3. International history 1900–99

This chapter focuses on some of the principal developments in world politics from 1900 to 1999: the development of total war, the advent of nuclear weapons, the onset of cold war, and the end of European imperialism. It shows how the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union became the key dynamic in world affairs, replacing the dominance of — and conflict among — European states in the first half of the twentieth century. It also examines the ways that the cold war promoted or prevented global conflict, how decolonization became entangled with East–West conflicts, and how dangerous the nuclear confrontation between East and West was. Finally, the chapter considers the role of nuclear weapons in specific phases of the cold war, notably in détente, and then with the deterioration of Soviet–American relations in the 1980s.

3. International history of the twentieth century

The Globalization of World Politics ◽

10.1093/hepl/9780198825548.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 54-69

Author(s):

Len Scott

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

The United States ◽

World Politics ◽

Total War ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

History Of ◽

This chapter focuses on some of the principal developments in world politics from 1900 to 1999: the development of total war, the advent of nuclear weapons, the onset of cold war, and the end of European imperialism. It shows how the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union became the key dynamic in world affairs, replacing the dominance of—and conflict among—European states in the first half of the twentieth century. It also examines the ways that the cold war promoted or prevented global conflict, how decolonization became entangled with East–West conflicts, and how dangerous the nuclear confrontation between East and West was. Finally, the chapter considers the role of nuclear weapons in specific phases of the cold war, notably in détente, and then with the deterioration of Soviet–American relations in the 1980s.

The Nuclear Revolution

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199236961.013.0021 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Campbell Craig

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Atomic Bomb ◽

The United States ◽

Arms Races ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

This chapter, which examines the role of nuclear weapons in the Cold War and the role of the Cold War in the nuclear revolution, argues that the development of nuclear weapons significantly affected the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union beyond the nuclear crises and arms races. It investigates the role of the atomic bomb in making impossible the postwar cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, and evaluates the role of nuclear fear in invalidating the Soviet's Marxism-Leninism ideology. The chapter also considers how the mutual assured destruction pushed the superpowers away from direct military confrontation and into senseless weapon overproduction at home.

Trust, but Verify

10.11126/stanford/9780804798099.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

International Relations ◽

Arms Control ◽

The United States ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

The Cold War ◽

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.

The Sputnik Challenge

Willy Ley ◽

10.5744/florida/9780813054438.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jared S. Buss

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

Cultural Lag ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

This chapter discusses the myriad of Ley’s activities during the late 1950s, when his status as a scientific celebrity and rocket expert peaked. It follows his pre-Sputnik and post-Sputnik tactics. Not only did Ley encourage millions of Americans to believe in American “firsts” in 1955 and 1956, but also he encouraged Americans to express resentment, anger, and shock following the launch of Sputnik I in 1957. In newspaper columns that circulated across the United States, Ley expressed fears of missile gaps and cultural lag with the Soviet Union. While historians have analyzed the role of politicians during the Cold War, they have not recognized the role of Ley as America’s rocket expert, who now shared the stage with Wernher von Braun.

15. The Return to Confrontation, 1979–80

International Relations Since 1945 ◽

10.1093/hepl/9780199693061.003.0019 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

John W. Young ◽

John Kent

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Short Range ◽

The United States ◽

Arms Race ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Slow Progress ◽

The Cold War ◽

This chapter examines why the United States and the Soviet Union returned to confrontation during the period 1979–1980. Despite the slow progress of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), there were at least some efforts to control strategic weapons. Short-range and intermediate-range nuclear weapons, in contrast, continued to grow in number and sophistication, particularly in Europe, where NATO and Warsaw Pact forces still prepared for war against each other, despite détente. The failure to control theatre nuclear weapons led to a new twist in the European arms race at the end of the 1970s which helped to undermine recent improvements in East–West relations. The chapter first considers NATO’s ‘dual track’ decision regarding theatre nuclear weapons before discussing the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. It concludes with an assessment of the revival of the Cold War, focusing on the so-called Carter Doctrine.

