962, but in doing so it shows that territorial claims and the desire for secure borders were the key concern of all the countries involved—Tibet, China, India under British imperial rule, post-1947 India, and the United States. |
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Moscow's Proxy? Cuba and Africa 1975-1988 |
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| Drawing on thousands of pages of documents from the closed Cuban archives, from U.S. archives, and from the former East German archives, as well as published materials, this article explores the role that Cuba played in Africa after its dramatic dispatch of 36,000 soldiers to Angola in late 1975 and the first few months of 1976. The article focuses on the two most important aspects of Cuba's policy in Africa after 1976: its intervention in Ethiopia in 1977-1978 and its continuing presence in Angola, a presence that continued until 1991. The article analyzes Cuba's motivations, the extent to which Fidel Castro's policy was a function of Soviet demands, and the effect of Cuba's policy in Africa on relations with the United States. The concluding section offers an assessment of the costs and benefits of Cuba's policy in Africa. |
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The Cold War Origins of the U.S. Central Command |
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| During the Carter administration the Middle East and Southwest Asia became a third major theater in the Cold War struggle along with Europe and the Far East. Initially, President Jimmy Carter tried to remove this region from the Cold War competition, but the collapse of the shah's regime in Iran prompted Carter to reverse course and to build a "Persian Gulf security framework" that later allowed the United States to deal with three wars and many smaller clashes. The interagency process implementing this dramatic change was rent with clashes of departmental interests. The State Department and the military services resisted the structural changes they would later need to confront not only the Soviet threat but also intraregional conflicts. Moreover, the Reagan administration, after forcing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make the Central Command formal, actually slowed the process of its growth, leaving it far from ready to embark on the Gulf War in 1990-1991. |
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Review Essay |
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| On 16 March 1978, the Marxist-Leninist Red Brigades kidnapped Aldo Moro, Italy's paramount political figure of the time. The Italian government steadfastly refused to negotiate with the Red Brigades for Moro's life, and on 9 May the terrorists executed him. Conspiracy theories based on the logic of Cold War politics and involving accusations against subversive elements in the Italian government and the secret services of foreign governments, particularly the United States and Israel, quickly surfaced. These theories gained wide currency among the Italian public despite overwhelming evidence that the Red Brigades bore exclusive responsibility for the crime. This article surveys some of the recent literature on what is still an extremely controversial subject in Italy. |
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Rethinking Nonproliferation: LBJ, the Gilpatric Committee, and U.S. National Security Policy |
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| In late 1964, Lyndon Johnson and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy convened an ad hoc group of distinguished citizens to consider the problem of nuclear proliferation. The creation of this group, known as the Gilpatric Committee, signaled Johnson's fear that a number of foreign policy issues related to proliferation had reached a crisis point in 1964. It also signaled his dissatisfaction with existing bureaucratic arrangements to resolve these problems. After several weeks of deliberation, the committee gave Johnson a report that advocated a sharp intensification of U.S. nonproliferation policy. The committee challenged key aspects of the administration's foreign policy and urged the president to rethink the nature of the U.S.-Soviet relationship. Although Johnson shied away from implementing some of the committee's more controversial proposals, the administration eventually embraced the basic philosophy of the report. The Gilpatric Report provided a conceptual foundation for important departures in U.S. foreign relations and national security policy from 1965 until the end of Johnson's presidency. |
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The Soviet Union and the Outbreak of the June 1967 Six-Day War |
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| The Soviet Union's transfer of false information to Egypt about alleged Israeli troop concentrations facing Syria in May 1967 is still considered a major factor in the outbreak of the June 1967 Mideast War. Soviet motivations and expectations, however, remain a topic of dispute. New information has become available over the past fifteen years, primarily through interviews and memoirs but also through the release of some important Soviet documents, including correspondence and reports of meetings between Soviet and Egyptian officials at the highest levels. A careful analysis of the circumstances and events during the period immediately before the 1967 war substantiates the conclusion that the Soviet Union did not initially expect or want war to break out between Israel and the Arabs. Soviet leaders made efforts to moderate Egyptian actions and considered at least one proposal for averting war. By the first week of June, as Egypt and Syria mobilized for an attack on Israel, the Soviet Union apparently expected an Israeli preemptive strike. Soviet actions during and immediately after the war indicated an interest in reducing the risks of the conflict, even in cooperation with the United States, although Soviet leaders seem to have held differing views about this matter. |
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Great-Power Involvement and Israeli Battlefield Success in the Arab-Israeli Wars, 1948-1982 |
