Austrian Neutrality: The Early Years, 1955–1958

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 216-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Harrod
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The West ◽  
East And West ◽  
Soviet Invasion

Austria's status of neutrality contended with crises almost immediately after its founding along with the 1955 State Treaty. First, during the Soviet invasion of Hungary in October 1956, Austrian neutrality faced the threat of conflict when Soviet-Hungarian clashes spilled over into Austria. Then, in July 1958, Austrian neutrality contended with more benign, but nonetheless disturbing, provocations from the Cold War's Western superpower, the United States. As U.S. military planes transited Austria in broad daylight on their way to Lebanon, the cozy, covert Austro-American relationship became all too overt. Although many Austrians believed neutrality would end foreign (particularly Soviet) domination and would ensure an ultimate withdrawal from global upheavals, these events showed that neutrality by itself could not remove the strategic implications inherent in Austria's position in Cold War Central Europe. Indeed, partisan strategic calculations in both East and West had played a significant role in creating Austrian neutrality. As a result, preserving both Austria's neutrality and its links to the West required delicate maneuvering by a small, poorly defended country amid Cold War crosscurrents of Eastern threats and Western sympathies. Already in its early years, Austrian neutrality proved to be less of the holiday from history that many Austrians expected during the festive mood of May 1955.

The Soviet Economic Challenge

Worldview ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
James Greene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Capita Rate ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War

The speed with which economics has sped to the front of the Cold War over the past four years has caught the West-used to diplomatic maneuvering and “little wars”-off guard. We have, as yet, no adequate answer to what may well prove to be Communism's most devastating weapon-a Soviet economy producing at a greater per capita rate than the United States. No nation of free men ever rallied round a column of statistics, and yet, clearly, that is where the current battle between East and West has moved.The change, it now seems, was inevitable. When they continue for any period of time, “total” wars, both hot and cold, slip more and more from the grasp of those charged with diplomacy and come to rest upon the impersonal powers of clashing armies, armies either on the battlefields or in the factories.

Human Source Intelligence

2010 ◽  
pp. 256-274
Author(s):  
Frederick P. Hitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The West ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Seven Deadly Sins ◽  
Human Source

This article focuses on human source intelligence (humint) and the relevance of spying in the prevention of terrorist attacks. It assesses whether Cold War spying can be revived and reworked to lead to success in the time of holy terror and whether the motivations to spy remain relevant. In this article, the seven deadly sins of espionage are discussed including how they hold up to today's conditions. The article ends with a discussion on whether human source intelligence gathering or humint can play a significant role in countering international threats to the United States and the West in the twenty-first century.

An Ordinary Soviet Death

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
The West ◽  
Rational Argument ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter describes the timing and motivations of the USSR's promotion of atheist doctrine. At the outset, it seems, the Soviets expected Orthodoxy to wither away, invalidated by rational argument and the regime's own record of socialist achievement. This did not happen, but Soviet officialdom did not take full cognizance of the fact until the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Cold War. Then it was that the Soviet Union's confrontation with the West came to be recast in religious terms as an epic battle between atheist communism on the one hand and on the other that self-styled standard-bearer of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the United States. So, here indeed, in Soviet atheism, is a secular church militant—doctrinally armed, fortified by the concentrated power of the modern state, and, as many believed, with the wind of history at its back. It speaks the language of liberation, but what it delivers is something much darker. The chapter then considers the place of ritual in the Soviet secularist project.

Education Between Iran and the West

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew K. Shannon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War

The introduction reconstructs Iran’s historical educational ties the West and explains how the United States became the primary destination for Iranian student during the Cold War era. It also engages with various historiographies to situate the book within the appropriate scholarly context.

The United States and the Burgenland, 1918–1920

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 39-58
Author(s):  
Jon D. Berlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The Will ◽  
Paris Peace Conference ◽  
The Many

Among the many delimitations determined by the Paris Peace Conference was the rectification of the Ausgleich frontier of 1867 between Austria and Hungary. Article 27, paragraph 5, of the Treaties of St. Germain and Trianon detached from the former Kingdom of Hungary the German-speaking western districts of the Hungarian Counties of Moson (Wieselburg), Sopron (Ödenburg), and Vas (Eisenburg). This region, then known as German West Hungary and subsequently as the Burgenland, had been the object of dispute between Austria and Hungary in the immediate postwar years. In the interval between the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in the autumn of 1918 and the Treaty of Trianon in June, 1920, the reactions of American representatives in Central Europe varied from advocation of the union of West Hungary with Austria to admonitions that the proposal was a serious miscalculation because the will of the inhabitants had not been ascertained and because historic and economic principles had been given only cursory consideration. In short, American observations mirrored the incertitude surrounding the West Hungarian controversy.

