scholarly journals Crises of Commemoration: Cold War, Decolonization and the Bungled 1954 D-Day Commemoration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W M Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
War Memories ◽  
European Defence Community

Abstract— In 1954, international dignitaries and veterans joined the commemoration of the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy, though not everything went according to plan. For the French organizers, chief among them Gaullist deputy Raymond Triboulet, the event was intended to communicate a unifying, pro-Allied message amid a turbulent political climate. By June 1954, France had recently suffered a decisive defeat at Dien Bien Phu and was politically gripped by the divisive prospect of a European Defence Community. In debates over these crises, war memories surfaced and France’s experience of the Occupation and Liberation enflamed passions. For many who attended the Normandy ceremony in 1954, the missteps of organizers created tension and upset, endangering Allied participation in the Paris Liberation ceremonies to follow. This moment of disjuncture illuminates how currents of memory, international diplomacy, decolonization and broader Cold War tensions all intersected and influenced each other on the Normandy beaches.

scholarly journals Is It Time for the Beaver to Hop off the Eagle? A Case for Canada to Reconsider Its Geopolitical Alignment with the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Zhou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International System ◽  
Economic Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
International Diplomacy

Canada is known for its close relations with the United States in the domains of economic affairs, defence and international diplomacy. This arrangement, however, was a product of the great changes brought about by the Second World War. The combination of British decline, Ottawa’s desire to achieve full independence from London, and the looming Soviet threat during the Cold War created a political environment in which Canada had to become closely integrated with the United States both militarily and economically. Canada did so to ensure its survival in the international system. With the exception of a few controversial issues like US involvement in Vietnam (1955) and Iraq (2003) as well as Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), Ottawa has been Washington’s closest ally since 1945. On numerous occasions like the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as recently as the War in Afghanistan and the War Against IS (Islamic State), Canada had provided staunch military and diplomatic support to Washington in its engagements around the globe. In an era of relative peace, stability, and certainty, particularly during the Post-Cold War period and the height of American power from 1991 to 2008, this geopolitical arrangement of continental integration had greatly benefited Canada. This era of benefits, however, is arguably drawing to a close. The Great Recession of 2007-09, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the insistence on pursuing a foreign policy of global primacy despite its significant economic cost, are sending the US down an uncertain path. Due to its close relations and geographical proximity with the US, Canada now faces a hostile international environment that is filled with uncertainty as a result of superpower decline, great power rivalries, environmental degradation, and failed US interventions.

Colonial Legacies, War Memories, and Political Violence in Taiwan, 1945–1947

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Victor Louzon
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
War Memories ◽  
Colonial Legacies

In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt broke out, and places the incident in the context of memory wars in Taiwan since. His chapter delves into the politics and geopolitics the incident, highlighting both the KMT brutal suppression of the revolt, and the experience of Taiwanese at the center of the revolt, many of whom had been mobilized by the Japanese army and paramilitary structures. His work redirects our attention to the experience of “remobilized” Taiwanese and the repertoire of actions and symbols invoked from the imperial era which defined the incident. Even more his work suggests new insights into broader transnational questions of the imperial roots of mobilization and militarization in Cold War Asia.

The Last Piece of the Jigsaw: Britain and the Creation of the Western European Union, 1954

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Deighton
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Cold War ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Community ◽  
West Germany ◽  
International Debate ◽  
The North ◽  
Western European ◽  
European Defence Community

By 1955, the formation of a Cold War bloc in Western Europe was complete. The Western European Union (WEU), a redesigned Brussels Treaty Organisation (BTO) within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with West Germany and Italy as members, was created. The 1954 Paris Agreements that established WEU also enabled West Germany to become a virtually sovereign actor, and a member of NATO. The Agreements were effected on the rubble of an acrimonious four-year international debate over a proposed European Defence Community (EDC). This would have created a European army for France, the Benelux countries, Italy and West Germany on the model of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), and a parallel political community for the Six.

Trends in the Production of Knowledge about the Middle East within and across Disciplines: A Survey of PhD Dissertations, 2000–2010

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Bier
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Academic Climate ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter surveys topical, methodological, and geographic trends in the production of knowledge about the Middle East in doctoral dissertations written over the decade 2000–2010. It assesses the extent to which the post-9/11 political and academic climate influenced knowledge production about the Middle East. It argues that while scholarship on the Middle East has undoubtedly been both constrained and inspired by geopolitics and the various political, popular, and media responses to 9/11, the relationship between the two is not necessarily coherent, unilinear, or predictable. Trends in Middle East studies (MES) are the product of changes in political climate, methodological currents within disciplines (themselves related to shifts in the post-Cold War geopolitical order), the peculiarities and engagements of MES as a distinct disciplinel, and the relationship between area studies and wider disciplinary norms, organizations, and institutions.

