15. The Return to Confrontation, 1979–80

This chapter examines why the United States and the Soviet Union returned to confrontation during the period 1979–80. 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.

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.

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.

3. International history 1900–99

The Globalization of World Politics ◽

10.1093/hepl/9780198739852.003.0003 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Len Scott

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

The United States ◽

World Politics ◽

Total War ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

The Cold War ◽

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

Journal of Cold War Studies ◽

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.

The Hazards of Operations Involving Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War

Journal of Cold War Studies ◽

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.

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.

Scientific Community in a Divided World: Economists, Planning, and Research Priority during the Cold War

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417508000261 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 50 (3) ◽

pp. 581-613 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Johanna Bockman ◽

Michael A. Bernstein

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

Economic Science ◽

Mathematical Economics ◽

Research Priority ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

The Cold War ◽

During the Cold War, economists utilizing mathematical methods in both the Soviet Union and the United States found they shared a common research project. After the Stalinist years in which they could communicate very little, they found that they had much to learn from each other. Mathematical economics came to bridge the divide between East and West even though the meetings and collaborations between American and Soviet colleagues were fraught with tension and misunderstanding. The Cold War excitement about mathematical economics and the East-West cooperation it allowed, however, dwindled with the end of détente, the global shift in economic science away from mathematical economics, and the end of state socialism in the East Bloc. To understand the rise and fall of this cooperation and convergence, we examine the case of the connection between Tjalling C. Koopmans, a Dutch economist living in the United States as a result of World War II, and Leonid V. Kantorovich, a Russian scientist living in the Soviet Union. These two men jointly won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1975. Their scientific connections reflect the broader experiences of East-West scientific collaboration during the Cold War. At the same time, they offer insights for scholars regarding struggles over scientific research priority and the potential for convergence between capitalism and socialism during the Cold War era.

Ballet in the Cold War

10.1093/oso/9780190945107.001.0001 ◽

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 ◽

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.

Why Arms Control?

Daedalus ◽

10.1162/daed_a_01792 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 149 (2) ◽

pp. 101-115

Author(s):

Jon Brook Wolfsthal

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Arms Control ◽

Good Deal ◽

The United States ◽

Nuclear War ◽

Nuclear Age ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

America survived the nuclear age through a complex combination of diplomatic and military decisions, and a good deal of luck. One of the tools that proved its value in both reducing the risks of nuclear use and setting rules for the ongoing nuclear competition were negotiated, legally binding, and verified arms control agreements. Such pacts between the United States and the Soviet Union arguably prevented the nuclear arms racing from getting worse and helped both sides climb off the Cold War nuclear precipice. Several important agreements remain in place between the United States and Russia, to the benefit of both states. Arms control is under threat, however, from domestic forces in the United States and from Russian actions that range from treaty violations to the broader weaponization of risk. But arms control can and should play a useful role in reducing the risk of nuclear war and forging a new agreement between Moscow and Washington on the new rules of the nuclear road.