First Things First: The Pressing Danger of Crisis Instability in U.S.-China Relations

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avery Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Current State ◽  
Near Term ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Cold War

Since the mid-1990s, much has been written about the potentially disruptive impact of China if it emerges as a peer competitor challenging the United States. Not enough attention has been paid, however, to a more immediate danger—that the United States and a weaker China will find themselves locked in a crisis that could escalate to open military conflict. The long-term prospect for a new great power rivalry ultimately rests on uncertain forecasts about big shifts in national capabilities and debatable claims about the motivations of the two countries. By contrast, the danger of crisis instability involving these two nuclear-armed states is a tangible near-term concern. An analysis that examines the current state of U.S.-China relations and compares it with key aspects of U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War indicates that a serious Sino-American crisis may be more likely and more dangerous than expected. The capabilities each side possesses, and specific features of the most likely scenarios for U.S.-China crises, suggest reasons to worry that escalation pressures will exist and that they will be highest early in a crisis, compressing the time frame for diplomacy to avert military conflict.

The Origins of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.

The Cold War Politics of Soviet Federal Structures, 1945–1965

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-207
Author(s):  
Étienne Forestier-Peyrat
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Federal Structure

Abstract This article shows how official discussions of federal arrangements within the USSR affected Soviet foreign policy from the 1940s through the 1960s, especially on questions of decolonization and relations with the United States and other Western countries. Connecting Soviet domestic history and international developments, the article shows how the federal structure of the USSR was used in transnational debates on composite polities, race, and nationality and also how it was debated internally. Attacks on the highly centralized nature of Soviet federal structures in international arenas and the countermeasures adopted as part of the ideological Cold War had long-term as well as short-term effects on Soviet politics and foreign policy. Within the USSR, such attacks raised questions about the ethnofederal structure of the USSR and provided comparison points for both loyalist and dissident proponents of national rights in the country.

The Cold War Debate Continues: A Traditionalist View of Historical Writing on Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Earl Haynes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Cold War Literature

This article reviews the huge Cold War-era and post-Cold War literature on American Communism and anti-Communism in the United States. These issues have long been the subject of heated scholarly debate. The recent opening of archives in Russia and other former Communist countries and the release of translated Venona documents in the United States have shed new light on key aspects of the American Communist Party that were previously unknown or undocumented. The new evidence has underscored the Soviet Union's tight control of the party and the crucial role that American Communists played in Soviet espionage. The release of all this documentation has been an unwelcome development for scholars who have long been sympathetic to the Communist movement.

The hijacking of a pact: the formation of the Baghdad Pact and Anglo-American tensions in the Middle East, 1955—1958

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel John Ashton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Canal Zone ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

The creation of the Baghdad Pact, a regional defence organization linking Britain to Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, in 1955, has been surrounded by historiographical confusion. Much of this is explicable in terms of the impact of rapid international changes on long-term strategy, the importance of which has tended to be neglected by historians of the pact. So, one school of thought focuses on the American promotion of the ‘Northern Tier’ concept during the period 1953–4, and on the British preference for an organization based on her Suez Canal Zone Base in Egypt.1 Applyingthis concept to the year 1955, the Baghdad Pact can become ‘the United States’ final victory over Great Britain during the Cold War, a victory which the Suez Crisis of 1956 served to confirm.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document