Coda

2020 ◽  
pp. 287-296
Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Spring ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
White House ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
President Bush

In the early spring of 1989, First Lady Barbara Bush received Martha Graham at the White House for a social call and a discussion of Graham’s upcoming tour, again “behind the Iron Curtain.” They exchanged gifts but also broke with protocol as they played with the Bush dogs; a relaxed familiarity infused the women’s smiles as the new pups jumped on Graham’s lap. The company would return to Poland and Yugoslavia, move to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and then finish in Russia, appearing in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Graham prepared for the tour with a gala featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov, the newest Soviet defector, in a “premiere” of American Document, with Baryshnikov dancing and reciting words from American documents such as the Declaration of Independence. Graham would come out of retirement as a dancer, and a film of her dancing with the defector would be shown on tour. Graham recruited Barbara Bush to become gala chair, and wrote notes describing the tour plans. Although the Wall would not fall until November, the month Graham was to perform in the bloc nations, peaceful revolts began to take place in Poland and Hungary. Reserved in his approach, President Bush may not have appreciated Graham’s heavy-handed Americana. Remaining ever-contemporary, Graham’s tour scout returned from Moscow to the United States, sharing a plane with Donald Trump’s own real estate scout. The Bush tour never took place. Graham passed away on April Fool’s Day, in 1991, the same year the Cold War officially ended.

scholarly journals Coercion by fear: Securitization of Iraq prior to the 2003 war

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-386
Author(s):  
Basar Baysal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
President Bush

The Iraq War was one of the most prominent events of the early 2000s. The prelude to the war halted the sense of optimism that captivated International Relations as a discipline after the end of the Cold War. The United States initiated this war following a lengthy securitization process. This study focuses on analyzing the securitization process in Iraq prior to the 2003 war. To that end, the article investigates the securitization process by asking, “How, within what context, and when did the securitization of Iraq take place?” For the study, 85 speeches made by President Bush are analyzed to examine how the president presented Iraq as an existential threat. The study also examines the kinds of arguments used by the Bush administration in securitizing Iraq. This study contributes to the literature on the 2003 Iraq War and security studies by applying Securitization Theory to the Iraq case by incorporating two essential contributions to the securitization analysis: context and audience(s).

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

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.

Ballet in the Cold War

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 ◽  
The Cold War

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.

scholarly journals Why Arms Control?

Daedalus ◽  
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 ◽  
The Cold War

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.

John Leighton Stuart and U.S.-Chinese Communist Rapprochement in 1949: Was There Another “Lost Chance in China”?

1982 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-ming Shaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
June July ◽  
The Cold War

Reverend John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) served as U.S. ambassador to China from July 1946 until August 1949. In the many discussions of his ambassadorship the one diplomatic mission that has aroused the most speculation and debate was his abortive trip to Beijing, contemplated in June–July 1949, to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Some students of Sino-American relations have claimed that had this trip been made the misunderstanding and subsequent hostility between the United States and the People's Republic of China in the post-1949 period could have been avoided; therefore, the unmaking of this trip constituted another “lost chance in China” in establishing a working relationship between the two countries. But others have thought that given the realities of the Cold War in 1949 and the internal political constraints existing in each country, no substantial result could have been gained from such a trip. Therefore, the thesis of a “lost chance in China” was more an unfounded speculation than a credible affirmation.

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