scholarly journals 17. Geopolitics and Grand Strategy

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Ortmann ◽  
Nick Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines the concept of geopolitics and its role in grand strategy. It first considers how the concepts of grand strategy and geopolitics evolved in response to changing world historical contexts before discussing why they came to be associated with the politics of Great Powers. It shows that the concept of grand strategy was initially developed in the context of the Second World War and that both the Soviet Union and the United States acted geopolitically during the cold war. It also looks at containment, a grand strategy informed by geopolitical reasoning but driven by ideological concerns rather than resource competition. The chapter proceeds by describing the pitfalls and problems associated with formulating a grand strategy and explains why geopolitics is as much about interpretation as it is about geography.

In a Changing America

Arthur Szyk ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 217-232
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Ansell
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Freedom Struggles ◽  
Second World

This chapter encompasses Arthur Szyk's final years. It shows his continued dedication to freedom struggles around the world even as it contemplates on the dwindling number of exhibitions he held during this period. During this time, the United States was also turning inward after the Second World War. This attitude was one which Szyk did not share and which his work, with its liberal and international themes, did not support. Moreover, the chapter reveals his growing sympathy towards the Soviet Union, which was so evident in the political cartoons and related works from the years of alliance during the Second World War. It also shows that, by the early years of the Cold War, his health was somewhat precarious, forcing him to choose his activities carefully.

1. The Second World War and the destruction of the old order

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Robert J. McMahon
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
World War ◽  
Old Order ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

‘The Second World War and the destruction of the old order’ focuses on the Second World War, the most destructive conflict in human history. The death and destruction precipitated by the war left not only much of Europe and Asia in ruins but the old international order as well. The origins of the Cold War lay in the intersection between a war-shattered world and the conflicting recipes for international order that the United States and the Soviet Union sought to impose on that world. The Soviets and Americans each saw themselves acting out of noble motives—acting to usher humanity into a new age of peace, justice, and order.

scholarly journals The Politics of theAbendland: Christian Democracy and the Idea of Europe after the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSARIO FORLENZA
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Christian Democracy ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article traces the deep cultural and experiential foundations that animated Christian Democratic Europeanism between the mid-1940s and the birth of the European Economic Community in the late 1950s. It shows how the language of Europeanness, generated in a period of multiple and intense crisis, congealed around symbolisms of Christianity and spirituality. More specifically, it connects the post-Second World War Christian Democratic vision of Europe to the 1920s German-Catholic articulation of theAbendland(the Christian West), understood as a supranational and symbolic space alternative to the Soviet Union and the United States and imbued with anti-materialist, anti-socialist and anti-liberal principles. The argument here is that, in mutated form and in context of the Cold War, this view sustained the political reconstruction of Western Europe after the horrors of the Second World War, the ‘European’ thought and language of Christian Democracy and the commitment to the project of European integration.

America Abroad

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kal Raustiala
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Second World

The single most important feature of American history after 1945 was the United States’s assumption of hegemonic leadership. Europeans had noted America’s enormous potential since at least the nineteenth century. After the Civil War the United States had one of the largest economies in the world, but, as noted earlier in this book, in geopolitical terms it remained a surprisingly minor player. By 1900 the United States was playing a more significant political role. But it was only after 1945 that the nation’s potential on the world stage was fully realized. Victory in the Second World War left the United States in an enviable position. Unlike the Soviet Union, which endured devastating fighting on its territory and lost tens of millions of citizens, the United States had experienced only one major attack on its soil. Thanks to its actions in the war America had great influence in Europe. And the national economy emerged surprisingly vibrant from the years of conflagration, easily dominant over any conceivable rival or set of rivals. When the First World War ended the United States ultimately chose to return to its hemispheric perch. It declined to join the new League of Nations, and rather than maintaining engagement with the great powers of the day, America generally turned inward. The years following the Second World War were quite different. In addition to championing—and hosting—the new United Nations, the United States quickly established a panoply of important institutions aimed at maintaining and organizing international cooperation in both economic and security affairs. Rising tensions with the Soviet Union, apparent to many shortly after the war’s end, led the United States to remain militarily active in both Europe and Asia. The intensifying Cold War cemented this unprecedented approach to world politics. The prolonged occupations of Germany and Japan were straightforward examples of this newly active global role. In both cases the United States refashioned a conquered enemy into a democratic, free-market ally—a significant feat. The United States did not, however, seek a formal empire in the wake of its victory.

scholarly journals Friends – of a Kind: America and its Allies in the Second World War Mary E. Glantz, FDR and the Soviet Union: The President's Battles Over Foreign Policy (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2005, $34.95). Pp. 253. ISBN 0 7006 1365 X. Steven Merritt Miner, Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, $55.00). Pp. 407. ISBN 0 8078 2736 3. Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and American Against the Axis Powers 1940–1945 (London and New York: Hodder Arnold, 2005, £25.00). Pp. 291. ISBN 0 340 72026 3. David Stone, War Summits: The Meetings that Shaped World War II and the Postwar World (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005, $29.95). Pp. 304. ISBN 1 57488 901 X.

