Hofstadter's The Age of Reform and the Crucible of the Fifties

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillis Harp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Federal Civil Service ◽  
The Cold War

In December 1954, the United States Senate voted 67-22 to censure the junior senator from Wisconsin. Joe McCarthy had been drawing increasing criticism for his bullying tactics in ferreting out alleged communists and communist sympathizers within the federal civil service and elsewhere. In the wake of the Army-McCarthy hearings of the preceding spring (and especially after the dramatic televised confrontation with Army counsel Joseph Welch), the tide of public opinion finally turned against McCarthy. Still, his demagogic campaign had ruined the careers of scores of American citizens, from civil servants to artists, and had raised disturbing questions about room for political dissent within a democracy during the height of the Cold War.

The United States, Viet-Nam, and the Cold War: A Reappraisal

1974 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siracusa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
United States History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Viet Nam ◽  
Gallup Poll ◽  
Complete Reversal ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
States History

The Viet-Nam War was without qualification the most unpopular war in United States history. By May 1971, 61 per cent of the 1,502 persons interviewed by the Gallup Poll thought it had been a mistake for the United States to become involved in Viet-Nam. (The question asked was, “In view of the developments since we entered the fighting in Viet-Nam, do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in Viet-Nam?” 28 per cent answered, “No”, and 11 per cent had no opinion.) The significance of the May poll lay in the fact that it marked a complete reversal of public opinion since Gallup first started asking the question in August 1965.

The Moralities of Negotiation

Worldview ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (11) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
E. Raymond Platig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Many well-intentioned people have long recognized the absence in our century of any effective international law, government and mores. They have also wasted a lot of time attempting to conjure up constitutional governments for the world, to codify, revise and extend international law, and to call forth a mostly non-existent world public opinion. In a world rent by such basic ideological and cultural splits as is ours, these efforts are foredoomed to failure.The much more relevant question for one interested in peace in this nuclear-missile’ age is whether or not the United States and the Soviet Union can settle through negotiation some of the political problems of the Cold War. If they cannot agree to “live and let live” as sovereign states in a world of sovereign states, on what basis can we expect that they will engage in that much more intimate collaboration out of which mores, law and government can grow?

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

scholarly journals Why Arms Control?

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Jon Brook Wolfsthal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

America survived the nuclear age through a complex combination of diplomatic and military decisions, and a good deal of luck. One of the tools that proved its value in both reducing the risks of nuclear use and setting rules for the ongoing nuclear competition were negotiated, legally binding, and verified arms control agreements. Such pacts between the United States and the Soviet Union arguably prevented the nuclear arms racing from getting worse and helped both sides climb off the Cold War nuclear precipice. Several important agreements remain in place between the United States and Russia, to the benefit of both states. Arms control is under threat, however, from domestic forces in the United States and from Russian actions that range from treaty violations to the broader weaponization of risk. But arms control can and should play a useful role in reducing the risk of nuclear war and forging a new agreement between Moscow and Washington on the new rules of the nuclear road.

John Leighton Stuart and U.S.-Chinese Communist Rapprochement in 1949: Was There Another “Lost Chance in China”?

1982 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-ming Shaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
June July ◽  
The Cold War

Reverend John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) served as U.S. ambassador to China from July 1946 until August 1949. In the many discussions of his ambassadorship the one diplomatic mission that has aroused the most speculation and debate was his abortive trip to Beijing, contemplated in June–July 1949, to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Some students of Sino-American relations have claimed that had this trip been made the misunderstanding and subsequent hostility between the United States and the People's Republic of China in the post-1949 period could have been avoided; therefore, the unmaking of this trip constituted another “lost chance in China” in establishing a working relationship between the two countries. But others have thought that given the realities of the Cold War in 1949 and the internal political constraints existing in each country, no substantial result could have been gained from such a trip. Therefore, the thesis of a “lost chance in China” was more an unfounded speculation than a credible affirmation.

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