Future Forces and Future Policies

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Richard L. Garwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Great Improvement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Capital ◽  
Missile Attack ◽  
Do So

Pertinent Highlights of the SALT Agreements: The SALT I Agreements signed in Moscow May 26, 1972, were the result of more than three years of negotiation by the Nixon Administration. They provide the basis for a great improvement in national security. The ABM Treaty recognizes the technical reality that neither the Soviet Union nor the United States can defend its population or industry against ballistic missile attack and that it is not simply wasteful but counterproductive to try to do so. The treaty limits each side to a negligible defense at two sites—the national capital and another at least 800 miles away. Furthermore, it limits the number of radar complexes around the national capital to six, at most, and the number of interceptors at each of the two sites to 100, with the clear implication that not only should these defenses against missiles be penetrable but also destroyable by those missiles.

Rational Superiority, Crises, and Arms Control, 1961–1963

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Cameron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Rhetoric ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Test Ban

Chapter 1 describes how John F. Kennedy rose to power by articulating his own new nuclear strategy, which would use the latest advances in social and organizational sciences, combined with US superiority in nuclear weapons, to defend the United States’ national security interests. The foremost exponent of this strategy of “rational superiority” was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The chapter then explains how this scheme was dealt a series of blows by Kennedy’s experiences during the Berlin and Cuban missile crises, which disabused him of the idea that nuclear superiority could be used to coerce the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the Kennedy administration used the rhetoric of rational superiority to advance the Limited Test Ban Treaty and was planning to employ it as part of the president’s reelection campaign in 1964. Kennedy had not reconciled this gap between his public rhetoric and personal doubts at the time of his death.

The New United Nations and the Revision of the Charter

1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Morgenthau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Do So

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union has prevented the United Nations from becoming the international government of the great powers which the Charter intended it to be. That conflict has paralyzed the Security Council as an agency of international government. In the few instances when it has been able to act as an agency of international government, it has been able to do so either, as in the beginning of the Korean War, by the accidental and temporary absence of the Soviet Union or, as on the Indonesian issue, by a fortuitous and exceptional coincidence of interests.

Civil Defense—the New Debate

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 44-44
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Downey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Limited Effectiveness ◽  
Basic Facts ◽  
Evacuation Plan ◽  
Do So

Anyone who believes that the Soviet Union, because of its civil defense program, is better able to survive a nuclear war than the United States is totally misguided. And anyone willing to accept such a foolish argument is blind to three basic facts.First, the massive urban evacuation program would have limited effectiveness in reducing the disastrous effects of a nuclear attack on the general population, even supposing that such a scheme could be effectively carried out on a national scale. Second, targeting for population destruction is not in any case a primary goal of our current strategic planning. Third, if Soviet strategic planners are contemplating a first-strike scenario against the United States (as many American hawks state in their arguments for an American civil defense evacuation scheme), they would be unable to employ their urban evacuation plan, because to do so would obviously destroy the element of surprise needed for any first strike to succeed.

The Cold War and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–74

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Jerome Slater
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Negotiated Settlement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace Settlement ◽  
Arab Israeli Conflict ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict became entangled in the global rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. American policymakers, particularly Henry Kissinger, believed that the Soviets wanted to exploit the Arab-Israeli conflict to drive the West from the Middle East and dominate the region. To prevent that, the Nixon administration sought to end Soviet influence there and exclude it from all efforts to reach a negotiated settlement. However, the American view was based on misperceptions about Soviet interests and objectives in the region. In fact, fearing American dominance and a war with the United States, the Soviets proposed a joint superpower-guaranteed or even imposed comprehensive peace settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Because the United States spurned these proposals, the Cold War was exacerbated, there were several near-confrontations between the superpowers, and important opportunities to reach a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict were permanently lost.

Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Moss ◽  
James USN (Ret.) Stavridis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
White House ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
The 1960S

The changing international environment of the 1960s made it possible to attain détente, a relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Back-channel diplomacy—confidential contacts between the White House and the Kremlin, mainly between National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin—transformed that possibility into reality. This book argues that although back-channel diplomacy was useful in improving U.S.-Soviet relations in the short term by acting as a safety valve and giving policy-actors a personal stake in improved relations, it provided a weak foundation for long-term détente. This book traces the evolution of confidential channels during the Nixon administration and examines certain flashpoints in U.S.-Soviet relations, such as the 1970 Cienfuegos crisis, Sino-American rapprochement, and the Indo-Pakistani War in 1971. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Moscow’s support for Hanoi remained constant irritants in U.S.-Soviet relations. The back-channel relationships allowed both sides to agree to disagree and paved the way for the Moscow Summit of May 1972. This focused examination of U.S.-Soviet back-channel diplomacy mitigates some of criticisms levied against Nixon and Kissinger in their secretive conduct of diplomacy by showing that back channels were both necessary and an effective instrument of policy. However, back channels worked best when they supplemented rather than replaced more traditional diplomacy.

