The Indian Ocean Creole Islands: Geo-politics and Decolonisation

1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Houbert
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North And South ◽  
Radical Transformation

Decolonisation was a policy of the West, as well as a process reflecting the radical transformation of the configuration of power in the international system. The Soviet Union, perceived as poised to dominate Eurasia, had to be ‘contained’ lest it expanded into the Rimland and challenged the West at sea. This geo-political obsession was reinforced by the ‘loss of China’ and the outbreak of the bitter struggle between North and South Korea. But the cold war was about ideology as well as military power, and containment was therefore not just a question of building pacts but of fostering the ‘right’ kind of political régimes.

scholarly journals EXPLORING AND EXPLAINING THE ECONOMIC POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND PAHLAVI ERA EMPHASIZING THE SYSTEM THEORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimia Zare ◽  
Habibollah Saeeidinia
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

Iran and Russia have common interests, especially in political terms, because of the common borders and territorial neighborhood. This has led to a specific sensitivity to how the two countries are approaching each other. Despite the importance of the two countries' relations, it is observed that in the history of the relations between Iran and Russia, various issues and issues have always been hindered by the close relations between the two countries. The beginning of Iran-Soviet relations during the Second Pahlavi era was accompanied by issues such as World War II and subsequent events. The relations between the two countries were influenced by the factors and system variables of the international system, such as the Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry, the Second World War and the entry of the Allies into Iran, the deconstruction of the relations between the two post-Cold War superpowers, and so on.The main question of the current research is that the political relations between Iran and Russia influenced by the second Pahlavi period?To answer this question, the hypothesis was that Iran's political economic relations were fluctuating in the second Pahlavi era and influenced by the changing system theory of the international system with the Soviet Union. The findings suggest that various variables such as the structure of the international system and international events, including World War II, the arrival of controversial forces in Iran, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, the US and Soviet policies, and the variables such as the issue of oil Azerbaijan's autonomy, Tudeh's actions in Iran, the issue of fisheries and borders. Also, the policies adopted by Iranian politicians, including negative balance policy, positive nationalism and independent national policy, have affected Iran-Soviet relations. In a general conclusion, from 1320 (1942) to 1357 (1979), the relationship between Iran and Russia has been an upward trend towards peaceful coexistence. But expansion of further relations in the economic, technical and cultural fields has been political rather than political.

Labor, the UN and the Cold War

1957 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Karan Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
World Federation ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

One of the significant structural differences between the organization of economic and social work under the League and under the United Nations is the extent to which non-governmental organizations (NGO's) have been allowed to participate. NGO's have been granted far greater privileges in the UN than they enjoyed in the League. Initially, they were formally recognized in Article 71 of the Charter, which gives the Economic and Social Council the right to make “suitable arrangements” for consultation with them. While defined in differing ways during different periods, consultative status under this article has, subject to various conditions, always included the right to participate in the debates of ECOSOC, its commissions and committees, and to propose items for inclusion in their provisional agenda. NGO's have made extensive use of these privileges. Their use, however, as well as the entire record of NGO action in the UN, has been inseparably linked with the cold war. Russian demands at San Francisco for privileges for the newly created, communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) were a contributing factor in the decision to include Article 71 in the Charter. The initial definition of this article resulted primarily from the interaction of pressures by the Soviet Union and the WFTU and the western response.

The Sociology of New Thinking: Elites, Identity Change, and the End of the Cold War

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert English
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Gorbachev Era ◽  
General Secretary

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 (1950s–1960s) 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 newthinking 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.

scholarly journals Voci libere in URSS

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
International Level ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Overview

Free Voices in the USSR is a project dedicated to the myriad of independent voices present in the culture of dissent in the Soviet Union in the second half of the twentieth century. Its aim is to offer a conceptual overview of the many forms of dissent by exploring two main thematic areas, the first devoted to “free voices” in the USSR and the second focused on reception in the West. The different manifestations of the USSR’s ‘Second Culture’, which was non-official and independent, spread thanks to the samizdat (the clandestine publication and circulation of texts within the USSR) and the tamizdat (the publication of texts forbidden in the USSR in the West). The reception of non-official forms of expression in the West is explored in the context of the debates arising from the Cold War; the role of the West in engaging with the literary, cultural and artistic challenges to the Soviet regime from within its own borders proved fundamental. Contributions to this website including critical essays, bio-bibliographic entries, archive information and the review and cataloguing of magazines are the result of coordinated research by a group of specialists at an international level.

The De-moralization of the Cold War

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

As the American public became increasingly disenchanted over the nation’s ongoing presence in Southeast Asia, the Nixon administration initiated a diplomatic strategy toward the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Nixon, who early in his political career had been a passionate anticommunist, began to consider ways in which he might bring China into the international community. The president believed that this strategy had the potential to decrease the Cold War tensions that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. The foreign policy strategy that Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, developed came to be known as détente. The initiatives that composed Nixon’s policy were based on Kissinger’s realist view of international affairs. That perspective embraced the idea of accepting the world as it was rather than trying to change it. By deemphasizing the importance of the conflict between international communism and democracy, pundits on the Right believed Nixon was not only withdrawing America from its global responsibilities, but in doing so was giving the communist world free reign to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy.

