Iraq-US Relations, 1920–2003

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Oil Boom ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Petroleum Company

Oil played a central role in shaping US policy toward Iraq over the course of the 20th century. The United States first became involved in Iraq in the 1920s as part of an effort secure a role for American companies in Iraq’s emerging oil industry. As a result of State Department efforts, American companies gained a 23.75 percent ownership share of the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1928. In the 1940s, US interest in the country increased as a result of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. To defend against a perceived Soviet threat to Middle East oil, the US supported British efforts to “secure” the region. After nationalist officers overthrew Iraq’s British-supported Hashemite monarchy in 1958 and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the United States cultivated an alliance with the Iraqi Baath Party as an alternative to the Soviet-backed regime. The effort to cultivate an alliance with the Baath foundered as a result the Baath’s perceived support for Arab claims against Israel. The breakdown of US-Baath relations led the Baath to forge an alliance with the Soviet Union. With Soviet support, the Baath nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1972. Rather than resulting in a “supply cutoff,” Soviet economic and technical assistance allowed for a rapid expansion of the Iraqi oil industry and an increase in Iraqi oil flowing to world markets. As Iraq experienced a dramatic oil boom in the 1970s, the United States looked to the country as a lucrative market for US exports goods and adopted a policy of accommodation with regard to Baath. This policy of accommodation gave rise to close strategic and military cooperation throughout the 1980s as Iraq waged war against Iran. When Iraq invaded Kuwait and seized control of its oil fields in 1990, the United States shifted to a policy of Iraqi containment. The United States organized an international coalition that quickly ejected Iraqi forces from Kuwait, but chose not to pursue regime change for fear of destabilizing the country and wider region. Throughout the 1990s, the United States adhered to a policy of Iraqi containment but came under increasing pressure to overthrow the Baath and dismantle its control over the Iraqi oil industry. In 2003, the United States seized upon the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an opportunity to implement this policy of regime change and oil reprivatization.

Economic and Social Council

1958 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Social Council

The resumed 24th session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was held on December 10 and 13, 1957, under the presidency of Mr. Mohammad Mir Khan (Pakistan). The Council elected as members of the Council Committee on Non-Governmental Organization, Brazil, China, France, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Council also elected Morocco to membership on the Technical Assistance Committee to replace the Sudan, which had been elected to ECOSOC, thereby becoming ineligible for TAC as a nonmember of the Council. The appointment of a number of members of ECOSOC commissions was subsequently confirmed by the Council.

Economic and Social Council

1959 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-294 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Social Council

The resumed 26th session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was held in New York on October 23 and December 10 and 11, 1958, under the presidency of Mr. Davidson (Canada). A draft resolution by which ECOSOC would decide to enable the International Atomic Energy Agency to become a member of the Technical Assistance Board and to participate in the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance was adopted unanimously at the 1045th meeting. The Council elected the members of the Governing Council of the Special Fund: elected as members representing the economically more advanced countries were Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and representing the less-developed countries were Argentina, Chile, Ghana, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, the United Arab Republic, and Yugoslavia. Brazil was elected as a member of the Technical Assistance Committee to fill the vacancy resulting from the election of Venezuela to ECOSOC. At its 1046th meeting the Council elected the following seven members of the Council Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations for 1959: China, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Council unanimously confirmed the names of persons nominated by governments to represent them on the functional commissions of ECOSOC. The delegate of France announced that his country had been unable to take advantage of the extended time-limit for the submission of lists of the territories it wished to be admitted as associate members of the Economic Commission for Africa. The Council unanimously adopted a resolution designed to make the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies applicable to the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization.

Alexandr Serebrovskiĭ and the Modernization of the Soviet Oil Industry—1924 to 1929

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sicotte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Oil Production ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Economic Potential ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Latent Potential

Abstract Baku, the center of the Russian and then Soviet oil industry, represented the raw economic potential of early Soviet industry. At the head of the industry was Alexandr Serebrovskiĭ, head of Azneft, the largest Soviet oil trust, and a pivotal figure in reviving Soviet oil production across the 1920s. His trip to the United States in 1924 and his subsequent plan to restore Baku’s productive capacity via American technology and methodology would not only improve the industry’s output but allow Azneft to directly compete with American oil companies on the international stage, thus demonstrating the latent potential of the Soviet Union for exportation. However, while this project seemed initially successful, it created a difficult fiscal legacy as Azneft became increasingly financially insolvent across the 1920s.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

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.

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

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.

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