Interview with Ali Ahmad Jalali

2011 ◽  
Vol 93 (882) ◽  
pp. 279-286 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Armed Group ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Defense University ◽  
Image Position ◽  
Do So

For this issue on understanding armed groups, the Review considered it important to invite someone who could give the inside perspective of an armed group. Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, currently Distinguished Professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, is uniquely placed to do so in the context of Afghanistan: he has at once the experience of a former member of the Mujahideen during the war against the Soviet Union, a former Colonel in the Afghan National Army, and a former Minister of the Interior for Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. Minister Jalali has published extensively on political, military, and security issues in Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia.

Book Review: Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb: A Story of Defiance, Deterrence and Deviance by Hassan Abbas

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minahil Riaz Toor
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Nuclear Bomb ◽  
Analytical Studies ◽  
National Defense University ◽  
Pakistani American ◽  
American Academic

Dr. Hassan Abbas is a Pakistani-American academic whose interest area lies in South and Central Asia. He is presently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Regional and Analytical Studies at National Defense University, Washington, DC. Similar to his previous books, Hassan Abbas has taken up yet another topic that revolves around the statehood of Pakistan.

State Violence, Justice, And The Suffering Of Others

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sanos
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
French Writer ◽  
Painful Experience ◽  
Tzvetan Todorov ◽  
Nazi Camps ◽  
Do So

In 1955, Alain Resnais's now canonical documentary, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) ended with an ominous question, asking “who, among us, is keeping watch from this strange watchtower [of the ruins of Auschwitz] to warn of the arrival of our new executioners” who might bring about the return of the “concentrationary plague?” One man had already made it his mission to do so: the French writer and former political deportee David Rousset. Rousset had shaken the French world of letters and politics with the 1946 publication of L'univers concentrationnaire (The Concentrationary Universe), which warned of the civilizational and moral cesura that the Nazi camps had been. The term quickly became a widely used conceptual framework. Former deportee and Catholic writer Jean Cayrol borrowed from it to write his voice-over to Night and Fog. In 1949, Rousset published another text that created a scandal in Cold War France: an Appeal to “fellow deportees” calling upon them to “investigate the USSR's concentrationary universe” (Kuby, 46). This indictment fiercely divided the French left. In 1950, he brought a libel suit against another former deportee, communist writer Pierre Daix, who had accused him of amnesiac “apoliticism” (Kuby, 65–6; Dean, 61). Just before, in the wake of his Appeal, Rousset had founded an organization against concentrationary regimes with those, like him, who had been political deportees. In 1951, it put the Soviet Union on trial for crimes against humanity. Rousset and his organization were involved in many trials, eager to denounce the “new executioners” who had revived the “scourge of the camps” in the postwar world. For many today, he is an “exceptional” man because, as philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov argues, he was not paralyzed by the memory of “this painful experience”; instead, he harnessed it into action against dehumanizing state violence. For Todorov, Rousset had allowed morality to prevail over base political considerations.

Hitler's Antarctic base: the myth and the reality

Polar Record ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Summerhayes ◽  
Peter Beeching
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Navy ◽  
Dronning Maud Land ◽  
Do So

In January-February 1939, a secret German expedition visited Dronning (or Queen) Maud Land, Antarctica, apparently with the intention inter alia of establishing a base there. Between 1943 and 1945 the British launched a secret wartime Antarctic operation, code-named Tabarin. Men from the Special Air Services Regiment (SAS), Britain's covert forces for operating behind the lines, appeared to be involved. In July and August 1945, after the German surrender, two U-boats arrived in Argentina. Had they been to Antarctica to land Nazi treasure or officials? In the southern summer of 1946–1947, the US Navy appeared to ‘invade’ Antarctica using a large force. The operation, code-named Highjump, was classified confidential. In 1958, three nuclear weapons were exploded in the region, as part of another classified US operation, code-named Argus. Given the initial lack of information about these various activities, it is not, perhaps, surprising that some people would connect them to produce a pattern in which governments would be accused of suppressing information about ‘what really happened’, and would use these pieces of information to construct a myth of a large German base existing in Antarctica and of allied efforts to destroy it. Using background knowledge of Antarctica and information concerning these activities that has been published since the early 1940s, it is demonstrated: that the two U-Boats could not have reached Antarctica; that there was no secret wartime German base in Dronning Maud Land; that SAS troops did not attack the alleged German base; that the SAS men in the region at the time had civilian jobs; that Operation Highjump was designed to train the US Navy for a possible war with the Soviet Union in the Arctic, and not to attack an alleged German base in Antarctica; and that Operation Argus took place over the ocean more than 2000 km north of Dronning Maud Land. Activities that were classified have subsequently been declassified and it is no longer difficult to separate fact from fancy, despite the fact that many find it attractive not to do so.

