Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and the Making of an Alliance Consensus

Author(s):  
Andrew Yeo

Chapter 2 recounts the origins of bilateralism in Asia and the legitimization of the US-led hub-and-spokes system among Asian elites during the Cold War. It also outlines the rise of ASEAN in the 1960s. Exploring postwar US alliances forged with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Thailand, I demonstrate how material threats, institutions, and ideas interact to produce an alliance consensus among political elites in Asia. Despite periodic domestic opposition to US alliances, and the weakness of ASEAN, the hub-and-spokes system and ASEAN become entrenched over time.

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-364
Author(s):  
Sangjoon Lee

Abstract As the apparent progeny of Cold War politics in the West, espionage films witnessed unprecedented popularity around the globe in the 1960s. With the success of Dr. No (1962) and Goldfinger (1964)—along with French, Italian, and German copycats—in Asia, film industries in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea recognized the market potential and embarked on churning out their own James Bond-mimetic espionage films in the late 1960s. Since the regional political sphere has always been multifaceted, however, each country approached genre conventions with its own interpretation. In the US-driven Cold War political, ideological, and economic sphere, developmental states in the region, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, vigorously adopted anti-communist doctrine to guard and uphold their militant dictatorships. Under this political atmosphere in the regional sphere, cultural sectors in each nation-state, including cinema, voluntarily or compulsorily served as an apparatus to strengthen the state’s ideological principles. While the Cold War politics that drive the narrative in the American and European films is conspicuously absent in Hong Kong espionage films, South Korea and Taiwan, on the other hand, explicitly promulgated the ideological principles of their apparent enemies, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in their representative espionage films. This article casts a critical eye over South Korea–initiated inter-Asian coproduction of espionage films produced during the time, with particular reference to South Korea–Hong Kong coproduction of SOS Hong Kong (SOS Hongk’ong) and Special Agent X-7 (Sun’gan ŭn yŏngwŏnhi), both produced and released in 1966.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 117-137
Author(s):  
Natalia Matveeva

Since its founding in 1948, South Korea existed on the forefront of the Cold War divide between the two rival blocs. The 'communist threat' was never far from the South Korean leaders' minds, yet it was not until the 1960s that anti-communism was turned into a strategy for regime legitimisation. In 1961, as a result of a coup d'état, a military regime came to power. Its first and most important goal was to legitimise itself both domestically and internationally. General Park Chung-hee, the leader of the military junta, chose anticommunism as part of his strategy. It was deployed to convince the US of the new regime's commitment to defending the country against any possible threat; to prevent American military and economic withdrawal from Korea, and to justify the intensive drive for rapid economic development, for which the general later became renowned. This article argues that South Korean anticommunism in the early 1960s was a complex and conscious strategy aimed at establishing the foundations for the new military regime and ensuring its continued survival. Based on Park Chung-hee's speeches and books and the available archival sources, the article illustrates the way in which anticommunism was presented and how it was used as part of the regime's legitimising strategy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
György Tóth

Partly as a result of compartmentalized academic specializations and history teaching, in accounts of the global upheavals of 1968, Native Americans are either not mentioned, or at best are tagged on as an afterthought. “Was there a Native American 1968?” is the central question this article aims to answer. Native American activism in the 1960s was no less flashy, dramatic or confrontational than the protests by the era’s other struggles – it is simply overshadowed by later actions of the movement. Using approaches from Transnational American Studies and the history of social movements, this article argues that American Indians had a “long 1968” that originated in Native America’s responses to the US government’s Termination policy in the 1950s, and stretched from their ‘training’ period in the 1960s, through their dramatic protests from the late 1960s through the 1970s, all the way to their participation at the United Nations from 1977 through the rest of the Cold War. While their radicalism and protest strategies made Native American activism a part of the US domestic social movements of the long 1960s, the nature of American Indian sovereignty rights and transnationalism place the Native American long 1968 on the rights spectrum further away from civil rights, and closer to a national liberation struggle—which links American Indian activism to the decolonization movements of the Cold War.


2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
ROBERT COOK

This essay provides a case study of one man's transition from the reform-oriented liberalism of the New Deal period to the burgeoning rights-focussed liberalism of the 1960s. It contends that Bruce Catton, the most popular Civil War historian of his generation, played an influential role in forging the culture of Cold War America. He did so in his capacity as a prominent “middlebrow” intellectual who sought to instil his legions of adoring fans with a sense of moral purpose at a time when political elites were fretting about ordinary Americans' ability to fight the Cold War effectively. While his finely crafted narratives of the Civil War demonstrated the courage and conviction of nineteenth-century Americans, his many public appearances in the 1950s enabled him to disseminate further his conviction that the timeless values of American democracy remained as relevant in the disturbing present as they had been in the country's divided past. Catton's characteristically middlebrow commitment to antiracism as a contribution to the Cold War struggle was by no means unfaltering but an assessment of his writings and actions during the Civil War centennial reveals his continuing determination to render American democracy sufficiently vigorous to counter the ongoing communist threat.