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| This article shows that Israel's success in wars against Arab states should not be attributed exclusively to its own military prowess and the relative incompetence of its enemies. Another important factor was great-power involvement in the Arab-Israeli wars. Despite Israel's early fears, such involvement in most cases either failed to deny Israel its military achievements or was an asset for two main reasons: lack of will or capability on the part of hostile great powers to intervene against Israel; and a friendly patron's support, without which Israel's own military skills might not have been sufficient to secure military success. |
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A Fusion Bomb over Andalucía: U.S. Information Policy and the 1966 Palomares Incident |
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| The fiery mid-air collision of two U.S. Air Force planes in January 1966 caused a payload of hydrogen bombs to fall on the countryside near the village of Palomares in the southern Spanish region of Andalucía. Although no nuclear explosions resulted, the incident scattered small amounts of radioactive material. A more serious problem, however, was the loss of one of the hydrogen bombs in the nearby waters of the Mediterranean Sea. During the prolonged period in which U.S. military teams worked to recover the missing bomb, government officials hastily cobbled together an information policy to deal with members of the press. Their efforts were almost not enough to quell rising concerns in Spain and in other European countries. The Palomares incident is an excellent historical illustration of the need for a versatile information policy that can be organized and set into action almost immediately after a sensitive military incident. |
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Ireland, the Marshall Plan, and U.S. Cold War Concerns |
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| The implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe from 1947 to 1951 has been increasingly well documented as archival materials have become available. Although U.S. motivations and the extent of the U.S. contribution to rehabilitating and uniting Europe, thwarting Communism, and consolidating democracy are still debated by historians, there is little disagreement about the impressive size and logistics of the program. However, not all of the assistance delivered was in the form of food, finance, and technical advice. Ideological and psychological weapons were also used. This article examines all of these aspects of the Marshall Plan and how the campaigns actually worked in a country that has often been left out of analyses of the postwar reconstruction—Ireland. Because Ireland had been neutral during the war and wanted to remain neutral afterward, the question of participating in a U.S.-sponsored program that did not include the Communist European states (because the Soviet Union vetoed their participation) raised sensitive questions within Ireland about the desirability of being so conspicuously aligned with a Western bloc. |
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Mongolian Politics in the Shadow of the Cold War: The 1964 Coup Attempt and the Sino-Soviet Split |
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After Nikita Khrushchev's condemnation of some of Stalin's crimes in 1956, the Mongolian People's Republic, following in the footsteps of the "fraternal" Soviet Union, also succumbed to the "thaw." Khrushchev used de-Stalinization to discredit his hardline opponents. Mongolia's leader, Yumjaagiyn Tsedenbal, was a Stalin-era holdover who came under criticism from his rivals for being unenthusiastic about political reforms. Tsedenbal had good reason to downplay de-Stalinization: He shared responsibility with Marshal Horloogiyn Choibalsan for violent repressions in the 1940s. But Tsedenbal outmaneuvered and eliminated his opponents in the late 1950s and early 1960s and consolidated his grip on power by 1964. Toward the end of that year, however, Tsedenbal once again was challenged, this time from an unexpected direction. Several members of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) used the precedent of Khrushchev's forced retirement from his leadership posts in Moscow in October 1964 as a pretext to overthrow Tsedenbal. At a plenum of the MPRP Central Committee in December 1964, Tsedenbal was accused of incompetence, corruption, disrespect for principles of "party democracy," lack of economic discipline, and overreliance on the Soviet Union for credits. But Tsedenbal rebuffed the "anti-party group" and depicted the affair as an attempted coup engineered by pro-Chinese sympathizers and spies. Soviet leaders were wary of Chinese efforts to "subvert" Moscow's influence in the socialist camp and were therefore willing to endorse Tsedenbal's version of events. |
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"Reenacting the Story of Tantalus": Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Failed Rhetoric of Liberation |
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| This article examines Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's publicly declared goal to achieve the "liberation" of Eastern Europe, a goal that they claimed would replace the Truman administration's "passive" containment policy. But the evidence shows that Eisenhower and Dulles were unwilling to risk war with the Soviet Union and believed that liberation, if actually pursued, would induce the Soviet Union to react violently to perceived threats in Eastern Europe. Hence, in top-secret meetings and conversations, Eisenhower and Dulles rejected military liberation, despite their public pronouncements. Instead, they secretly pursued a tricky, risky, and long-term strategy of radio broadcasts and covert action designed to erode, rather than overthrow, Soviet power in Eastern Europe. In public, they continued to embrace liberation policy even when confronted with testimony from U.S. allies that the rhetorical diplomacy of liberation had not worked. This reliance on rhetoric failed to deter the Soviet Union from quashing rebellions in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. If anything, the Eisenhower administration's rhetorical liberation policy may have encouraged, at least to some degree, these revolts. |
