The Cold War Origins of the U.S. Central Command

2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Odom
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Command ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Joint Chiefs Of Staff ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

During the Carter administration the Middle East and Southwest Asia became a third major theater in the Cold War struggle along with Europe and the Far East. Initially, President Jimmy Carter tried to remove this region from the Cold War competition, but the collapse of the shah's regime in Iran prompted Carter to reverse course and to build a “Persian Gulf security framework” that later allowed the United States to deal with three wars and many smaller clashes. The interagency process implementing this dramatic change was rent with clashes of departmental interests. The State Department and the military services resisted the structural changes they would later need to confront not only the Soviet threat but also intraregional conflicts. Moreover, the Reagan administration, after forcing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make the Central Command formal, actually slowed the process of its growth, leaving it far from ready to embark on the Gulf War in 1990–1991.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

scholarly journals The soviet school system in Central Intelligence Agency estimates at the initial stage of the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-197
Author(s):  
Zaur Imalverdi oglu Mamedov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
School System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Soviet School ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Comprehensive Knowledge ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The paper is devoted to the analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency of the USSR school system. The US was in dire need of information about its new adversary. The situation was aggravated by the closed nature of the Soviet state and the absence of a long continuous tradition of intelligence activities of American intelligence. The president and other government bodies wanted to have comprehensive knowledge of any processes and phenomena in the world. US intelligence should have been able to solve this problem. In this regard, the first stage of the Cold War for the CIA was largely due to an analysis of official and semi-official sources, as well as the development of various strategies. In order to find out about various areas of the life in the USSR, analysts extracted information from Soviet scientific literature, press, radio, legislation and interrogations of former German prisoners. The National Assessment Bureau, led by William Langer and Sherman Kent, compiled reports on Soviet military capabilities, industry, agriculture, the political system, etc. The Soviet school system was considered by American intelligence specialists in the framework of the military and economic potential of the enemy, as well as the strategy of psychological warfare. The paper analyzes the reports concerning the educational system in the USSR in the aspect of school education, its strengths and weaknesses. The results allow us to conclude that the information about the Soviet school system contributed to the formation of the foreign policy and domestic policy of the United States.

The Anglo-American Worldview and the Question of World Order

2019 ◽  
pp. 175-190
Author(s):  
Andrew Gamble
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

One of the distinctive features of the idea of an Anglosphere has been a particular view of world order, based on liberal principles of free movement of goods, capital and people, representative government, and the rule of law, which requires a powerful state or coalition of states to uphold and enforce them. This chapter charts the roots as well as the limits of this conception in the period of British ascendancy in the nineteenth century, and how significant elements of the political class in both Britain and the United States in the twentieth century came to see the desirability of cooperation between the English-speaking nations to preserve that order against challengers. This cooperation was most clearly realised in the Second World War. The post-war construction of a new liberal world order was achieved under the leadership of the United States, with Britain playing a largely supportive but secondary role. Cooperation between Britain and the US flourished during the Cold War, particularly in the military and intelligence fields, and this became the institutional core of the ‘special relationship’. The period since the end of the Cold War has seen new challenges emerge both externally and internally to the Anglo-American worldview.

The Reagan Presidency and US Foreign Relations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Miles
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
White House ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy legacy remains hotly contested, and as new archival sources come to light, those debates are more likely to intensify than to recede into the background. In dealings with the Soviet Union, the Reagan administration set the superpowers on a course for the (largely) peaceful end of the Cold War. Reagan began his outreach to Soviet leaders almost immediately after taking office and enjoyed some success, even if the dominant theme of the period remains fears of Reagan as a “button-pusher” in the public’s perception. Mikhail Gorbachev’s election to the post of General Secretary proved the turning point. Reagan, now confident in US strength, and Gorbachev, keen to reduce the financial burden of the arms race, ushered in a new, cooperative phase of the Cold War. Elsewhere, in particular Latin America, the administration’s focus on fighting communism led it to support human rights–abusing regimes at the same time as it lambasted Moscow’s transgressions in that regard. But even so, over the course of the 1980s, the United States began pushing for democratization around the world, even where Reagan and his advisors had initially resisted it, fearing a communist takeover. In part, this was a result of public pressure, but the White House recognized and came to support the rising tide of democratization. When Reagan left office, a great many countries that had been authoritarian were no longer, often at least in part because of US policy. US–Soviet relations had improved to such an extent that Reagan’s successor, Vice President George H. W. Bush, worried that they had gone too far in working with Gorbachev and been hoodwinked.

scholarly journals The great Project Camelot: Implications and repercussions of a controversy in social sciences

Sociologija ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 458-480
Author(s):  
Marko Bala
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Project Camelot

The paper examines the relationship between social sciences and the military-industrial complex in the United States of America during the Cold War era. Based on the review of the most representative texts on this problematique, the author?s main goal is to prove the plausibility of critical view according to which the social sciences have been instrumentalized during the Cold War by centers of power such as CIA and the Pentagon in order to accomplish certain strategic goals. The main focus of our interest is Project Camelot, an ambitous research program which was canceled in the midst of the international scandal which erupted as a consequence of the exposure of the project?s political nature. The first part of the paper describes the Camelot controversy and the reaction of social scientists, as well as the debate on ethical, epistemological, political and practical implications of social scientific research, which was triggered by the affair. The second part of the paper describes research projects whose characterics are similar to those of Project Camelot, and the author hypostasizes that the controversial project cannot be viewed as an isolated case, but rather as a paradigmatic example of the Cold War social science. The text pays special attention to the question of sponsorship/sources of funding of social research, an issue whose scale and importance is especially highlighted in the third section of the paper. The concluding part points on the problem of militarization and instrumentalisation of social sciences fifty years after Project Camelot, while the emphasis is put on the necessity of maintaining the memory on the worst cases of the abuse of behavioral expertise.

