Vandenberg Vanished: US Congress and the Politicisation of Military Interventions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Böller

Abstract This article examines the extent and patterns of politicisation in the field of military interventions for the USA after the end of the Cold War. The analysis shows that key votes on war and peace in the US Congress are contested to a higher degree than in the European parliaments. It finds that Republican members of Congress (MoC) are in general more supportive of military interventions than Democrats. At the same time, party loyalty towards the president influences the level of support. Furthermore, an original content analysis of congressional debates reveals that MoC use specific argumentative frames in line with partisan ideology. Both parts of the analysis point to the relevance of partisanship and partisan ideology for understanding the politicisation of military interventions policies. Thus, the traditional bipartisan spirit, paradigmatically invoked by US Senator Arthur Vandenberg during the Cold War, has almost vanished.

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-491
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Joksimovic

In searching for various opportunities to act in pursuing its foreign policy and endeavors to achieve a dominant role in the global processes USA has developed a broad range of instruments including a financial assistance as a way to be given support for its positions, intelligence activities, its public diplomacy, unilateral implementation of sanctions and even military interventions. The paper devotes special attention to one of these instruments - sanctions, which USA implemented in the last decade of the 20th century more than ever before. The author explores the forms and mechanisms for implementation of sanctions, the impact and effects they produce on the countries they are directed against, but also on the third parties or the countries that have been involved in the process by concurrence of events and finally on USA as the very initiator of imposing them.


Author(s):  
Mykola Saychuk

The system of secrecy of documents of operative-strategic planning which worked in the armed forces of the USSR and the USA during the Cold War the author analyzes based on his experience with archival documents. On the basis of the author’s experience with work with archival documents, this article analyzes the systems of classification of operational and strategic planning documents of the Armed Forces of the USSR and the USA during the Cold War. A comparison of documents’ classification levels and works of the regime-secret (classification) bodies is made. It is determined which secrecy classification levels and additional code words were used for different documents depending on the nature of the information contained in them: nuclear planning, mobilization planning, operational plans at the theaters of war. After a detailed comparison, it is concluded that despite the widespread view of extraordinary secrecy in the USSR, in fact, the US regime-secret system was more advanced, demanding and rigid. The Soviet system included three levels of document secrecy. In addition, the US system had additional restrictions due to acronyms listing a narrow range of document users. The aim of the article is to investigate documents that reveal the preparation for war in Europe during the Cold War.


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Brogi

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-415
Author(s):  
Harem Hasan Ahmed Baban ◽  
Mohammed Abdullah Kakasur

The USA policy towards Iraq 1963-1968,is one of the significant topics that has been given special attention by researchers, especially the America’s role in bringing the Baathists to power in Iraq and recognizing them.Another issue that has been taken care of by America is how to strengthen its political, cultural, and economic ties, especially its oil relations with Iraq. Because of Iraq was one of main forces in the Middle East during the Cold War, Therefore, it has become an important site to American interest .On the other hand, there were some external factors that had a negative impact on the US foreign policy towards Iraq during this period. Among those factors, the Arab-Israel and the problem of western oil partners that were operating in Iraq at that time. However during existing these issues, the cultural and economic relations between USA and Iraq was still remain.


Author(s):  
Wolfgang Wagner

Votes in parliament reveal the degree to which foreign affairs are contested and politicized. Data from the US Congress since its first session in 1789 confirm the established narrative that foreign affairs have become politicized since the Vietnam War but also qualify the politicization narrative by showing that post-Vietnam levels of contestation are far from unusual if compared to the first 150 years of Congressional voting. While levels of contestation vary, foreign affairs have never been fully exempted from democratic politics. An analysis of voting behaviour in the German and the Dutch parliament confirm that democratic politics does indeed not stop at the water’s edge. A new dataset of deployment votes in eleven countries shows that dissent is also common in votes on military interventions but also highlights differences across countries. In many countries, the government is successful in building a broad coalition in support of the military intervention in question. The rising numbers of deployment votes indicate that military interventions have gained in saliency since the end of the Cold War.


