A Policy in Tension: The National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Response to the Collapse of the Soviet Union

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 772-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Geoghegan
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (Fall 2021) ◽  
pp. 231-258
Author(s):  
Kemal İnat ◽  
Melih Yıldız

In this article, the rise of China is discussed in the light of economic and military data, and what the challenge from China means for the global leadership of the U.S. is analyzed. Changes in the indicators of the U.S. and China’s economic and military power over the last 30-40 years are examined and an answer is sought for the following question: What will the consequences of China’s rise be in terms of the international political system? To answer this question, similar ‘rise and challenge’ precedents are discussed to contextualize and analyze and the present challenge China poses. This article concludes that while improving its global status, China has been taking the previous cases’ failed challenges into consideration. China, which does not want to repeat the mistakes made by Germany and the Soviet Union, is hesitant to pursue an aggressive military policy and tries to limit its rivalry with the U.S. in the economic area. While Chinese policy of avoiding direct conflict and focusing on economic development has made it the biggest economic rival of the U.S, the rise of China initiates the discussions about the end of the U.S. and West-led international system.


Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo

This chapter examines the indicators used by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and two key decision makers in his administration, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union during the period 1977–1980. Using evidence from U.S. archives and interviews with former U.S. decision makers, it compares the predictions of the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. After discussing the U.S. decision makers’ stated beliefs about Soviet intentions, the chapter considers the reasoning they employed to justify their intentions assessments. It then describes the policies that individual decision makers advocated and those that the administration collectively adopted. It also explores whether decision makers advocated policies that were congruent with their stated beliefs about intentions and evaluate sthe impact of beliefs about intentions on U.S. foreign policy at the time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-209
Author(s):  
James G. Hershberg

Using materials from the Russian Foreign Ministry archive in Moscow (combined with previously obtained Brazilian and U.S. sources), this research note presents fresh evidence about Soviet-Brazilian relations and the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, supplementing a detailed, two-part article published in the Journal of Cold War Studies in 2004 exploring Brazil's secret mediation between John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro at the height of the crisis. The new evidence illuminates a previously hidden “double game” that Brazil's president, João Goulart, played during the crisis as he alternated between meetings with the U.S. ambassador and Nikita Khrushchev's recently arrived envoy (Brazil and the Soviet Union had just restored diplomatic relations after a fifteen-year break). The new evidence from Moscow suggests that Goulart, who vowed solidarity with Washington and even toasted Kennedy's “victory” when talking to the U.S. ambassador, took a completely different approach when speaking to Soviet officials, expressing strong sympathy and even support for Khrushchev.


1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 179-185
Author(s):  
Arthur Downey ◽  
Leonore Burts

I think Professor Jacobsen’s analysis of the unity, the comprehensiveness of the forward movement of Soviet policy and its military, diplomatic, political, economic, cultural advance may be quite true, but I wonder if we are not really only talking about a difference in degree from the U.S. system. I think the fact that Soviet policy is conceived of as a web, and that individual geographic areas or political, military, economic issues are not viewed or treated in isolation, is a concept or a method of conducting policy that is not peculiar to the Soviet Union. We have the same thing, with perhaps only a slight difference in degree as a result in part of the ability of the Soviet system to centralize.


1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 194-198
Author(s):  
Walter Glass ◽  
Patricia O. Lawry

I shall discuss some of the practical legal problems we have encountered in our efforts to trade with the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries. I should like to say at the outset that ever since I began to work in this field in 1964, the U.S. Government has been very helpful. Within the framework of congressional export policy, the Department of Commerce has always endeavored to make allowance for the needs of the American businessman. The State Department has also been helpful; I recall in particular a really first-rate briefing by our embassy in Bucharest when East-West trade was a very new subject.