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-644
Author(s):  
MARTIN H. FOLLY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

The Second World War continues to be an attractive subject for scholars and even more so for those writing for a general readership. One of the more traditional areas of focus has been the ‘Big Three’ – the alliance of the United States with Britain and the Soviet Union. Public interest in the three leaders – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – remains high, and their decisions continue to resonate in the post-Cold War era, as demonstrated by continued (and often ahistorical) references to the decisions made at the Yalta Conference. Consequently, while other aspects of Second World War historiography have pushed into new avenues of exploration, that which has looked at the Grand Alliance has followed fairly conventional lines – the new Soviet bloc materials have been trawled to answer old questions and using the frames of reference that developed during the Cold War. This has left much to be said about the nature of the relationship of the United States with its great allies and the dynamics and processes of that alliance, and overlooked full and rounded analysis of the role of that alliance as the instrument of Axis defeat.

FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR: THE WARTIME ALLIANCE AND POST-WAR TRANSITIONS, 1941–1947

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID REYNOLDS
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This review examines some of the recent British, American, and Russian scholarship on a series of important international transitions that occurred in the years around 1945. One is the shift of global leadership from Great Britain to the United States, in which, it is argued, the decisive moment was the fall of France in 1940. Another transition is the emergence of a wartime alliance between Britain and America, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other, followed by its disintegration into the Cold War. Here the opening of Soviet sources during the 1990s has provided new evidence, though not clear answers. To understand both of these transitions, however, it is necessary to move beyond diplomacy and strategy to look at the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the Second World War. In particular, recent studies of American and Soviet soldiers during and after the conflict re-open the debate about Cold War ideology from the bottom up.

scholarly journals The Attitude of the Soviet Union of the War in the Korean Semi-Continental during the years 1950-1953 (A Documentary Study)

2018 ◽  
Vol 219 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dr .Ayad Tariq Khudier Al-Alwani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
United State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
China And Japan ◽  
Second World

      This research deals with the attitude of the Soviet Union of the war the Korean Semi –Continental during  the years 1950  - 1953. It also treats the historical matters of the Korean issue which is considered one of the most important forms of the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States; especially that the strategic spot that distinguished the Korean Semi- Continental had stimulated the great countries such as China and Japan to control the Semi- Continental .Besides the attempts of both the United States and the Soviet Union to exend their leverage to the areas they had controlled after the Second World War; of what led to obstruction of appearance of a united state in the peninsula; therefore Korea had been divided into two parts and Latitude 38 had been put as a separate border between them.

scholarly journals Bukovina: A Borderland Region in (Trans-)national Historiographies after 1945 and 1989–1991

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëlle Fisher ◽  
Maren Röger
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Future Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article is part of the special cluster titled Bukovina and Bukovinians after the Second World War: (Re)shaping and (re)thinking a region after genocide and ‘ethnic unmixing’, guest edited by Gaëlle Fisher and Maren Röger. This introductory essay provides an overview of the historiography of the borderland region of Bukovina after 1945 and 1989–1991. Presenting the approaches adopted in different national contexts after the end of the Second World War, it points to the methodological nationalism which characterized research on the region during the Cold War. We show that while the historiography of Bukovina on the ground, in Romania and the Soviet Union, refracted wider national ideologies, abroad, particularly in West Germany and Israel, it remained for a long time the prerogative of small groups of “Bukovinians,” who saw it as their “lost home.” We explore both the similarities and differences between these narratives and stakeholders as well as the changes that took place after 1989–1991, especially in Romania and Ukraine. We show that while divided, the actors behind the narratives and thereby the narratives themselves have been connected in complex ways over the decades and particularly since the collapse of communism. Indeed, while for a long time the study of Bukovina resisted transnationalism, it nevertheless constituted and constitutes an ultimately transnational research object. Today, Bukovina remains a space of contest but it is also a space of opportunity, not least for researchers interested in the contested histories of borderland regions. This essay therefore contextualizes the themes and issues addressed in the following cluster of articles and identifies avenues for future research in this field.

scholarly journals 18. Geopolitics and Grand Strategy

2018 ◽  
pp. 308-326
Author(s):  
Stefanie Ortmann ◽  
Nick Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
World War ◽  
International Environment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World ◽  
Changing World

This chapter discusses the concept of geopolitics and its role in formulating and implementing a grand strategy. It first provides an overview of the relationship between grand strategy and geography before explaining how the meanings of grand strategy and geopolitics evolved in response to changing world historical contexts. It then considers the reasons why geopolitics and grand strategy are linked to the politics of great powers and why these concepts are currently making a comeback. In particular, it examines the revival of geopolitical thinking after the Second World War and how geopolitical reasoning informed containment as a grand strategy during the cold war. It also takes a look at the pitfalls and problems associated with formulating a grand strategy, especially in today's complex international environment. Finally, it argues that there is a need to rethink geopolitics with the ultimate goal of balancing ends and means.

Genuine Pacifism or Soviet Infiltration? Allied Responses to West German Rearmament Protests, 1950–52

Diplomatica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
William Whitworth
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
German Government ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
German People ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

Abstract This article examines the reactions of British and U.S. officials to the wave of anti-rearmament protests which erupted in West Germany in the early 1950s. It examines the discourse generated by these officials to argue that the West German protests were either encouraged or condemned by different diplomatic figures. Most officials blamed the Soviet Union for the dissent in Germany and called for widespread concessions to the German government to better calm the situation. Some officials, however, supported the protests and protesters and looked to use the demonstrations to argue for increased contact with the Soviet Union and a thawing of the Cold War. A lasting impact of this discussion was that the image of the German people began to change in the eyes of Western policy makers- with old stereotypes from the Second World War beginning to give way to a new appraisal of Germans as activists and pacifists.

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