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Private Sources of U.S. Foreign Policy: William Pawley and the 1954 Coup d'État in Guatemala |
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| As a wealthy American businessman and former ambassador, William Pawley was a key actor in PBSUCCESS, the covert operation that brought down the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in 1954. The anti-Arbenz rebels, led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, could not have defeated the Guatemalan army on their own. The key to a successful coup was getting the army to act on their behalf, and in this regard, control of the air was vital. Pawley, owing to his knowledge of Latin America and experience in aviation, played a central role in ensuring that the rebels enjoyed air superiority during their move against the president. At a more abstract level, Pawley exemplified the role non-governmental actors played in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. The "state-private network," as it has been dubbed, remains a rich vein for scholarly investigation. |
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Cold War Pop Culture and the Image of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Perspective of the Original Star Trek Series |
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| Star Trek has been a major American cultural phenomenon. In the 1960s, when the original series was in production, the producers, directors, and writers attempted to use it as a forum to comment on a number of political issues. They intentionally designed some episodes to critique U.S. foreign policy in the belief that the United States should seek to foster democracy and refrain from using force that would undermine the country's positive role in international affairs. In part, then, Star Trek was a running effort to reshape the foreign policies of the United States. |
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From Non-alignment to Neutrality: Austria's Transformation during the First East-West Détente, 1953-1958 |
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This article deals with Austria during the first phase of détente from 1953 to 1958, a period in which the country was still formally under Four-Power control. The article recounts and analyzes the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty (and Austria's accompanying declaration of neutrality) in 1955 and the positions taken by Austria during the crises in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Lebanon in 1958. Austria's neutrality was spurred not so much by the Cold War as by the East-West "thaw" after Stalin's death. Neutrality helped usher in a remarkably successful period of national self-assertion that facilitated Austria's efforts at nation building. |
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Revolution or Self-Defense? Communist Goals, Strategy, and Tactics in the Greek Civil War |
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| At the end of World War II the Greek Communist party (KKE) claimed that it would seek an accommodation with its domestic opponents, but the party soon launched a full-scale insurrection on its own initiative in the expectation of receiving decisive support from the Soviet Union. With civil war under way, the head of the KKE, Nikos Zahariadis, repeatedly told Soviet officials that victory was certain if the Greek Communists could obtain funding, weapons, and other equipment from the USSR and its allies. Although Soviet leaders were concerned that the KKE's aggressiveness would provoke a U.S. reaction, they permitted the clandestine shipment of large quantities of supplies that delayed but could not avert the insurgents' defeat. U.S. officials at the time largely misperceived the causes of the insurrection, but they correctly sensed that the KKE's dependence on Soviet-bloc assistance would ensure that a Communist victory would bring Greece into Moscow's orbit. |
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The Nixon Administration, the "Horror Strategy," and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969-1972: Prelude to the Schlesinger Doctrine |
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| In early 1969 President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, received a briefing on the U.S. nuclear war plan, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). Appalled by the catastrophic scale of the SIOP, Nixon and Kissinger sought military options that were more credible than massive nuclear strikes. Participants in the Air Force Nuclear Options project also supported more flexible nuclear war plans. Although Kissinger repeatedly asked Defense Department officials to construct limited options, they were skeptical that it would be possible to control nuclear escalation or to introduce greater flexibility without weakening the SIOP. Interagency studies presented a mixed verdict about the desirability of limited options; nevertheless, continued White House pressure encouraged Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to sponsor a major review of nuclear targeting. In 1972 the Foster panel developed concepts of limited, selective, and regional nuclear options that were responsive to Kissinger's interest in credible nuclear threats. The Foster panel's report led to the controversial "Schlesinger Doctrine" and further efforts to revise the SIOP, but serious questions endured about the whole concept of controlled nuclear warfare. |
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Continuity and Change: Reinterpreting the Policies of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations toward Iran, 1950-1954 |
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It has long been argued that the Eisenhower administration pursued a more assertive policy toward Iran than the Truman administration did. This interpretative consensus, though, has recently come under challenge. In the Journal of Cold War Studies in 1999, Francis Gavin argued that U.S. policy toward Iran in 1950-1953 became progressively more assertive in response to a gradual shift in the global U.S.-USSR balance of power. This article shares, and develops further, Gavin's revisionist theme of policy continuity, but it explains the continuity by showing that Truman and Eisenhower had the same principal objectives and made the same basic assumptions when devising policy. The more assertive policy was primarily the result of the failure of U.S. policy by early 1952. The Truman administration subsequently adopted a more forceful policy, which Eisenhower simply continued until all perceived options for saving Iran from Communism were foreclosed other than that of instigating a coup to bring about a more pliable government. |