Violence and the New Internationalism, 1988–2003

2020 ◽  
pp. 175-197
Author(s):  
Laura Robson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The West ◽  
Considerable Promise ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
West Bank And Gaza ◽  
First Intifada ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Resistance Movement

This chapter looks at the first intifada—a grassroots resistance movement that emerged in the West Bank and Gaza in late 1987 and showed considerable promise before being crushed by Israeli military might. Its collapse also coincided with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, marking the beginning of a new American tactic of supposed humanitarian concern for ethnically or communally defined victims of a regime as a pretext for military action intended to ensure resource access, especially to oil. These arguments for and practices of occupation not only invigorated and intensified internal ethnic and communal tensions within the Iraqi state, but also fueled new forms of Islamist opposition that had never before flourished in the Mashriq.

scholarly journals Bellicose Peace: China’s Peace Signature Campaign and Discourses about “Peace” in the Early 1950s

Modern China ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-280
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Forster
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

In the early 1950s, China engaged in several military actions, most notably in the Korean War. Nevertheless, the World Peace Council, an international organization sponsored by the Soviet Union, praised the country as a “fortress for the protection of world peace” in 1954. This hinged upon a very specific, bellicose understanding of “peacefulness,” which did not mean the rejection of war, but war against the “right” enemy. I discuss this understanding, its function within the international community, its embeddedness in international political thinking, and its promulgation among the Chinese population, using the example of a campaign in 1950 to collect signatures on a World Peace Council–authored appeal against the atomic bomb. Self-promotion as a peaceful nation in the bellicose sense served a variety of purposes for the young People’s Republic of China (PRC), most importantly the goal to instill bloc thinking in the PRC’s population and to gain prestige within the new international order of the Cold War.

Litvinov's Lost Peace, 1941–1946

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Grand Alliance ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Realist Conception

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the ensuing conflict witnessed the political rehabilitation of the former People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maksim Litvinov. After serving as ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943, Litvinov returned to the Soviet Union and played a key role in charting Moscow's wartime Grand Alliance strategy. He urged So-viet leaders to convene a joint Anglo-Soviet-American commission to discuss military-political questions, and he helped organize the October 1943 foreign ministers'conference in Moscow. As the war drew to a close, Litvinov argued for a postwar settlement dividing the world into security zones. His realist conception of foreign policy suggested a more moderate alternative o Josif Stalin's reliance on confrontation with the West. Although Litvinov faded again from public view after his retirement in 1946, his belief that the Grand Alliance could continue suggests that the rapid, postwar descent into the Cold War might have been averted had it not been for Stalin.

Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvio Pons
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The West ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
West European

Soviet policy toward the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1943 to 1948 exemplified Josif Stalin's complicated relationship with the West European Communist parties and Western Europe in general. For a considerable while, Stalin insisted that the PCI follow a policy of moderation. Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the PCI, heeded Stalin's orders and tried to ensure that the Italian Communists pursued a policy of national unity and avoided conflicts that might lead to civil war in Italy. But this moderate approach collapsed after the Soviet Union rejected the Marshall Plan in 1947 and thereby forced the West European Communist parties into extra-parliamentary opposition. Not until after the poor showing of the PCI in the 1948 Italian elections was the party able to regain a viable role. Stalin's conflicting advice to the PCI was indicative of his tenuous grasp of the situation in Western Europe.

scholarly journals Deterrence theory and strategy in the international system from the Cold War to the multipolar era. Towards a new strategy of ‘extended deterrence’ in Greek-Turkish relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Nicolas Papanastasopoulos ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Extended Deterrence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
The Cold War

Deterrence is the key concept for understanding the strategy and diplomacy of the age (Kenny, 1985). Its various versions — or better yet — its main manifestations appear during the Cold War period (Brodie, Wolfers, Viner, at A. Lupovici, 2010), initially through competition, especially in the field of scientific discoveries and then in the balance between the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union. This article, using a historical and conceptual perspective, analyses the philosophy and dynamic of the deterrence theory, both in the conventional and especially in its Cold War and the multipolar era dimension. This article revisits the concept of deterrence and defends a more plausible deterrence theory — the ‘extended deterrence’ conception. Drawing on insights from the IR theory and security studies, we are going to use Greek-Turkish relations as a case study of this approach. This approach supports an implementation of the extended deterrence by the enrichment of the NATO’s article 5. The findings of this study can help members of the academic community familiarize themselves with this new concept of deterrence. Keywords: deterrence, strategic theory, doctrine, IR theory, nuclear weapons.

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