The American Exceptionalists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Abrams Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
State Department ◽  
The State ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
American Power ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines Americanist composers William Schuman and Howard Hanson in parallel, as they engaged with the Cold War in very similar ways. These two men are shown to have used their influence as conservatory directors and advisers to government to present musical Americanism as a tool to grow American power on the global stage. Working with the State Department and the US Information Agency, Schuman and Hanson helped shape Cold War–created international cultural programs that placed a heavy emphasis on concert music and mandated the performance of American compositions. The chapter also includes an analysis of a musical work by Schuman that was commissioned by a branch of the US government. Credendum (1955) demonstrates in sound Schuman’s conception of Cold War American exceptionalism.

scholarly journals The New Frontier: Religion in America’s National Space Rhetoric of the Cold War Era

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen E. Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
National Space ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Religious Imagery ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Cold War

The origins and use of national space rhetoric used by NASA, the US government, and the media in America began during the Cold War era and relied, in part, on religious imagery to convey a message of exploration and conquest. The concept of space as a “New Frontier” was used in political speech, television, and advertising to reawaken a sense of manifest destiny in postwar America by reviving notions of religious freedom, courage, and exceptionalism—the same ideals that originally drove expansionist boosters first to the New World and then to the West. Using advertisements, political speeches, NASA documents, and other media, this paper will demonstrate how this rhetoric served to reinforce a culture held by many Americans who maintained a long tradition of believing that they were called on by God to settle New Frontiers and how this culture continues to influence how human spaceflight is portrayed today.

Taiwan will benefit from US-China friction

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
State Department ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Opening Ceremony ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
At Home

Significance Taiwan-US relations got a symbolic boost when the US government opened a new 250-million-dollar institute to house the de facto embassy in Taipei, Taiwan's capital, on June 12. President Tsai Ing-wen, and a US delegation that included representatives from Congress and the State Department, attended the opening ceremony. It may have received greater attention and perhaps higher-ranking US representation had the first US-North Korea summit not been scheduled for the same day. Impacts Taiwan's president will be constrained from improving China ties by anti-China sentiment at home. More businesses could come under Chinese pressure as cross-Strait relations deteriorate further. Taiwan-US military cooperation will prompt more aggressive Chinese efforts to diminish Taiwan's standing and increase military intimidation.

Ending Grand Alliance Politics in Western Europe: US Anti-communism in France and Italy, 1944–7

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Brogi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The State ◽  
Alliance Politics ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Grand Alliance ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Transitional Phase

The postwar ascendancy of the French and Italian Communist Parties (PCF and PCI) as the strongest ones in the emerging Western alliance was an unexpected challenge for the USA. The US response during this time period (1944–7) was tentative, and relatively moderate, reflecting the still transitional phase from wartime Grand Alliance politics to Cold War. US anti-communism in Western Europe remained guarded for diplomatic and political reasons, but it never mirrored the ambivalence of anti-Americanism among French and especially Italian Communist leaders and intellectuals. US prejudicial opposition to a share of communist power in the French and Italian provisional governments was consistently strong. A relatively decentralized approach by the State Department, however, gave considerable discretion to moderate, circumspect US officials on the ground in France and Italy. The subsequent US turn toward an absolute struggle with Western European communism was only in small part a reaction to direct provocations from Moscow, or the PCI and PCF. The two parties and their powerful propaganda appeared likely to undermine Western cohesion; this was the first depiction, by the USA and its political allies in Europe, of possible domino effects in the Cold War.

‘Chinese rings’: the United States, the two Chinas and the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics

2018 ◽  
pp. 185-202 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
State Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Winter Olympics ◽  
Winter Olympic Games ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
International Sport

This chapter examines the inter-relationship of sport and diplomacy with specific reference to the 1960 Winter Olympic Games (held in Squaw Valley, California). More specifically, it evaluates State Department involvement in the ongoing issue of the recognition of the “Two China’s” during the Cold War, with specific reference to international sport. Despite long-standing official non-involvement in international sporting matters, hosting the 1960 Games focussed US diplomatic attention on the opportunities and problems presented by the Olympics within the wider Cold War. Crucially, the State Department extended considerable behind-the-scenes efforts both before and during the Squaw Valley Games in an attempt ensure Nationalist Chinese participation. Overall, this chapter will demonstrate that despite claims of non-involvement, the State Department specifically utilised international sport – and particularly the Olympics – as a tool of diplomacy during the Cold War. This was drawn into particularly sharp focus when the Games were being hosted on American soil, as they were in Squaw Valley in 1960.

Removing the Mask of Sanity: McCarthyism and the Psychiatric–Confessional Foundations of the Cold War National Security State

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (04) ◽  
pp. 1066-1094
Author(s):  
ROBERT GENTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Psychiatric Discourse ◽  
National Security State ◽  
The Cold War

In the early Cold War, the US government institutionalized a national security program, centered on the investigation into the political beliefs of federal employees, to safeguard the nation from Communist subversion. Often interpreted as the result of a partisan battle between New Deal Democrats and conservative Republicans, the national security program had deeper origins, reflecting the influence of psychiatric discourse on public understandings of deviancy. Framed by a metonymical logic that linked radical political beliefs, deviant sexual behaviors, and other illicit behaviors under the category of psychopathology, the security program sought to guard against the threat posed by potentially dangerous individuals, a form of protection that necessitated the public disclosure by those deemed security risks of all aspects of their personal lives.

Strategies of Decolonization: Economic Sovereignty and National Security in Libyan–US Relations, 1949–1971

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Christopher R. W. Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Deep Foundations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Arab League ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This article examines Libyan–US relations through the historical lenses of decolonization, international law, the Cold War, and the international political economy. The Libyan government exercised its newfound sovereignty in the postwar era through the negotiation of ‘base rights’ for the US government and ‘oil rights’ for corporations owned by US nationals. They did so in conjunction with other petrostates and through international organizations such as the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Libyan leaders’ strategy of using sovereignty to promote corporate competition relied on connections with similarly situated nations, and it was through global circuits of knowledge that they pressed the outer limits of economic sovereignty. At the same time, the US government consistently accommodated Libyan policies through Cold War arguments that linked the alliance with Libya to US national security. Those deep foundations of sovereignty and security created the conditions for the transformation of the global oil industry after Libya’s 1969 revolution.

scholarly journals Rereading Empire, Rethinking History: Rehabilitation of the Vietcong in Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-94
Author(s):  
Yuan Shu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Vietnamese American ◽  
The Us

Throughits reading of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, credited as the first Vietnamese American novel, this article seeksto investigate the discourse of reconciliation or refugee settlement in the context of the changing US master narratives from Empire to Cold War 2.0. Itarguesthat Cao’s novel in its effort to register a South Vietnamese perspective reorients modern Vietnamese experiences in relation to the US sense of democracy and freedom and in the process challenges what Donald Pease calls the state fantasy of American exceptionalism in the US military intervention in Vietnam. What Cao’s novel achieves is to blur the boundary between nationalism and communism in its representation of the Vietnamese struggle for independence in its early stage and to humanize and rehabilitate the Vietcong soldier as a possibly assimilable “us” rather than as simply “them” in the realm of the other.

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