5. Superpower

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-113
Author(s):  
Andrew Preston
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Durable Peace

The modern era was the American century, but it was also very much the communist century. Between them, the United States and the Soviet Union held the fate of the world in their hands. If there was to be a just and durable peace after 1945, an understanding between Washington and Moscow would have to be its foundation. Instead, in a conflict quickly dubbed “the Cold War,” the world suffered through four decades of existential tension between the Soviets and the Americans. ‘Superpower’ explains why the Soviets and Americans moved from cooperating in a world war to resisting each other in the Cold War, before exploring the events and ending of the Cold War in the 1980s.

The Origins of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.

Gonzo biography

2006 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-349
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Barilleaux
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
The Cold War

The single organizing fact of the Cold War was “the bomb.” In our present age of unipolarity, globalization, and the clash of civilizations, it is useful to remember that our current complexities exist only because the previous age of stark simplicity has passed into history. The decades from the end of World War II until the fall of Communism were years shaped by a nuclear standoff. The threat of nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union framed the politics and culture of the age. This framing was especially apparent in the 1950s and 1960s, before arms-control agreements lent an air of manageability to nuclear politics.

American Security Guarantees during the Cold War, 1949–1980

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Alexander Lanoszka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Posture ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Security Guarantees ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter chronicles how the United States designed and adjusted its alliance commitments in Western Europe and East Asia during the first three decades of the Cold War (1949-1980). The purpose of this chapter is not only to introduce historical events to readers, but also to highlight key variation decision-makers implemented changes in American strategic posture and, by extension, the security guarantees provided to American allies. It covers how the United States expanded its commitments around the world early in the Cold War before contracting them by the late 1960s amid changes to the nuclear balance between it and the Soviet Union.

The United States and Eastern Europe in 1945: A Reassessment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the policies pursued by the American government to deal with the problem of Eastern Europe in 1945. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union, it was said, sought to communize eastern Europe; the western powers, and especially the United States, were deeply opposed to that policy; and the clash that developed played the key role in triggering the Cold War. But historians in recent years have been moving away from that sort of interpretation. American policy is also being seen in a new light by many historians. Increasingly the argument seems to be that U.S. leaders in 1945 did not really care much about eastern Europe—that their commitment to representative government in that region was surprisingly thin and that by the end of 1945 they had more or less come to the conclusion that the sort of political system the Soviets were setting up in that part of the world was something the United States could live with.

America and the World: Isolationism Resurgent?

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
Arthur M. Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Global Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Building on an earlier argument that isolationism may well be America's natural state, Schlesinger explains how the apparent rejection of isolationism during the long standoff with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was nothing more than a reaction to what was perceived as a direct and urgent threat to the security of the United States. In the wake of the Cold War's end, the incompatibility between collective international action and conceptions of national interest has highlighted the difficulties of democracies in sending their armies to war, especially those that do not directly threaten national security. While much more can and should be done to enhance the effectiveness of global organizations already in place, what is needed, Schlesinger argues, is both a reexamination of the Wilsonian doctrine of collective security and a greater concentration on preventive diplomacy.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-140
Author(s):  
Simon Miles
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indelible Mark ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter recounts how foreign policymakers operate in a world shaped by the end of the Cold War when the Soviet flag was lowered one last time over the Kremlin in 1991. It traces the events from 1985 to 1991 as the story of a crumbling Soviet Union and a United States that inexorably headed for its unipolar moment. It also elaborates why Washington has not done as it pleased in the world, such as expanding NATO eastward and dismissing Moscow's protestations. The chapter explores how expanding the temporal scope of the end of the Cold War makes for a very different story as taking five earlier years into account changes the picture. It highlights the Soviet Union trying desperately to stop its decline and remain a coequal superpower to the United States, and the United States being keen to speed Moscow's decay, which is a dramatic reversal of fortunes that left an indelible mark on the minds of Kremlin policymakers today.

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?

scholarly journals Propagandized Adversary Populations in a War of Ideas

MCU Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-148
Author(s):  
Donald M. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Disinformation, the disruptive effects of social media, and the prospect of information warfare increasingly preoccupy national security thinkers. In the twentieth century, years of prewar and wartime propaganda by the Axis powers and the Soviet Union made the World Wars and the Cold War longer and more costly. In this century, China and North Korea represent two nations that have propagandized their populations for 70 years, hardening them against informational initiatives. What are the lessons? How should the United States assemble a strategy to counter propaganda’s effects?

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.

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