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Who Is Trying to Keep What Secret from Whom and Why? MI5-FBI Relations and the Klaus Fuchs Case |
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| Klaus Fuchs was one of the most infamous spies of the Cold War, whose espionage feats altered the nature of the early postwar period. Drawing on newly released archival documents and witness testimony, this article considers the events surrounding his arrest and conviction. These sources reveal that even before Fuchs was arrested, he was used as a pawn. Because of his supreme importance to the British nuclear weapons program, some British officials initially believed that he should remain in his position, despite his admission of guilt. Until the matter was resolved, Fuchs was used unwittingly as a wedge between the British and U.S. intelligence services. Moreover, when the United States criticized British security standards, the Fuchs case was used by MI5 to cajole and mislead Parliament and the public. |
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Introduction: The Role of Ideas and the End of the Cold War |
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| The end of the Cold War helped to prompt new interest in the study of ideas in international politics. Once the province of a few dedicated researchers on the fringes of the discipline, scholarship on the role of ideas now occupies an important place in the mainstream of North American and especially European international relations research. The five articles in this special issue of the journal are intended to move the research agenda on ideas and the end of the Cold War to a new level of rigor. They develop new models of how ideas affected the outcome and, in so doing, take stock of this event to refine our understanding of how ideas work in international politics. Although we seek a deeper understanding of the end of the Cold War itself, we also use this seminal case to clarify and advance the debate over the role of ideas in international politics more generally. |
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Ideas and Explanation: Advancing the Theoretical Agenda |
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This article responds to key methodological and theoretical challenges posed by the literature on the role of ideas in international relations, especially the literature on ideas and the end of the Cold War. The article develops a theoretical framework that guides the analysis of the empirical articles that follow. It identifies explanatory strategies for the role of ideas and seeks to clarify key methodological issues in the study of ideas. The article defines terms, identifies several different relationships between ideational and material factors, and lays out a series of "tests" for evaluating the causal effect of various kinds of ideas and ideational mechanisms. It then seeks to clarify two primary issues: whether it is possible to draw a clearer line between the material and the ideational; and what is meant by "constitutive effects" and "constitutive explanation." The article defends the notion of constitutive explanation and shows how both causal analysis and constitutive analysis are valid explanatory strategies for the role of ideas. |
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The Sociology of New Thinking: Elites, Identity Change, and the End of the Cold War |
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| This article recounts the origins of Soviet "new thinking" as a case study of how Soviet intellectuals sought to redefine national identity in response to the West. It demonstrates that new thinking was fundamentally normative, not instrumental, insofar as it was developed in a period (1950s1960s) when "socialism" was thought to be materially outperforming capitalism. It also demonstrates that new thinking decisively affected Soviet policy in the second half of the 1980s. Putting forth a socialization argument to show how new-thinking ideas originated in the post-Stalin period within a community of intellectuals, the article charts the growing influence of these intellectuals through the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s, when Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party and empowered many of the new thinkers as advisers, their liberal, Westernizing ideas played an indispensable role in shaping his reforms. The analysis focuses on mechanisms of identity change at two levels: that of the community of reformist intellectuals, and that of the Soviet Union itself. The analysis challenges realist and rationalist views that new thinking was largely instrumental. Until the Gorbachev era, Soviet reformers advocated new-thinking ideas often at the risk of their personal, professional, and institutional interests. |
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The Guns That Didn't Smoke: Ideas and the Soviet Non-Use of Force in 1989 |
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| Why did Soviet leaders not resort to force to preserve the Warsaw Pact in 1989? This article provides a cognitive model of how decision-makers learn from experience. It seeks to specify and establish the causal effect of this mechanism (elite cause-and-effect learning) as opposed to alternatives (more materialist or normative arguments) and to lay out the scope conditions for its operation. Soviet leaders learned from past Soviet military interventions in Czechoslovakia, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere the high costs and negative consequences of the use of force. Even Soviet hardliners, for both material and ideational reasons (i.e., beliefs about the efficacy of force), would have hesitated about the use of force in Eastern Europe had they been in power. The hardliners did, however, have much different views about the terms the Soviet Union should seek regarding German unification. Gorbachev's ideas prevailed largely because of the lingering authority of his position as top leader. In short, although ideas and material constraints pushed in the same direction to produce the startling events of 1989, ideas and governmental structure were critical in determining which of competing policy prescriptions would prevail regarding German unification. |