1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Franz

Proliferation of biological—as well as chemical and nuclear—weapons is a threat to the security of the U.S. in the post-Cold War era. The number of states with biological weapons (BW) programs or with a strong interest in having a BW program has increased significantly since the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) was signed in 1972 (Office of Technology Assessment, 1993). BW programs present difficult intelligence targets. Thus, the Soviet Union was a signatory to the BWC at the time of the Sverdlovsk incident in 1979, yet we knew little of the scope of its BW program until 1991 (Meselson et al., 1994). The spread of biotechnology throughout the world in recent years has made even more governments potentially BW capable.


Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 8-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester R. Brown

Each day two 20,000-ton freighters loaded with grain leave the United States for the Soviet Union. This flow of grain between two major adversaries is influenced by economic considerations such as the size of the Soviet grain deficit, the U.S. capacity to supply, and the Soviet ability to pay. Political considerations include the risk to both trading partners of such a heavy interdependence, whether as supplier or market.Never before has a country dominated the world grain trade as the United States does today. Its 55 per cent share of world grain exports in 1981 easily overshadows Saudi Arabia's 24 per cent share of world oil exports in 1978. And while the amount of oil traded internationally has been falling since 1979, grain shipments are continuing to grow.


2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Justus M. Van Der Kroef

In the Southeast Asian area modalities of political dependence have developed which involve the distinctive typology of clients, silent partners, and proxies. These modalities govern the relationship between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Laos, and the People's Republic of Kampuchea. They also are operative in the international interaction between the members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations (Asean) and the Western major powers. A set of strategic cooperative arrangements, as well as direct military assistance between Asean, the Commonwealth and the U.S., has its counterpart in similar relations between the U.S.S.R. and the Hanoi dominated lndo-China alliance. As a result, the U.S.-Soviet confrontation in Southeast Asia is expressed politically and strategically primarily through the proxy relationships with the lndo-China states and key Asean members respectively. In turn, there are strong undercurrents in Asean seeking an accommodation with Hanoi, in order to minimize the conflict potential in the region generated by opposing U.S. and Soviet strategic interests. Particularly the relatively warming relationship between the U.S. and People's China has strengthened the Asean fears of China s long-term intentions in the region. An independent Vietnam, free from its proxy-client status toward the Soviet Union, could act as a buffer between China and the Southeast Asian region. Since Hanoi, if only for long-standing nationalistic reasons, wishes to be free from its currently necessary dependence on Moscow, Asean's accommodationist interests may well meet with appreciation in Hanoi in the future. This would tend to lessen the effect of the American-Soviet confrontation in the area.


Author(s):  
Gerald Horne

This chapter discusses the powerful FBI faction within the highest ranks of the CP, led by Morris Childs, who was quite effective in gumming up potentially far-reaching proposals and stoking internal conflict. This internecine conflict wracking the CP provided a plethora of headlines for the U.S. press, which in turn alienated actual and potential members. At the sixteenth convention of the CP in February 1957, there were seventy correspondents from newspapers, television, and radio, including journalists from Italy, Poland, and the Soviet Union, who did a credible job of presenting a portrait of disarray disrupting presumed agents of Moscow. Despite party support collapsing all around—which became evident after this convention—as a Communist, Patterson found it necessary to find the time to survey the domestic and the global scene when contemplating strategy and tactics.


This essay is a response to the essay “Americanization and Anti-Americanism in Poland: A Case Study, 1945-2006.” The author argues that Poland, Georgia, and South Africa tend to echo each other, even though they are arguably very different countries. It stresses that Poland and the Republic of Georgia, for example, were both subjected to Soviet influence and that this had consequences over the years in their views of the U.S. Nas is quite interested in Delaney and Antoszek’s argument that Poland is the least anti-American country in Europe, and suggests that it might be better to examine those attitudes as attitudes expressed above ground or underground. The essay also contemplates the possibility that Poland had more freedom than Georgia because it was never a formal part of the Soviet Union. And it contemplates the South African experience which highlights U.S. economic imperialism, even though Chinese influence now also needs to be examined.


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