Gendering the American Enemy in Early Cold War Soviet Films (1946–1953)

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleg Riabov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social System ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
Gender Deviancy ◽  
The U.S

Analyzing Soviet films and film criticism from the late Stalin period, this article shows how Soviet cinematographers exploited gender discourse to produce Otherness. Cinematic representations of U.S. femininity, masculinity, love, sexuality, and marriage played an important role in constructing external and internal Enemies. Cinematography depicted the U.S. gender order as resulting from the unnatural social system in the United States and as contrary to both the Soviet order and human nature. In line with the notion of “two different Americas,” the films also created images of “good Americans” who aspired to satisfy gender norms of the Soviet way of life. The image of the American Other helped shape Soviet gender and political orders. Internal enemies’ “groveling before the West” on political matters was depicted as causing gender deviancy, and the breaking of Soviet gender norms was shown to lead to political crimes.

Trajectories of Karelian Music After the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Suutari
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
The United States ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter tells the story of the revival of interest in Karelian music in the Finnish-Russian border region of Karelia after the Cold War. During this tense time, Karelians had been subjected to territorial divisions and harsh assimilation policies. With Perestroika came new stores of Karelian culture under the influence of developments taking place across the Nordic and Baltic regions. This was a scenario for Karelians in both countries to express their sense of belonging in new ways, and music once again became a medium for this. The author draws on fieldwork in the Karelian town of Petrozavodsk since 1992 and uses two bands from there as focal points for exploring consciousness in the region and beyond in wider international trajectories in Central Europe, Scandinavia, and the United States.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Shift in Japanese Diplomacy at the Beginning of the Second Cold War, 1979: A New Look

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 311-338
Author(s):  
Yamaguchi Wataru
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
The Public ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Soviet Invasion

Previous studies have proposed two different views as to how the beginning of the Second Cold War shaped Japanese diplomacy. This study demonstrates and reinterprets transformations in Japanese diplomacy experienced at that time, examining in particular the perceptions and behaviors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, based on primary source materials of both Japan and the United States. Japanese diplomacy was slowly transformed as the international environment became harsher. Indeed, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made the ministry aware of the Soviet threat, and Japan consequently started to increase its defense spending and make use of strategic foreign aid: these transformations might not have been radical, but were enough to cause the United States to perceive Japan more positively on security issues. However, the ministry’s attitude had been changing even before the beginning of the Second Cold War, inspired by jurisdictional disputes in the context of the diversification of security and the public approval of defense policies. The changes enabled the U.S.-Japan alliance to evolve into a much more complex partnership in the 1980s.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew N. Rubin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Cultural Translation ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Cultural Domination ◽  
The Cold War

This introductory chapter discusses several iterations of militarized Orientalism and the function that it has continued to serve in military zones of rapid cultural translation. Such instances not only show how brazen the connection between power and knowledge has become in our culture, but also evince how profoundly the modalities for understanding have become instruments of power. The chapter briefly traces the genealogy of this view in the early years of the Cold War and describes the formidable structures and conjunctures of cultural domination, as well as the cultural mechanisms by which the United States rearticulated the discourse of British colonialism through the institutions and discourses of anticommunism.

The West and Elections in Nigeria

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-37
Author(s):  
Amadu Sesay ◽  
Charles Ukeje
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Country ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

The end of the cold war has made democratization, and its barest essential component elections, imperative for all nondemocratic forms of government. This is to be expected, given the dismal failure of the socialist alternative even in the first socialist country, the former Soviet Union. The United States, which is not only the foremost democracy in the world but also the only superpower, has been in the vanguard of democracy salesmanship. Africa, the continent with the least democratic space, has not been left out, as witnessed by President Bill Clinton’s unprecedented tour of the continent in March 1998.Understandably, Nigeria, arguably the most important country in Africa, was left out of the tour, since it was then under the obnoxious, undemocratic, and oppressive military regime of the late General Sani Abacha.

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