Kinship and Crisis: Embedded Economic Pressures and Gender Ideals in Postsocialist International Matchmaking

Slavic Review ◽

10.1017/s0037677900016685 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 69 (1) ◽

pp. 16-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Jennifer Patico

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Former Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

Transnational Marriage ◽

Gender Ideals ◽

And Gender ◽

The Cold War ◽

The rise of the international matchmaking industry has been particularly rapid and noticeable in the former Soviet Union, where the end of the Cold War has intersected with daily socioeconomic pressures to make cross-cultural romance and marriage newly possible and newly desirable for some women of Russia, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet states. Less acknowledged than the role of economics in women's decision making, however, is the fact that postsocialist financial strains are not experienced in social vacuums but are mediated by ideals of gender and marriage, such that the search for a foreign spouse is unlikely to be experienced as a simple desire for increased material comfort. Instead, discourses of gender “crisis” in the home country inform the desires for transnational kinship for both women from the former Soviet Union and men from the United States. When both women's and men's narratives of “crisis” (and how transnational marriage might alleviate it) are taken into account, they significantly complicate our understandings of east-west relations of “commodification” and power.

The Northern Front in the Technological Cold War: Finland and East-West Trade in the 1970s and 1980s

10.1162/jcws_a_00909 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 150-174 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Niklas Jensen-Eriksen

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Small Countries ◽

Important Player ◽

The Cold War ◽

East West ◽

The U.S

This article shows how the United States and the Soviet Union competed technologically in northern Europe during the final decades of the Cold War. The article highlights the U.S. government's ability to enlist neutral countries, and even vulnerable neutral states like Finland, into Western technology embargoes against the Soviet Union. Yet, the Finnish case also demonstrates that determined small countries and their companies were not simply helpless actors and could protect their political and commercial interests. Finland exported high-technology goods such as electronics and telecommunications equipment to the Soviet Union, even though Finland itself was dependent on technology flows from the United States. In fact, the Finns managed to get the best of both worlds: their country was an important player in East-West trade, but at the same time it was able to modernize its economy and strengthen trading links with the U.S.-led Western alliance.

Cold War Sport, Film, and Propaganda: A Comparative Analysis of the Superpowers

10.1162/jcws_a_00721 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 160-192 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Tony Shaw ◽

Denise J. Youngblood

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Comparative Analysis ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Soviet Cinema ◽

The Cold War ◽

Hearts And Minds ◽

Sports Films ◽

Films and sports played central roles in Cold War popular culture. Each helped set ideological agendas domestically and internationally while serving as powerful substitutes for direct superpower conflict. This article brings film and sport together by offering the first comparative analysis of how U.S. and Soviet cinema used sport as an instrument of propaganda during the Cold War. The article explores the different propaganda styles that U.S. and Soviet sports films adopted and pinpoints the political functions they performed. It considers what Cold War sports cinema can tell us about political culture in the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945 and about the complex battle for hearts and minds that was so important to the East-West conflict.

Foreign Intelligence and the Historiography of the Cold War

10.1162/152039704773254759 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 21-56 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Raymond L. Garthoff

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

Unintended Consequences ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Cold War Era ◽

Foreign Intelligence ◽

Foreign intelligence played a number of important roles in the Cold War, but this topic has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. This survey article provides a broad overview of some of the new literature and documentation pertaining to Cold War era intelligence, as well as the key dimensions of the topic. Despite the continued obstacles posed by secrecy and the mixed reliability of sources, the publication of numerous memoirs and the release of a huge volume of fresh archival material in the post— Cold War era have opened new opportunities to study the role of intelligence in Cold War history. Scholars should explore not only the “micro level” of the problem (the impact of intelligence on specific events) but also the “macro level,” looking at the many ways that the Cold War as a whole (its origins, its course, and its outcome) was influenced, perhaps even shaped, by the intelligence agencies of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other key countries. It is also crucial to examine the unintended consequences of intelligence activities. Some interesting examples of “blowback” (effects that boomerang against the country that initiated them) have recently come to light from intelligence operations that the United States undertook against the Soviet Union. Only by understanding the complex nature of the role of intelligence during the Cold War will we be able to come to grips with the historiographic challenge that the topic poses.

The Hazards of Operations Involving Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War

10.1162/jcws_a_00826 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 207-249 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Milton Leitenberg

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

The United States ◽

The Other ◽

False Alarms ◽

Nuclear War ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

This article provides an overview of the perils of U.S. and Soviet nuclear war planning during the Cold War. In particular, the article discusses instances of false alarms, when one side or the other picked up indications of an imminent attack by the other side and had to take measures to determine whether the indicators were accurate. None of these incidents posed a large danger of an accidental nuclear war, but they illustrate the inherent risks of the war preparations that both the United States and the Soviet Union took for their immense nuclear arsenals.