scholarly journals Foreign Correspondents in the East Asian Cold War: The Sino-Japanese journalist exchange of 1964

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1446-1482
Author(s):  
CASPER WITS

AbstractThis article examines the importance of the exchange of foreign correspondents between Japan and China from 1964, during a period of the Cold War when the two countries did not have official ties. Favourable political circumstances in the first half of the 1960s led to a brief window of opportunity for an improved relationship between China and Japan, during which this unique exchange took place. The article attempts to shed light on the significance of the exchange within the broader context of Chinese foreign policy and Sino-Japanese relations during the Cold War. Thereby it will clarify the importance of the 1960–1964 period for the longer rapprochement process that would come to fruition in 1972 with the establishment of diplomatic relations. The exchanges of 1964 were seen by participants as an important first step on the way towards official ties. For the Chinese the importance of a relationship with Japan in this period, and, by extension, the importance of the journalist exchange, is shown by the involvement of an unusually high number of journalists from both countries. This article argues that the Chinese leadership's desire for the journalist exchange was rooted in a craving for accurate knowledge about Japan, especially concerning specific political trends and economic developments. This enthusiasm was matched by pro-China politicians in Japan, who also felt that the journalists’ presence would enable the Chinese to base their Japan policy on a broader variety of sources, extending beyond information merely gathered through contacts in the Japanese left.

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Burton

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.


Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg

What makes for war or for a stable international system? Are there general principles that should govern foreign policy? This book explores how historical work can throw light on these questions. The essays in this book deal with specific problems—with such matters as nuclear strategy and U.S.–European relations. But the book's main goal is to show how in practice a certain type of scholarly work can be done. The book demonstrates how, in studying international politics, the conceptual and empirical sides of the analysis can be made to connect with each other, and how historical, theoretical, and even policy issues can be tied together in an intellectually respectable way. These essays address a wide variety of topics, from theoretical and policy issues, such as the question of preventive war and the problem of international order, to more historical subjects—for example, American policy on Eastern Europe in 1945 and Franco-American relations during the Nixon–Pompidou period. But in each case, the aim is to show how a theoretical perspective can be brought to bear on the analysis of historical issues, and how historical analysis can shed light on basic conceptual problems.


Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris

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.


Author(s):  
Moeed Yusuf

This book is the first to theorize third party mediation in crises between regional nuclear powers. Its relevance flows from two of the most significant international developments since the end of the Cold War: the emergence of regional nuclear rivalries; and the shift from the Cold War’s bipolar context to today’s unipolar international setting. Moving away from the traditional bilateral deterrence models, the book conceptualizes crisis behavior as “brokered bargaining”: a three-way bargaining framework where the regional rivals and the ‘third party’ seek to influence each other to behave in line with their crisis objectives and in so doing, affect each other’s crisis behavior. The book tests brokered bargaining theory by examining U.S.-led crisis management in South Asia, analyzing three major crises between India and Pakistan: the Kargil conflict, 1999; the 2001-02 nuclear standoff; and the Mumbai crisis, 2008. The case studies find strong evidence of behavior predicted by the brokered bargaining framework. They also shed light on several risks of misperceptions and inadvertence due to the challenges inherent in signaling to multiple audiences simultaneously. Traditional explanations rooted in bilateral deterrence models do not account for these, leaving a void with serious practical consequences, which the introduction of brokered bargaining seeks to fill. The book’s findings also offer lessons for crises on the Korean peninsula, between China and India, and between potential nuclear rivals in the Middle East.


Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

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.


Author(s):  
William D. James

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’.


Images ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-90
Author(s):  
Maya Balakirsky Katz

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.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryo Makko

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.


Author(s):  
YEW MENG LAI

This article analyses the trends and developments in Malaysia-Japan relations since its inception in 1957. It begins with a brief historical overview of their bilateral interactions, followed by a scrutiny of the developments and shifting trends, from the early decade of the establishment of official diplomatic relations between independent Malaya and Japan that coincided with the Cold War to the introduction of Malaysia’s Look East Policy (LEP) in the early 1980’s that saw Malaysia-Japan ties taking-off to new and unprecedented heights. In doing so, the article reveals the major impetuses/drivers of their ‘special relationship’, which among others include complementarities in their national economies, perceived sociocultural affinities underpinned by the so-called ‘Asian values’ and idiosyncrasies of key leaders like Mahathir Mohamad, as well as the given regional strategic environment, which contributed to a congruence of strategic thought and mutual interests between the major actors from both countries that led to Malaysia’s admirable relations with Japan before the turn of the 21st century. This article also assesses the contemporary trends in and prospects for their bilateral ties, by identifying the changing dynamics that have brought a qualitative shift in the Malaysia-Japan bilateral relationship which is moving towards strategic partnership and beyond.


Author(s):  
K. Demberel ◽  

The article deals with the issue of Mongolia's foreign policy during the Cold War. This period is divided into two parts. The first period, 1945-1960s, is a period of conflict between two systems: socialism and capitalism. In this first period of the Cold War Mongolia managed to establish diplomatic relations with socialist countries of Eastern Europe, as the “system allowed”. The second period, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, is the period of the conflict of the socialist system, the period of the Soviet-Chinese confrontation. During this period Mongolia's foreign policy changed dramatically and focused on the Soviet Union. This was due to the Soviet investment «boom» that began in 1960s and the entry of Soviet troops on the territory of Mongolia in 1967. The Soviet military intervention into Mongolia was one of the main reasons for cooling the Soviet-Chinese relations. And military withdrawal contributed to the improvement of Soviet-Chinese relations until the mid-1980s and one of the conditions for improving relations with their neighbors. The internal systemic conflict had a serious impact on Mongolia's foreign policy over those years.


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