1986 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Kubalkova ◽  
A. A. Cruickshank

In the historiography of the Cold War a small but active group of American historians influenced by New Left radicalism rejected the view prevailing in the USA at the time in regard to the assignation of responsibility for the beginning and continuation of the Cold War.1 Although their reasoning took them along different routes and via different perceptions as to key dates and events, there were certain features all US revisionists had in common (some more generally recognized than others). Heavily involved as they were in the analysis of the US socio-economic system, the Soviet Union was largely left out of their concerns and it was the United States who had been found the ‘guilty’ party. The revisionists, of course inadvertently, corroborated Soviet conclusions, a fact gratefully acknowledged by Soviet writers.2


2019 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 468-475
Author(s):  
Shabnam Gul ◽  
Aftab Alam ◽  
Muhammad Faizan Asghar

The USA, the victor of the Cold War, became supper power in 1992 and started to exercise its hegemony in the world. China, a Cold War ally of the US, became a stronger economy and came forward to encounter the Primacy of the US in Asia. In the name of peaceful development and cooperation, China has become the supreme exporter of the world and the second economy of the world. The advancement PRC has made in the arena of technology, military, space technology, its engagements in different regions, its soft balancing strategy in the world displays that China wants to perform as a forthcoming hegemon of the world. This paper analyze both the soft and hard balancing tactics of China to counter the omnipotence of the US in different regions of the world. The strategies of China illustrates that it is searching for a multipolar world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (6) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Alexey Gromyko ◽  

The article continues the research of the “big three” strategic thinking, especially the USSR and the USA, during the Second World War, their contribution to the post-war settlement with the United Nations as a key element. Their approaches to new mechanisms of global governance were developing on parallel and overlapping courses. On the chronology of the Cold War, the author proposes to define its start as an extended period from 1945 until the end of the decade. This methodology avoids absolutization of intentions, separate events and statements. Instead it imbeds them in the process of political-military structures’ construction, designed for regional and global confrontation. The attention is paid to the role of the subjective factor in transition of the “big three” from cooperation to the Cold War. The meaning of the Iranian crisis is demonstrated as an additional source of the Cold War’s premises. The author reveals the milieu of conflicting views in the US political establishment on the legacy of the “Roosevelt course” including the nuclear factor. The conclusion is drawn that in the years of the Second World War great powers pursued long-term policy towards the post-war settlement putting aside political conjuncture.


2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Butler

Abstract. The polities of Canada and the United States are purportedly engaged in the process of value convergence; however, with regard to the legitimacy of foreign military intervention, divergence seems a more apt characterization. This research explores whether the current discord between Canada and the US reflects an aberration, or a realization of entrenched normative differences, over what justifies the use of military force. A series of regression models tests the hypothesis that justice considerations prompted the military interventions of both the US and Canada during the Cold War. The results herein fail to confirm this hypothesis, and in the process highlight the ways in which each country employed ‘justice’ selectively in the service of broader foreign policy objectives.Résumé. Les constitutions politiques des États-Unis et du Canada sont supposées tendre vers des valeurs communes; cependant, en ce qui concerne la reconnaissance de la légitimité des interventions militaires à l'étranger, la divergence semble être une caractérisation plus juste. Cette recherche explore si le désaccord actuel entre les États-Unis et le Canada reflète une certaine aberration ou la réalisation de différences profondément ancrées, concernant la justification de l'utilisation de la force militaire. Une série de modèles régressifs teste l'hypothèse selon laquelle des considérations de justice ont provoqué les interventions militaires des États-Unis et du Canada durant la guerre froide. Les résultats infirment cette hypothèse, et soulignent, en même temps, les façons dont chacun des deux pays a employé la “ justice ” de manière sélective pour servir des objectifs plus vastes de politique extérieure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Zahir Ahmad KHALEQI ◽  
Jamaluddin Sadruddin Oghli

With the dissolution of the USSR, the world entered a unipolar period after the cold war. In this period, the US wants to influence the region by establishing warm relations during the independence and establishment processes in the former Soviet regions with the claims of world domination. China and Russia, dissatisfied with these expansionist policies of the USA and western countries. China and Russia took the border problems between them for many years against the threats in the region and established the Shanghai 5th organization in 1996 to establish security and commercial cooperation and to remove the USA from the region. With the participation of Uzbekistan in 2001, the name of the organization was changed to Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). when Turkey started to be hesitated from EU membership process in recent years, Turkey's foreign policy orientation of Eurasia and as an alternative to membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has started to be discussed. In 2012, Turkey was accepted as a dialogue country in the SCO that could not yet enter the full membership process. In this study, primarily the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and mentioning about the structure of the aforementioned organization, within the framework of the advantages and disadvantages of being the SCO member for Turkey and its possible relations were examined.


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