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Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War |
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| This article analyzes the role of human-rights ideas in the collapse of Communism. The demise of Communist rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was significantly influenced by the transnational diffusion of human-rights ideas. The analysis focuses on how human-rights norms were transmitted to Soviet dissidents and policymakers. The article also considers precisely how, and how much, these norms affected policy. The two primary causal mechanisms were the transmission of these ideas by a transnational Eastern European social movement for human rights, which expanded the roster of available political concepts and the terms of political legitimacy, and the mechanism of "rhetorical entrapment" whereby Soviet leaders became "trapped" or constrained to uphold their rhetorical commitment to the Helsinki Accords by the expanding discourse of human rights. Subsequently, Soviet leaders accepted human rights ideas for both substantive and instrumental reasons. Western power played some role, but the ideas themselves were salient, legitimate, and resonant for Soviet leaders seeking a new identity and destiny for the Soviet Union. |
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Economic Incentives, Ideas, and the End of the Cold War: Gorbachev and German Unification |
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Focusing on Gorbachev and German unification, this article shows how the effectiveness of economic aid depends on ideas decision-makers hold about economics and identity. German economic statecraft worked in securing Gorbachev's support for German unification solely because of a specific set of ideas that animated Soviet decision-makers during that period. The weakness of the Soviet economy made economic assistance from Germany attractive, but Gorbachev did not bargain hard over the amount of aid because he thought it would ruin an anticipated close partnership with Germany in the future. The importance of the German economic incentives lay in their role as trust-building measures. In contrast, Japan's effort to use economic aid to persuade Soviet leaders to return the Kurile Islands during the same period failed, in part because Soviet leaders did not expect a friendly relationship with Japan. For cultural and political reasons, Soviet leaders were more oriented toward Germany and the West. The fact that Soviet leaders did not seek aid or technology from Japan--a technology powerhouse--and turned instead to Germany, shows that material pressures alone cannot account for the success or failure of economic incentives. |
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The End of the Cold War as a Hard Case for Ideas |
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| The articles in this special issue of the journal succeeded in meeting the core objective set out in the introduction: to refine, deepen, and extend previous studies of the role of ideas in the end of the Cold War. In particular, they confront more forthrightly than past studies a major challenge of studying ideas in this case; namely, that ideas, material incentives, and policy all covaried. Two other important problems for those seeking to establish an independent role for ideas remain to be addressed in future studies. Facing those problems as squarely as the contributors to this issue have faced the covariation problem will yield major benefits for the study of ideas in this case and in international relations more generally. |
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The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 3) |
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This is the concluding part of a three-part article that discusses the transformation of SovietEast European relations in the late 1980s and the impact of the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe on the Soviet Union. This final segment is divided into two main parts: First, it provides an extended analysis of the bitter public debate that erupted in the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991 about the "loss" of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The debate roiled the Soviet political system and fueled the hardline backlash against Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, this part of the article offers a concluding section that highlights the theoretical implications of the article as a whole. The article, as the conclusion shows, sheds light on recent literature concerning the diffusion of political innovations and the external context of democratization and political change. |
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Special Forum: The Marshall Plan and the Origins of the Cold War Reassessed |
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Two British scholars reassess what they view as the decisive episode in the early Cold War, the Marshall Plan. Far from seeing the Plan as a mere act of generosity by the United States, they argue that it was an integral part of an increasingly aggressive U.S. posture toward the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was still seeking a cooperative relationship with the United States, but the U.S. decision to establish a European Recovery Program (ERP) without a sincere intention of including the Soviet Union posed a threat to Soviet security interests. Josif Stalin wanted to prevent the United States from luring the East European countries away from the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and into the Western sphere. Although Stalin was reluctant to abandon his bid for close cooperation with the West, the Marshall Plan left him with little choice. As the ERP progressed, Stalin drastically tightened his hold over Eastern Europe and imposed Soviet-style systems on the countries in the region. The Marshall Plan thus had the "tragic" effect of creating a long-term divide in Europe that consigned tens of millions of people to life under tyranny. |
