Global Britain's strategic problem East of Suez

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
William D. James
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Permanent Presence

Abstract Why did Britain withdraw from its military bases in the Arabian Peninsula and Southeast Asia midway through the Cold War? Existing accounts tend to focus on Britain's weak economic position, as well as the domestic political incentives of retrenchment for the ruling Labour Party. This article offers an alternative explanation: the strategic rationale for retaining a permanent presence East of Suez dissolved during the 1960s, as policymakers realised that these military bases were consuming more security than they could generate. These findings have resonance for British officials charting a return East of Suez today under the banner of ‘Global Britain’.

Mind Bending, Mental Seduction and Menticide: Brainwashing in British Spy Dramas of the 1960s

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Burton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Thought Control ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Scientific Background ◽  
Mind Control ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Cultural Fantasy

Brainwashing assumed the proportions of a cultural fantasy during the Cold War period. The article examines the various political, scientific and cultural contexts of brainwashing, and proceeds to a consideration of the place of mind control in British spy dramas made for cinema and television in the 1960s and 1970s. Particular attention is given to the films The Mind Benders (1963) and The Ipcress File (1965), and to the television dramas Man in a Suitcase (1967–8), The Prisoner (1967–8) and Callan (1967–81), which gave expression to the anxieties surrounding thought-control. Attention is given to the scientific background to the representations of brainwashing, and the significance of spy scandals, treasons and treacheries as a distinct context to the appearance of brainwashing on British screens.

Nasser's Gamble

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Original Material ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Arab Spring

This book draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as “my Vietnam.” The book argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen, the book demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the “Arab Cold War” set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, this book brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Systems Thinking ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Future Visions

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.

Tropical Russian Bears: Jews and Soviet Animation During The Cold War

Images ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-90
Author(s):  
Maya Balakirsky Katz
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Mickey Mouse ◽  
Social Mapping ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

After Stalin consolidated the major animation studios and closed down smaller regional studios to create a single Moscow-based drawn and puppet animation studio in 1934–36, the animation studio Soyuzmultfilm became the largest animation studio in Eastern Europe. In the 1960s, Soviet Jewish animators focused on the theme of social geography and developed individual characters in relationship to social mapping. This essay analyses the enigmatic Cheburashka, the Soviet Mickey Mouse, whose popularity as a Communist ideal led to his starring role as Soyuzmultfilm’s most enduring logo. It is particularly concerned with the development of the ethnically-unidentifiable Cheburashka against the history of the Moscow Zoo and its inter-species exhibitions.

Sweden, Europe, and the Cold War: A Reappraisal

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryo Makko
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Traditionally, Sweden has been portrayed as an active bridge-builder in international politics in the 1960s and 1970s. The country advocated a “third way” toward democratic socialism and greater “justice” in international affairs, but these foreign policy prescriptions were never applied to European affairs. This article examines Sweden's relations with Europe by contrasting European integration with the Cold War. Negotiations on Swedish membership in the European Communities and Swedish policy at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe were influenced by a general Berührungsangst toward Europe, which persisted during the years of détente. Because Swedish decision-makers believed that heavy involvement in European affairs would constrict Sweden's freedom of action, Swedish leaders' moral proclamations were applied exclusively to distant Third World countries rather than the egregious abuses of human rights in the Soviet bloc.

scholarly journals Cultural Trauma of the Civil War of 1918 Staged and Commemorated in Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-131
Author(s):  
Pentti Paavolainen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

The Centennial of one of the cruelest of European civil wars fought in Finland between the Reds and the Whites from January to May 1918 has evoked a spectrum of theatre productions illustrating variations of styles and approaches on the events. The turn in the treatment of this cultural trauma occurred with the interpretations and narrative perspectives that were fixed in the 1960s, when an understanding for the defeated Red side was expressed in historiography, literature and theatre. Since that, the last six decades the Finnish theatre and public discourse on the Civil War have been dominated by the Red narrative as the memory of the 1918 Civil War provided an important part in the new identity politics for the 1969 generation. Since the 1980’s the topic was mostly put aside so that before the 2018 revivals of the Civil War topic, the productions seem to have been reactions by the artists confronting the developments at the end of the Cold War. Some theatrical events can even be tied to the cultural trauma of the 1969 left evoked by the collapse of the socialist block. The Centennial productions repeated the Red narrative but they also provided more balanced interpretationson the tragic events.

Violent Origins of Authoritarian Variation: Rebellion Type and Regime Type in Cold War Southeast Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Slater
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The State ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

AbstractDictatorships are every bit as institutionally diverse as democracies, but where does this variation come from? This article argues that different types of internal rebellion influence the emergence of different types of authoritarian regimes. The critical question is whether rebel forces primarily seek to seize state power or to escape it. Regional rebellions seeking toescapethe state raise the probability of a military-dominated authoritarian regime, since they are especially likely to unify the military while heightening friction between civilian and military elites. Leftist rebellions seeking toseizethe state are more likely to give rise to civilian-dominated dictatorships by inspiring ‘joint projects’ in which military elites willingly support party-led authoritarian rule. Historical case studies of Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam illustrate the theory, elaborating how different types of violent conflict helped produce different types of dictatorships across the breadth of mainland and island Southeast Asia during the Cold War era.

Overseas Chinese Commerce, Decolonization, and the Cold War in Southeast Asia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Lim
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Cold War

The term “overseas Chinese” refers to people who left the Qing Empire (and later on, the Republic of China or ROC) for a better life in Southeast Asia. Some of them arrived in Southeast Asia as merchants. They were either involved in retail or wholesale trade, or importing and exporting goods between the Qing Empire/ROC and Southeast Asia. With the decolonization of Southeast Asia from the end of World War II in 1945, overseas Chinese commerce was targeted by nationalists because the merchants were seen to have been working together with the colonial authorities and to have enriched themselves at the expense of locals. New nationalist regimes in Southeast Asia introduced anti-Chinese legislation in order to reduce the overseas Chinese presence in economic activities. Chinese merchants were banned from certain trades and trade monopolies were broken down. Several Southeast Asian states also attempted to assimilate the overseas Chinese by forcing them to adopt local-sounding names. However, the overseas Chinese continued to be dominant in the economies of Malaya (later Malaysia) and Singapore. Malaysia introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which has an anti-Chinese agenda, in 1970. The decolonization process also occurred during the Cold War, and Chinese merchants sought to continue trade with China at a time when governments in Southeast Asia were suspicious of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Attempts by merchants from Malaya and Singapore to trade with the PRC in 1956 were considered to have failed, as the PRC had other political concerns. By the time Singapore had gained independence in 1965, the door to investment and trade with the PRC was shut, and the Chinese in Southeast Asia turned their backs on China by taking on citizenship in their countries of residence.

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