7. Fighting the Cold War: The Offensive Strategies

Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter examines the offensive strategies employed by the United States and the Soviet Union in fighting the Cold War. It begins with a discussion of US covert operations and its revised national security strategy, focusing on Operation Solarium, the search for a post-Solarium national security policy, and subversion and intelligence gathering. It then considers the Berlin crises, noting that Berlin was at the heart of the Cold War, the heart of the German question, and on several occasions became the focus of tension between the two blocs in Europe. The airlift of 1948–9 to preserve the Western position in the city, which was an island in East Germany, had become a potent Cold War symbol. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Offshore Islands crises and the Cuban missile crisis.

Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter examines the offensive strategies employed by the United States and the Soviet Union in fighting the Cold War. It begins with a discussion of US covert operations and its revised national security strategy, focusing on Operation Solarium, the search for a post-Solarium national security policy, and subversion and intelligence gathering. It then considers the Berlin Crises, noting that Berlin was at the heart of the Cold War, the heart of the German question, and on several occasions became the focus of tension between the two blocs in Europe. The airlift of 1948–9 to preserve the Western position in the city, which was an island in East Germany, had become a potent Cold War symbol. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Offshore Islands Crises and the Cuban Missile Crisis.


Author(s):  
David A. Messenger

This chapter examines how the politics of the Cold War shaped integration and created and cemented the division of Europe in the immediate postwar era. It first provides an overview of the origins of the Cold War in Europe before discussing the Marshall Plan and the Schuman Plan. It then considers the Western Alliance and German rearmament, the Soviet Union's attitude towards European integration, and alternatives to integration including the Western European Union and NATO. The chapter shows that the outbreak of the Cold War not only enabled the United States to remain engaged in European affairs but also spurred the process of European integration while ensuring that it would be confined to the western part of the continent. Of great significance was the connection made by American and French officials, notably Jean Monnet, between economic development, national security, and the double containment of Germany and the Soviet Union.


Author(s):  
Tony Smith

This chapter examines the United States's Wilsonianism in the post-Cold War era, first under George H. W. Bush and then under Bill Clinton. It considers how Bush, who became president as the Soviet Union was disintegrating and its leaders were looking for a new framework of understanding with the West, used Wilsonianism to address the question of establishing a world order favorable to American national security. It also discusses various Bush initiatives that were designed to establish a new world order after the cold war, Clinton's selective approach to liberal democratic internationalism, the effects of liberal economic practices on American national security, and the link between nationalism and liberal democracy. Finally, it assesses some of the challenges involved in the United States' efforts to bring about stable constitutional governance in many parts of the world.


1996 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
Arthur M. Schlesinger

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.


Author(s):  
Aleksandr Yur'evich Karasev

In modern world, different aspects of military science are of crucial significance in the questions related to ensuring national security and protection of national interests of the countries. The activity of separate entities, groups or units of the state militarized formations implemented abroad for solution of tasks within the framework of ensuring national security is defined as “military presence”. The author determines the types of military presence used by the Soviet Union during the cold war in different geographical areas; formulates conclusions based on the analysis of usage of each type of military presence and their impact upon international situation; as well as notes the priorities of realization of USSR military-land and naval presence. The research methodology contains the methods of politological and historical studies, historiography, and systemic approach. The main conclusions consist in the thesis that during the cold war period all types of military presence operated as a universal mechanism in the context of military policy of the Soviet Union: the entire palette of forms of military presence, from fly-over and call at the allies’ ports to placement of the land military objects. At the same time, international relations during the indicated period were viewed through the prism of opposition between the Soviet Union and the United States due to the military presence policy that allowed influencing global processes.


MCU Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-148
Author(s):  
Donald M. Bishop

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?


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.


Author(s):  
Anne Searcy

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.


The armed forces of Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. This Handbook aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. The six parts focus on: country-based assessments of the evolution of the national defence policies of Europe’s major, medium, and lesser powers since the end of the cold war; the alliances and security partnerships developed by European states to cooperate in the provision of national security; the security challenges faced by European states and their armed forces, ranging from interstate through intra-state and transnational; the national security strategies and doctrines developed in response to these challenges; the military capabilities, and the underlying defence and technological industrial base, brought to bear to support national strategies and doctrines; and, finally, the national or multilateral military operations by European armed forces. The contributions to The Handbook collectively demonstrate the fruitfulness of giving analytical precedence back to the comparative study of national defence policies and armed forces across Europe.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.


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