Security dilemmas and the end of the Cold War

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASON RALPH
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Security Community ◽  
The Us ◽  
Common Identity ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
The Way

Alan Collins is to be congratulated for highlighting the role Gorbachev’s strategy of Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction (GRIT) played in ending the military conflict between East and West. By offering an alternative view to the conservative opinion that America’s material strength forced the Soviets into submission, it suggests that statesmen caught in security dilemmas have real options and are not simply forced to compete for power. As a policy that fostered transparency which assisted the creation of security regimes, GRIT undoubtedly played a role in the way the military conflict ended. Yet the Cold War was not simply about the military balance. Collins’ account of this period is restricted by his bias towards state-centric and rationalist explanations of state behaviour. He underestimates the role ideology played in ending the Cold War and as such only offers half a Cold War story. The influence of the US during this period, as a cautious agent of liberal individualism, is completely ignored, yet, as this reply demonstrates, it is crucial to understanding the way the US reciprocated Soviet policies. Moreover, if ‘debate over what the Cold War was is part of the politics of deciding what the post-Cold War is’, the significance of this criticism is not merely academic. The implication of Collins’ unwritten assumption that state’s identities are egoistic is that a security community based on a common identity is impossible. The lesson that the Cold War, as opposed to the military conflict, only ended when a common identity based on liberal individualism was instituted, suggests that a transatlantic security community including Russia was and still is a possibility.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

Defining–Redefining Security

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Buzan ◽  
Lene Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Rivalry ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Strategic Studies

International security studies (ISS) has significantly evolved from its founding core of “golden age” strategic studies. From the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s through to the 1970s, strategic studies virtually was ISS, and remains a very large part of it. The fact that it continues to stand as the “mainstream” attacked by widening/deepening approaches further speaks to its status as a “core.” This core consists of those literatures whose principal concern is external military threats to the state, and the whole agenda of the use of force which arises from that. This core was originally focused on nuclear weapons and the military-political rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union, but has since adapted its focus to changes in the salience and nature of military threats caused by the end of the Cold War and 9/11. It includes literatures on deterrence, arms racing, arms control and disarmament, grand strategy, wars (and “new wars”), the use of force, nuclear proliferation, military technology, and terrorism. Debates within ISS are structured, either implicitly or explicitly, by five questions: (1) which referent object to adopt, (2) whether to understand security as internally or externally driven, (3) whether to limit it to the military sector or to expand it, (4) what fundamental thinking about (international) politics to adopt, and (5) which epistemology and methodology to choose.

The Politics of Removing Children: The International Tracing Service's German Foster Homes Investigation of 1948

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dan Stone
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Foster Homes ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Missing Children ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

Abstract After the Second World War, the International Tracing Service's Child Search Branch (CSB) responded to inquiries for missing children and, until 1950 when funding was stopped, searched for children ‘in the field’. As the Cold War set in, the US military authorities restricted the opportunities for such children, mostly Eastern European, to be removed from their German foster parents and returned to their countries of origin. In the spring of 1948, when tensions between the CSB fieldworkers and the military authorities were at their height, ITS appointed an experienced fieldworker, Charlotte Babinski, to investigate cases of children in German foster homes with a view to streamlining policy regarding child removal. Despite her findings, as monetary and geopolitical pressures increased, the CSB had to accept that many children of Eastern European origin would remain in Germany. Children were thus a battleground in the early Cold War, in which politics triumphed over ethics.

Elephants of a Feather? The Role of ‘Justice’ in Canadian and American Cold War Military Interventions

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Le Canada

Abstract. The polities of Canada and the United States are purportedly engaged in the process of value convergence; however, with regard to the legitimacy of foreign military intervention, divergence seems a more apt characterization. This research explores whether the current discord between Canada and the US reflects an aberration, or a realization of entrenched normative differences, over what justifies the use of military force. A series of regression models tests the hypothesis that justice considerations prompted the military interventions of both the US and Canada during the Cold War. The results herein fail to confirm this hypothesis, and in the process highlight the ways in which each country employed ‘justice’ selectively in the service of broader foreign policy objectives.Résumé. Les constitutions politiques des États-Unis et du Canada sont supposées tendre vers des valeurs communes; cependant, en ce qui concerne la reconnaissance de la légitimité des interventions militaires à l'étranger, la divergence semble être une caractérisation plus juste. Cette recherche explore si le désaccord actuel entre les États-Unis et le Canada reflète une certaine aberration ou la réalisation de différences profondément ancrées, concernant la justification de l'utilisation de la force militaire. Une série de modèles régressifs teste l'hypothèse selon laquelle des considérations de justice ont provoqué les interventions militaires des États-Unis et du Canada durant la guerre froide. Les résultats infirment cette hypothèse, et soulignent, en même temps, les façons dont chacun des deux pays a employé la “ justice ” de manière sélective pour servir des objectifs plus vastes de politique extérieure.

Interpreting during the Cold War era in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-440
Author(s):  
Özüm Arzık-Erzurumlu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Common Language ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Common ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article examines the way the Cold War shaped the field of interpreting in Turkey. Turkey became part of the anti-communist bloc, and one outcome of this Turkish-American partnership was the influence that a constellation of American and Turkish organizations exerted on the nascent field of interpreting. Through open-ended interviews with selected interpreters, the article seeks to shed light on the way the Cold War impacted the practice of interpreting. By drawing on Lewin’s (1947) concept of gatekeeping, it is suggested that the US-led anti-communist campaign of the Cold War affected the topics that were interpreted, the common language pairs, and interpreters’ lexical choices. The Cold War, thus, became a “gate” through which the interpreted topics, languages, lexical choices, and even the interpreters – all of which were instruments of the regime – had to pass through.

Creative Intelligence and the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bregje F. Van Eekelen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Creativity Studies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

This article investigates the Cold War entanglements of the concept of “creativity” with the US military. The field of creativity studies came about after World War II, and the military was a vital site for the production of knowledge about creative thinking. Creativity emerged on the geopolitical radar, in terms of the acquisition of creative thinking skills, attempts to “think the unthinkable” (atomic futures), and the detection of creative citizens. Creative, divergent thinking garnered a renewed urgency with the Sputnik shock, which showcased that conformist practices in knowledge production would not put an American on the moon. Between 1945 and 1965, the concept of creativity—as something to be defined, measured, and stimulated—was framed as a matter of national security and an object of geopolitical concern. This ensuing traffic in knowledge between Cold War academic and military contexts has been constitutive of present-day understandings of creative, undisciplined thought.

“Grasping the Assassin’s Mace”

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-100
Author(s):  
Rush Doshi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Control Strategy ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Military Power ◽  
American Power ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Chapter 4 considers the military component of China’s grand strategy to blunt American power in Asia. It shows that the “traumatic trifecta” at the end of the Cold War prompted China to depart from a “sea control” strategy increasingly focused on holding distant maritime territory to a “sea denial strategy” focused on preventing the US military from traversing, controlling, or intervening in the waters near China. That shift was challenging, so Beijing declared it would “catch up in some areas and not others” and vowed to build “whatever the enemy fears” to accomplish it—ultimately delaying investments in costly and vulnerable vessels like aircraft carriers and instead investing in cheaper, asymmetric denial weapons. The chapter discusses Beijing’s construction of the world’s largest mine arsenal, the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, and the world’s largest submarine fleet—demonstrating a motivation in all these investments to undermine US military power.

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