The Reagan Reinvention

2020 ◽  
pp. 205-248
Author(s):  
Vanessa Walker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
First Year ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Policy Shift ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the dramatic reinvention of U.S. human rights policy during Reagan's first year in office. The Carter administration pursued human rights as a corrective to U.S. interventionist legacies, emphasizing pluralism and eschewing regime change. The Reagan administration, in contrast, aggressively promoted human rights within a reinvigorated but narrow Cold War framework. This construction, championing a limited range of civil and political rights, downplayed the human rights violations of pro-American governments, focusing instead on what it considered the much greater moral flaws and violations of communist regimes. The Cold War framing of human rights under Reagan empowered a pairing of military power and moral values, leading the United States to not only not limit arms sales to governments but also recast military aid as a critical aspect of both hemispheric defense against communism and the advancement of human rights. The chapter studies this policy shift in the Reagan administration's first year in regard to Chile and Argentina.

‘We Have to Pay the Price’: German Workers and the US Army, 1945–1989

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-584
Author(s):  
Adam R. Seipp
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United States Army ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Labour Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

This article examines the relationship between German civilian workers and the United States Army in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War. Using archival and published sources, the article offers an entangled history of ‘local national’ employees and their role in maintaining the American presence in Central Europe. Beginning in the late 1960s, German labour unions began to challenge American labour policy. In doing so, they consistently argued for a more forceful assertion of German sovereignty. This labour relationship was therefore important for both the military history of the Cold War and for the development of German democracy.

scholarly journals US Foreign Policy at the Initial Stage of the Cold War

1970 ◽  
pp. 32-44
Author(s):  
D. Lakishyk ◽  
D. Puhachova-Lakishyk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

The article examines the formation of the main directions of the US foreign policy strategy at the beginning of the Cold War. The focus is on determining the vectors of the United States in relation to the spatial priorities of the US foreign policy, the particular interests in the respective regions, the content of means and methods of influence for the realization of their own geopolitical interests. It is argued that the main regions that the United States identified for itself in the early postwar years were Europe, the Middle and Far East, and the Middle East and North Africa were the peripheral ones (attention was also paid to Latin America). It is stated that the most important priorities of American foreign policy were around the perimeter of the zone of influence of the USSR, which entered the postwar world as an alternative to the US center  of power. Attention is also paid to US foreign policy initiatives such as the Marshall Plan and the 4th Point Program, which have played a pivotal role inshaping American foreign policy in the postwar period.

scholarly journals Problems of international governance in the middle east during the cold war period

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (49) ◽  
pp. 101-108
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Fisanov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The article is devoted to little-known aspects of the political and military developments in the Middle East during the Cold War – from the division of Palestine into two states and until the mid-1950s. The focus is on the confrontation between the two superpowers of the United States and the USSR for their influence on Arab countries. This article uses little-known documentary material, as well as the display of some of the described international events in contemporary film documentaries. It was clarified that in the investigated period the first steps of the policy of large foreign military aid and cooperation on development issues in the Middle East were carried out, first of all, on the part of the USSR and the USA. It was emphasized in particular that then two international coalitions were formed – the monarchical Arab regimes and Israel were supported by the official Washington, and the national revolutionary regimes, where the military forces came to power (Egypt, Syria), cooperated with Moscow. Keywords: Middle East, Great Britain, USA, USSR, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Cold War, supply of weapons, digital cinema collections

Outras Guerras Frias: os embates entre neoliberais e neoconservadores estadunidenses diante da Revolução Nicaraguense

Diálogos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Roberto Moll Neto
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sandinista Revolution ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Nicaraguan Revolution

Em meio a Guerra Fria, a Revolução Sandinista abalou os interesses dos Estados Unidos na região da América Central e do Caribe. Durante o Governo Reagan, os Estados Unidos intensificaram as ações de intervenção na região a fim de derrubar o Governo Sandinista. Este artigo pretende demonstrar que, mesmo no campo ortodoxo da política estadunidense, o papel dos Estados Unidos em face da revolução na Nicarágua não estava pré definido exclusivamente em uma visão de mundo única e que, portanto, haviam propostas concorrentes, que, inclusive, compreendiam a realidade na região a partir de dinâmicas próprias, e não apenas em função da Guerra Fria. Abstract Other Cold Wars: the clashes between neoliberals and neoconservatives in the face of the Nicaraguan Revolution In the midst of the Cold War, the Sandinista Revolution shook US objectives in the Central America and Caribbean. During the Reagan Administration, the United States stepped up intervention in the region to overthrow the Sandinista Government. This paper intends to demonstrate that even in the orthodox field of American politics, the role of the United States in the face of the revolution in Nicaragua was not exclusively defined in a single perceptions and that therefore there were competing proposals that even understood the reality in the region from its own dynamics, and not only because of the Cold War. Resumen Otras guerras frías: los embates entre neoliberales y neoconservadores estadunidenses ante la Revolución Nicaragüense En medio de la Guerra Fría, la Revolución Sandinista sacudió los intereses de Estados Unidos en la región de América Central y del Caribe. Durante el Gobierno Reagan, Estados Unidos intensificó las acciones de intervención en la región a fin de derrocar al Gobierno Sandinista. Este artículo pretende demostrar que, incluso en el campo ortodoxo de la política estadounidense, el papel de los Estados Unidos frente a la revolución en Nicaragua no estaba pre definido exclusivamente en una visión de mundo única y que, por lo tanto, había propuestas concurrentes, que incluso comprendían la realidad en la región a partir de dinámicas propias, y no sólo en función de la Guerra Fría.

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