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Responses |
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| Five distinguished scholars offer separate commentaries on the article by Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe. All of the commentators reject the broad interpretation and many of the specific arguments put forth by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe. They point out several crucial issues that are omitted from the article and raise questions about the authors' sources, use of evidence, and selective invocation of secondary literature. They regret that Cox and Kennedy-Pipe seem to dwell on a large number of the same matters that preoccupied radical revisionist historians in the 1960s. They argue that although Cox and Kennedy-Pipe offer a more sophisticated version of revisionism, their article suffers from many of the same shortcomings. Most of the commentators believe that the Marshall Plan merely reflected a division of Europe that was already well under way rather than being the precipitating cause. In that sense, the debate on the origins of the Cold War needs to go well beyond the issues raised by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe. |
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| Response 1: The Marshall Plan as Tragedy Trachtenberg, Marc To access this file, please follow the link. |
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| Response 2: The Advent of Neo-Revisionism? |
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| Response 3: Looking for Love (or Tragedy) in All the Wrong Places |
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| Response 4: Was American Diplomacy Really Tragic? |
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| Response 5: The Marshall Plan and the Division of Europe |
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Rejoinder: The Tragedies of American Foreign Policy: Further Reflections |
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Cox and Kennedy-Pipe offer a staunch defense of their article, arguing that the commentators generally missed the point of what the article was supposed to accomplish. Rather than providing an exhaustive account of the early Cold War and all the complications posed by Germany, the article sought to distill the essence of U.S. and Soviet strategies. The basic problem, as highlighted in the article, is that the United States would not accept the extension of Soviet influence into Eastern Europe and that, in opposing and seeking to roll back Soviet influence, U.S. officials sealed the fate of the East European countries. |
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The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 2) |
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| This is the second part of a three-part article that looks at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the repercussions of those events in the Soviet Union. The first part focused on the "direct" spillover from Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union, whereas this segment examines the "indirect" spillover, which took four forms: (1) the discrediting of Marxist-Leninist ideology, (2)the heightened sense of the Soviet regime's own vulnerability, (3)the diminished potential for the use of force in the USSR to curb internal unrest, and (4) the "demonstration effect" and "contagiousness" of regime change and democratization in Eastern Europe. These factors together made it considerably more difficult for Gorbachev to prevent the Soviet Union from unraveling. The final part of the article will be published in the next issue of the journal. |
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Immunizing against the American Other: Racism, Nationalism, and Gender in U.S.-Icelandic Military Relations during the Cold War |
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| The 1951 U.S.-Icelandic Defense Agreement paved the way for a permanent U.S. military presence at the Keflavik base in Iceland, an outpost that played a crucial role in U.S. strategy during the Cold War. The article explores two gender-related aspects of the U.S.-Icelandic Cold War relationship: the restrictions on off-base movements of U.S. soldiers, and the secret ban imposed by the Icelandic government on the stationing of black U.S. troops in Iceland. These practices were meant to "protect" Icelandic women and to preserve a homogeneous "national body." Although U.S. officials repeatedly tried tohave the restrictions lifted, the Icelandic government refused to modify them until the racial ban was publicly disclosed in late 1959. Even after the practice came to light, it took another several years before the ban was gradually eliminated. Misguided though the Icelandic restrictions may have been, they did, paradoxically, help to defuse domestic opposition to Iceland's pro-American foreign policy course and thus preserved the country's role in the Western alliance. |
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De Gaulle, Moravcsik, and The Choice for Europe : Soft Sources, Weak Evidence |
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| In The Choice for Europe Andrew Moravcsik develops a "commercial" interpretation of Charles de Gaulle's European policies. Moravcsik claims that his revisionist analysis succeeds because he, as opposed to almost all other students of European Community policymaking, has relied not on "soft" sources but on hard primary sources. An investigation of his claim shows that it cannot be substantiated. Both the quality of his sources and his handling of them are poor. His commercial interpretation of de Gaulle's policy is based on a serious misreading of the two sources on which his argument depends. Finally, his restatement in 2000 ofhis original argument—a restatement intended to overcome the problem that, as his critics pointed out, he failed to produce any direct supporting evidence—leads only to further problems. |
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| REVIEW ESSAY German and Soviet Military Doctrinal Innovation before World War II Roberts, Cynthia |