Armand Hammer, Lenin, and the First American Concession in Soviet Russia

Slavic Review ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip S. Gillette
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Personal Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
American Trade

In 1921 a young American doctor named Armand Hammer went to Russia, met Lenin, and undertook the first American concession in Soviet Russia. Interest in this episode has been heightened by the fact that fifty years later Armand Hammer, as chairman of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, forged new commercial links between the United States and the Soviet Union. This article provides a new interpretation of Hammer’s meeting with Lenin and his receipt of the first American concession granted by the Soviet government. It throws light on how Soviet national security objectives and personal relations can influence Soviet government decisions on American trade.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 263-284
Author(s):  
Kevin Riehle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Perception Of Threat ◽  
The Stability

Several lessons emerge from these defectors’ revelations. First, the motivations of defectors changed based on the circumstances around them, which reflected Soviet policy changes. Those policy changes, such as purges and increased domestic repression, were often at the foundation of defector’s motivations. Second, vetting standards for Soviet personnel assigned to sensitive national security positions fluctuated, depending on the stability in the Soviet government and the level of urgency for hiring new personnel. When the Soviet Union was stable, it had the luxury of enforcing strict standards. When the Soviet Union needed a lot of people fast—such as during purges or wartime—it did not vet them as thoroughly. Finally, the Soviet perception of threat evolved, beginning with Great Britain as the primary threat in the early Soviet era, and joined by Germany after 1933, although Stalin never abandoned hope for an accommodation with Hitler. However, even before Germany was defeated in 1945, Soviet intelligence began targeting its wartime allies. By the late 1940s, when the United States assumed the role of the leader of the democratic world, the label “main enemy” was coined and applied to the United States, which stuck for the rest of the Soviet era.

America and the World: Isolationism Resurgent?

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
Arthur M. Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Global Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Building on an earlier argument that isolationism may well be America's natural state, Schlesinger explains how the apparent rejection of isolationism during the long standoff with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was nothing more than a reaction to what was perceived as a direct and urgent threat to the security of the United States. In the wake of the Cold War's end, the incompatibility between collective international action and conceptions of national interest has highlighted the difficulties of democracies in sending their armies to war, especially those that do not directly threaten national security. While much more can and should be done to enhance the effectiveness of global organizations already in place, what is needed, Schlesinger argues, is both a reexamination of the Wilsonian doctrine of collective security and a greater concentration on preventive diplomacy.

scholarly journals La liberté est-elle divisible? Comment rapprocher les concepts de mission et de sécurité dans une politique étrangère américaine

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-531
Author(s):  
Cathal J. Nolan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Diplomacy ◽  
American Mission

This article seeks to outline the complex pattern of liberty and national security in international relations through a survey of the historical relationship between those concerns in the foreign policy of what is still the world's most important democratic country, the United States. This study is not a history per se of American diplomacy concerning this cluster of issues, although it is historical in approach. Nor is it directly concerned with an on-going theoretical debate over whether or not democracies are inherently more peaceful than other types of states, despite drawing upon elements of that debate and having implications for it. Instead, what is presented here is an interpretive survey of the importance in U.S. foreign policy of a set of key ideas about international order — specifically, the attempt to resolve ideas of "American mission " with the requirements of security, through increasingly active linkage of U.S. national security to the internal character of foreign regimes. It then explores how that tension became manifest in two policy settings : the United Nations, one of America's major multilateral relationship s, and the Soviet Union, its principal bilateral relationship. In short, this study is concerned with governing ideas in American diplomacy; with how such ideas arise and are sustained or challenged; with how they have been disseminated among allies (and even adversaries) ; and the implications of the reality that the United States have succeeded in imbedding these notions in the structures of the international System. The essay concludes with what should prove a controversial, qualified approval of the new 'liberal realism' evident in American foreign policy in the early 1990s.

scholarly journals Propagandized Adversary Populations in a War of Ideas

MCU Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-148
Author(s):  
Donald M. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Disinformation, the disruptive effects of social media, and the prospect of information warfare increasingly preoccupy national security thinkers. In the twentieth century, years of prewar and wartime propaganda by the Axis powers and the Soviet Union made the World Wars and the Cold War longer and more costly. In this century, China and North Korea represent two nations that have propagandized their populations for 70 years, hardening them against informational initiatives. What are the lessons? How should the United States assemble a strategy to counter propaganda’s effects?

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