The Helsinki Accord: A Growth Industry

1990 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Korey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Negotiation Strategies ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Growth Industry

Despite conservative opposition, in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter turned the tide in favor of the Helsinki Accord by taking a strong stand in fostering U.S. participation in it. Korey focuses on the U.S. delegation to the Commission on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) in Europe and credits the success of the Helsinki Accord to U.S. adroit negotiation strategies, beginning with the Carter administration. By 1980, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev came to embrace the “humanitarianism” of the treaty. The Vienna review conference's (1986–89) effort peaked when a milestone was reached in the human rights process, linking it directly to security issues equally pertinent to the East and the West. The author contends that the United States' ardent participation in the monitoring of compliance was particularly effective in putting pressure on the Soviet Union to uphold the agreement within its territory, yielding enormous progress in human rights

Neil Kinnock’s perestroika: Labour and the Soviet influence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Davis
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Free Market ◽  
New Right ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Market Economic ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The Labour Party’s socialism changed dramatically in the 1980s. Neil Kinnock’s restructuring of Labour occurred at the same time as the international socialist movement moved away from the statist model of economics and turned, in varying degrees, to more market-orientated ideas. This chapter assesses the ways in which Labour’s political thought adapted both to New Right realities and to the fact that much of world was adopting free market economic ideas. The particular focus here is the development of Kinnock’s ideas in light of the changes in Soviet socialism after Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his reform programme. The Soviet Union had long influenced Labour’s ideology in both positive and negative ways, and this chapter shows how it continued to do so in 1980s. It examines the relationship between Kinnock’s Labour and Gorbachev’s USSR, and it shows how the changes introduced by both leaders began to lead to a convergence of ideas between Eastern and Western European versions of socialism.

What Happened to Soviet Security Studies?: An Essay on the State of the Field

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-210
Author(s):  
Brian D. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
North America ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Weapons Procurement ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Expert Community

Security issues were a central part of Soviet studies. This article considers how the study of security issues has changed with respect to Russia and Eurasia since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It highlights a series of positive changes: a broadening of vision beyond Moscow, more engagement with mainstream social science, greater attention to security issues internal to post-Soviet states, and the creation of an expert community that spans North America, Europe, and Eurasia. At the same time, I argue that scholarship on Russian and Eurasian security issues has become less strategic, in the sense this word is used by Richard Betts – about the interaction of political ends and military means, rooted in an appreciation of military science. The academy, especially in North America, has become a less welcoming place for scholars working on Russia and Eurasia who care about previously central issues in the field such as nuclear strategy, weapons procurement, military doctrine, and defense planning.

Future Forces and Future Policies

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Richard L. Garwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Great Improvement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Capital ◽  
Missile Attack ◽  
Do So

Pertinent Highlights of the SALT Agreements: The SALT I Agreements signed in Moscow May 26, 1972, were the result of more than three years of negotiation by the Nixon Administration. They provide the basis for a great improvement in national security. The ABM Treaty recognizes the technical reality that neither the Soviet Union nor the United States can defend its population or industry against ballistic missile attack and that it is not simply wasteful but counterproductive to try to do so. The treaty limits each side to a negligible defense at two sites—the national capital and another at least 800 miles away. Furthermore, it limits the number of radar complexes around the national capital to six, at most, and the number of interceptors at each of the two sites to 100, with the clear implication that not only should these defenses against missiles be penetrable but also destroyable by those missiles.

Closing the Gaps in US Rocket Propellant Production, 1940–1945

Vulcan ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-73
Author(s):  
Yoel Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
No Production ◽  
National Defense ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Closing The Gaps ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Defense Research ◽  
Joint Group

Abstract The article supplements and revises past historiographical explanations on why the US entered World War ii without propellant based engines, for tactical rockets and how that gap was overcome. Short range rockets were used extensively by all sides in the War for various purposes, but in the interwar period (1919–1939), rocket advances were made mostly in Europe with the US lagging behind. The rockets engines were based on solid propellant tubes, but in 1940 there was hardly any US tubes design knowledge and no production facilities. Technological and production gaps had to be closed, and from 1940 were made with a significant help from Britain and under the leadership of the civilian National Defense Research Council (ndrc) agency, merged in 1941 into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (osrd). Due to the pressing needs to equip American forces with rockets, a joint group of ndrc and Army developers modified in early 1942 an existing gun propellant production technology for rocket tubes. Used initially for the Bazooka this adoption was found later to be extremely problematic in production and performance of tubes in the widely-used, Army’s 4.5-inch barrage and fighter plane rockets. Working in parallel, a joint group of ndrc and navy developers was able to construct the more modern tube production process already used abroad, avoiding the main army difficulties and taking the lead. The growing needs for these superior Navy rockets, some of which were used extensively by the Army, led to gaps between supplies and demands by 1943. Two fortunate events, one of them connected with the Soviet Union, helped to relieve the shortage.

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