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| In the lead-up to World War II, both Germany and the Soviet Union pursued important changes in military doctrine that proved crucial during the armed confrontation between the two countries in 1941-1945. Using a new book by the military historian Mary Habeck as a point of departure, this essay explains how the German and Soviet armed forces by the late 1930s had developed almost identical doctrines without extensively borrowing from each other. Although the doctrinal innovations that informed the German Blitzkrieg and the Soviet conception of "deep battle" have long attracted attention, Habeck's book is the first detailed comparison of the development of armored warfare in these two countries. Although the book does not provide a comprehensive explanation of the sources of innovation in military doctrine, it sheds a great deal of light on the revolutionary changes in German and Soviet military doctrines during the interwar years. |
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The United States, Brazil, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (Part 2) |
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Though virtually ignored in the historiography, Brazil played an intriguing role in the politics and diplomacy of the Cuban missile crisis and in U.S.- Cuban relations during the Kennedy administration. In the years after Fidel Castro took power, successive Brazilian governments tried secretly to mediate between Washington and Havana as their mutual confrontation intensified. Newly available U.S., Brazilian, Cuban, and other sources reveal that this role climaxed during the missile crisis, as John F. Kennedy clandestinely sought to employ Brazil to transmit a message to Castro. In turn, Brazil, which was also promoting a Latin American denuclearization scheme at the United Nations as a possible means of resolving the crisis, sought to broker a formula for U.S.-Cuban reconciliation that would heighten the prestige of its own "independent" policy in the Cold War. Ultimately, these efforts failed, but they shed light on previously hidden aspects of both the missile crisis and the triangular U.S.-Cuban-Brazilian relationship. This is the concluding part of a two-part article. |
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| The Irony of Vietnam: The Johnson Administration's Tentative Bridge Building to China, 1965-1966 Lumbers, Michael |
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Drawing on recently declassified American documents, this article traces the shift in U.S. policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) initiated by the Johnson administration in 1965-1966. During the first two years of his presidency, Lyndon Johnson resisted proposals to adopt a more flexible stance toward China, owing in large part to his suspicion that Beijing was encouraging and supplying the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam. This perception remained intact for the duration of the Johnson years and stifled major changes in policy toward China. Yet ironically, the Vietnam War itself led to a reappraisal of long-standing strategy toward the PRC. Johnson's determination to head off the threat of Chinese intervention in Vietnam and to sustain public support for the war yielded a relaxation of travel restrictions, the promotion of unofficial contacts between the two countries, and a striking change in rhetoric.
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REVIEW ESSAY |
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This essay reviews two books that provide diverging views of the relationship between the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Soviet Union. The first book, a lengthy collection of declassified documents from the former Soviet archives, provides abundant evidence of the PCI's crucial dependence on Soviet funding. No Communist party outside the Soviet bloc depended more on Soviet funding over the years than the PCI did. Vast amounts of money flowed from Moscow into the PCI's coffers. The Italian Communists maintained their heavy reliance on Soviet funding until the early 1980s. The other book discussed here—a memoir by Gianni Cervetti, a former senior PCI financial official—seeks to defend the party's policy and to downplay the importance of the aid provided by Moscow. Nonetheless, even Cervetti's book makes clear, if only inadvertently, that the link with the Soviet Union helped spark the broader collapse of Marxism-Leninism as a mobilizing force. |
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REVIEW ESSAY |
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The crisis in Poland in 1980-1981 imposed great demands on the U.S. intelligence community. On the one hand, U.S. intelligence analysts sought to determine whether the Soviet Union might send troops into Poland to crush the Solidarity movement. On the other hand, a small group of senior intelligence and national security officials who were privy to reports from Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a senior officer on the Polish General Staff who was secretly working for the United States, had to decide how best to use the enormously valuable information the colonel was providing. These issues and others pertaining to the activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Polish crisis are examined in a new book by Douglas J. MacEachin, a former CIA deputy director who oversaw the agency's efforts vis-à-vis Poland and the Soviet Union. MacEachin's book, as this essay shows, provides an astute and refreshingly candid evaluation of the CIA's performance. |
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Volume 6, Issue 2 (Spring 2004)Volume 6, Issue 1 (Winter 2004)
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The Early Post-Stalin succession Struggle
and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy (Part II) Mark Kramer |
| Part 2 of this three-part article discusses
the aftermath of the June 1953 East German
uprising, particularly the arrest on 26 June
of Lavrentii Beria, who until then had been one of the most powerful
figures in Moscow. Beria's arrest came not
because of any high-level disagreements about
policy, but simply because Beria's rivals
wanted to remove him from the post-Stalin succession struggle.