2020 ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips

“When they sensed internal mayhem / They sent out Martha Graham / That’s what we call cultural exchange,” wrote Dave and Iola Brubeck with Louis Armstrong for the opera The Real Ambassadors. Graham disavowed political attachments: indeed, understanding what she said she was not is often a way to understand Graham as an actor in US diplomatic history. Allegedly not political, she also disavowed herself as a modernist, feminist, and American missionary. Rather than proving that she was what she said she was not, the introduction outlines the methodology to understand why Graham made these pronouncements while touring for the US government during the Cold War. While Graham initially was a part of the targeting of the elite in “trickle-down diplomacy,” over time she grew older and modernism ossified, just as the government sought to target the youth. In response, Graham posed for pictures that billed her as “Forever Modern,” with dances that were “Too Sexy for Export?” featuring a troupe of young, technically brilliant dancers to represent the United States. Graham passed away in 1991, the same year as the official Cold War end.


2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. e1-e11 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW BAKER

Abstract This article reviews the idea of ‘American Empire’. For most of the Cold War, this term formed part of particular kind of Marxian critique of American power. Neither American nor European statesmen, nor the mainstream press, regarded America as an ‘empire’. Interestingly, the idea of an ‘American Empire’, stripped of its Marxian connotations, entered the mainstream towards the end of Cold War. This article asks two questions: what does it mean? Is it a useful expression or a dangerous distortion? It will be argued that, as a general statement of American political economy, ‘American Empire’ is meaningless: it neither lends itself to positive comparison with European empires nor describes any concrete aspect of the international relations of the US. However, it is possible to refer to American empires limited in time and space, for instance to formal empire in the Philippines or informal empire in Iran. ‘American Empire’ is thus a distortion; but is it dangerous? The idea certainly captured the neoconservative imagination, but it does not seem to have had real policy implications.


Author(s):  
Ni Luh Bayu Purwa Eka Payani

ABSTRAKSetelah Perang Dingin berakhir, AS mulai menguasai dunia baik dari segi ideologi maupun pengaruh lainnya. Asia Timur merupakan salah satu medan peperangan antara ideologi liberal dan komunis, yang sampai saat ini ketegangan antar negara masih terjadi. Situasi yang tidak pasti dan tidak stabil membuat AS sebagai pemenang perang serta aliansi dari Jepang dan Korea Selatan, ikut campur dalam mengatur pemetaan keamanan di kawasan tersebut. Ketidakstabilan muncul saat negara-negara di kawasan berusaha untuk melakukan military build-up untuk mengimbangi kekuatan negara lain, konflik-konflik internal antar negara, serta provokasi senjata nuklir Korea Utara yang tidak hanya mengancam kawasan tetapi juga AS. Untuk menghadapi ini, AS perlu meningkatkan perannya dalam menjawab ketidakstabilan keamanan di kawasan Asia Timur.Kata kunci: ketidakstabilan, keamanan regional, aliansi militer.ABSTRACTAfter The Cold War ended, US started to dominate the whole world with its ideology and other influences. East Asia is one of the battlefields between Liberal and Communist Ideology, which is until now; the tense is still felt among the countries. The uncertain and unstable situation made US as a victor and close alliance to Japan and South Korea to intervene in setting security map in the region. Instability emerges when the countries within region try to build their military up (military buildup) to offset one another, internal conflicts between countries, and nuclear provocation by North Korea, which is not only threatening region but also the US existence in the region. To encounter these challenges, US needs to increase its role in settling instability in East Asia.Keywords: instability, regional security, military alliance


2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan P. Dobson

Both policy articles about US post-Cold War foreign policy and the recent rhetoric of US policymakers appears to be slipping back into the language of the ‘arrogance of power’, against which Senator Fulbright warned America in the 1960s. In what follows, the USA's style of foreign policy; its criteria for intervention; its invasion of Panama; its capabilities; its intervention in Bosnia; and the impact of contending theories about changes in the international sphere will be examined with a view to casting some light on how the USA has responded to the world outside its boundaries after the Cold War. Finally, in the light of Senator Fulbright's criticisms of US interventionism in the recent past, the essay draws towards its conclusion by specifically addressing the key questions of the whens, whys and wherefores of US intervention into and exits from international crises. It explores some of the problems posed by continuity and change in the struggle to adjust US foreign policy to a non-Cold War world and examines the wisdom of enthusiastic calls for the US to spread democracy abroad.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Burton

Brainwashing assumed the proportions of a cultural fantasy during the Cold War period. The article examines the various political, scientific and cultural contexts of brainwashing, and proceeds to a consideration of the place of mind control in British spy dramas made for cinema and television in the 1960s and 1970s. Particular attention is given to the films The Mind Benders (1963) and The Ipcress File (1965), and to the television dramas Man in a Suitcase (1967–8), The Prisoner (1967–8) and Callan (1967–81), which gave expression to the anxieties surrounding thought-control. Attention is given to the scientific background to the representations of brainwashing, and the significance of spy scandals, treasons and treacheries as a distinct context to the appearance of brainwashing on British screens.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.


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