Jimmy Carter and Human Rights in Latin America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Walker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
Security Costs

Human rights was perhaps the defining feature of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Although much attention was given at the time to its impact on US relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Latin America was equally, if not more, important in defining and implementing Carter’s vision of a human rights foreign policy. Latin America was the site of some of the Carter administration’s most visible and concentrated human rights diplomacy, and revealed the central logic and persistent challenges of implementing a coherent, comprehensive human rights policy that worked in tandem with other US interests. Carter’s Latin America policy reimagined US national interests and paired human rights with greater respect for national sovereignty, challenging US patterns of intervention and alignment with right-wing anticommunist dictatorships throughout the Cold War. In the Southern Cone, the Carter administration’s efforts to distance the United States from repressive Cold War allies and foster improvements in human rights conditions provoked nationalist backlash from the military regimes, and faced domestic criticism about the economic and security costs of new human rights policies. Similarly, in Central America, the administration faced the challenge of reforming relations with abusive anticommunist allies in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador without supporting communist revolution. Its tepid and cautious response to violence by the Central American governments called into question the Carter administration’s commitment to its human rights agenda. In Cuba, the Carter administration sought to advance human rights as part of a larger effort to normalize relations between the two countries, an effort that was ultimately stymied by both geopolitical dynamics and domestic politics. Although limited in the fundamental changes it could coax from foreign governments and societies, the administration’s policy had a tangible impact in specific high-profile human rights cases. In the long term, it helped legitimize human rights as part of international diplomacy in Latin America and beyond, amplifying the work of other government and nongovernment proponents of human rights.

Minority Rights After Helsinki

1994 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 119-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Korey
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
International Diplomacy

The “sexiest acronym in international diplomacy.” Such was a Washington pandit's roguish, if appropriate, characterization of the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) just a few of years ago in 1990 after it critically helped ignite the revolutions in Eastern Europe and torpedo the Berlin Wall. Other, more serious, foreign affairs analysts were equally enthusiastic about CSCE. A prominent commentator called it the “premier post-Cold War political forum.”

The External Relations of the EEC, and Its Internal Problems

1975 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emile Noël
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
Internal Development ◽  
Military Threat ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
Political Background ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
European Defence Community

EXTERNAL POLICY HAS HAD QUITE A LOT TO DO WITH THE establishment of the Communities. The cold war was in fill1 swing when the first of them, the European Coal and Steel Community, came into operation in 1952. The projected European Defence Community was an attempt to find a European response to the Soviet military threat which was the obsession of the early 1950s. A few years later, the trouble in which the European countries found themselves - over oil afier the Suez crisis, at the end of 1956, undoubtedly served to speed up the negotiation and conclusion of the Treaties of Rome. However, this political background did not affect the actual content of the Common Market Treaty, which as regards external relations is quite on traditional lines. It keeps the assertion of the Community's external identity and responsibilities very definitely subordinated to its internal development, that is, to the achievement of economic integration.

Sounds of the Apocalypse: Preserving Cold War Memories in Ulrich Horstmann's Radio Play Die Bunkermann-Kassette

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-109
Author(s):  
Gerrit K. Roessler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Radio Drama ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
War Memories ◽  
Radio Technology ◽  
Radio Play ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines Ulrich Horstmann's science fiction radio play Die Bunkermann-Kassette (The Bunker Man Cassette, 1979), in which the author frames fears and anxieties surrounding a potential nuclear conflict during the Cold War as apocalyptic self-annihilation of the human race. Radio, especially radio drama, had a unique role in capturing the historical imaginaries and traumatic experiences surrounding this non-event. Horstmann's radio drama and the titular cassette tape become sound artifacts that speak to the technological contexts of their time, while their acoustic content carries the past sounds into the present. In the world of the play, these artifacts are presented in a museum of the future, which uses the possibilities of science fictional imagination and speculation to create prosthetic memories of the Cold War. The article suggests that these memories are cyborg memories, because the listener is a fully integrated component of radio technology that makes these memories and recollections of imagined events possible in the first place.

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