Newly released documents shed much greater light
on the plot against Beria, which was intricate
and extremely risky, yet ultimately successful. |
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A Certain Idea of Science: How International
Relations Theory Avoids Reviewing the Cold War William C. Wohlforth |
| So far, scholars of international politics
have displayed relatively little inclination
to use new evidence from Cold War-era archives
to test their theories and generalizations. This reaction is misguided.
The new archival evidence and memoirs can,
and should, provide a reality check for theoretical
debates. It is time for students of international
relations to recognize the crucial link between
historical explanation and theoretical propositions. |
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Mobilizing Europe's Stateless: America's Plan for
a Cold War Army
(download full-text) James Jay Carafano |
| When World War II ended, millions of refugees
were left in Europe, unable or unwilling
to return to their former homes. A number
of leading U.S. officials wanted to form an armed Volunteer Freedom
Corps out of these displaced groups. The Corps
would have supplemented, and perhaps eventually
replaced, U.S. troops stationed in Europe.
American officials favored the plan because they believed it would
reduce the U.S. military burden, alleviate the
refugee crisis, and provide a bulwark against
Soviet expansion. The proposal was never
implemented, however, because of objections from West European
governments. The whole episode illustrated the tensions
that often surfaced within NATO during the
Cold War. |
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To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once
and for All': The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland,
1943-1947 Timothy Snyder |
| The complicated and violent interactions
between Ukrainians and Poles during and after
World War II have been the subject of competing
Ukrainian and Polish historical interpretations. This article
sifts through the historical evidence to determine
why Ukrainian and Polish memories of that
period are so much at odds. The fate of
the contested territories of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia was
decided ultimately by the Soviet Union, which imposed
new borders on Poland. Once those borders
had been established, the transfer of Poles
from the newly enlarged Soviet Ukraine and the forced
removal of Ukrainians from eastern Poland consolidated an "ethnically
cleansed" postwar order. |
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The Early Post-Stalin succession Struggle
and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy (Part I) Mark Kramer |
| The death of Josif Stalin was followed
by momentous changes in the Soviet bloc.
Part 1 of this two-part article considers how and
why these changes came about, looking at the interaction between
domestic and external events. It explores
the nature of Soviet decision-making, the
impact of events in East-Central Europe,
the implementation of Moscow's new policy, and the use of Soviet
troops to put down a large-scale uprising in East
Germany. |
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Politics, Power, and U.S. Policy in Iran, 1950-1953
(download full-text)Francis Gavin |
| Explanations that focus on norms, ideology,
and domestic sources of foreign policy are
increasingly popular in studies of international politics
during the Cold War. This article finds that U.S. policy
in the early 1950s was driven chiefly by
structural factors, especially the changing
balance of power. What appeared to be a radical shift
in policy toward Iran initiated by Eisenhower was, in fact, largely
a continuation of the policies of the Truman
administration, with new options made possible
by the huge U.S. military buildup of the
early 1950s. |
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Rethinking the Role of Ideology in
International Politics During the Cold War Nigel Gould-Davies |
| The partial opening of East-bloc archives
has sparked renewed interest in the study
of ideological influences in Soviet foreign policy.
The task of assessing the relative weight of ideology is complicated,
however, by the failure of most scholars
to develop sound evaluative critera. This
article discusses the shortcomings of previous analyses
of Soviet ideology and puts forth a more theoretically coherent
approach, based on three explicit criteria
for assessing ideological and security-seeking
goals. |
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A Few Unresolved Mysteries about Stalin
and the Cold War in Europe: A Modest Agenda for Research Adam Ulam |
Despite the gradual release of once-classified documents in the former Soviet Union, numerous questions and problems about Stalin's role in the Cold War remain. Some tantalizing clues about Stalin's ambitious and motivations have emerged, but several key aspects of Soviet policy in East-Central Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s seem just as puzzling as they did before the archives were opened. The further declassification of materials may shed new light on these mysteries, enabling scholars to develop a better understanding of the first decade of the Cold War. |