The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948–1951

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-145
Author(s):  
Coleman Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Political Economic

After relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke down in 1948, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) devoted a good deal of attention to Yugoslavia. Initially, however, the Truman administration was reluctant to provide extensive security assistance to the regime of Josip Broz Tito, who until 1948 had been a brutal Stalinist. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the situation. The United States developed much closer political, economic, and military ties with Yugoslavia, and the CIA established a formal agreement of cooperation with the Yugoslav Ministry of State Security, especially on intelligence-sharing and covert operations. U.S. officials were particularly concerned about ensuring that Yugoslavia would be able to defend itself, if necessary, against a Soviet invasion.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

Mr. X and the Pacific

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Heer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Impact

This book chronicles and assesses the little-known involvement of US diplomat George F. Kennan—renowned as an expert on the Soviet Union—in US policy toward East Asia, primarily in the early Cold War years. Kennan, with vital assistance from his deputy John Paton Davies, played pivotal roles in effecting the US withdrawal from the Chinese civil war and the redirection of American occupation policy in Japan, and in developing the “defensive perimeter” concept in the western Pacific. His influence, however, faded soon thereafter: he was less successful in warning against US security commitments in Korea and Indochina, and the impact of the Korean War ultimately eclipsed his strategic vision for US policy in East Asia. This was due in large part to Kennan’s inability to reconcile his judgment that the mainland of East Asia was strategically expendable to the United States with his belief that US prestige should not be compromised there. The book examines the subsequent evolution of Kennan’s thinking about East Asian issues—including his role as a prominent critic of US involvement in the Vietnam War—and the legacies of his engagement with the region.

4. From colony to competing states

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Michael J. Seth
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Republic Of Korea ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Second World

As the Second World War came to an end, most Koreans hoped that their nation would be an independent and prosperous state. ‘From colony to competing states’ shows that, instead, events took an unexpected turn. Korea became both free of Japanese colonial rule and simultaneously partitioned into two occupation zones by the United States and the Soviet Union. From these zones, two separate states were created: the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; two societies with different leaderships, political systems, and geopolitical orientations. When North Korea attempted to reunify the country in 1950, foreign powers again intervened resulting in the Korean War, a costly conflict that left the peninsula still divided.

Congo/Zaire-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Namikas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
The Cold War

At the dawn of the 20th century, the region that would become the Democratic Republic of Congo fell to the brutal colonialism of Belgium’s King Leopold. Except for a brief moment when anti-imperialists decried the crimes of plantation slavery, the United States paid little attention to Congo before 1960. But after winning its independence from Belgium in June 1960, Congo suddenly became engulfed in a crisis of decolonization and the Cold War, a time when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for resources and influence. The confrontation in Congo was kept limited by a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force, which ended the secession of the province of Katanga in 1964. At the same time, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) intervened to help create a pro-Western government and eliminate the Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Ironically, the result would be a growing reliance on the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu throughout the 1980s. In 1997 a rebellion succeeded in toppling Mobutu from power. Since 2001 President Joseph Kabila has ruled Congo. The United States has supported long-term social and economic growth but has kept its distance while watching Kabila fight internal opponents and insurgents in the east. A UN peacekeeping force returned to Congo and helped limit unrest. Despite serving out two full terms that ended in 2016, Kabila was slow to call elections amid rising turmoil.

The New United Nations and the Revision of the Charter

1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Morgenthau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Do So

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union has prevented the United Nations from becoming the international government of the great powers which the Charter intended it to be. That conflict has paralyzed the Security Council as an agency of international government. In the few instances when it has been able to act as an agency of international government, it has been able to do so either, as in the beginning of the Korean War, by the accidental and temporary absence of the Soviet Union or, as on the Indonesian issue, by a fortuitous and exceptional coincidence of interests.

The Increasing Public Profile of the CIA

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-84
Author(s):  
David P. Hadley
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Bay Of Pigs

This chapter examines the public presence of the Central Intelligence Agency after its high-profile successes in Iran and Guatemala, related in the previous chapter. An effort to oust Sukarno in Indonesia failed, and the CIA was troubled by the general political environment of the 1950s, driven by fears that the Soviet Union was technologically ahead of the United States. Though able to weather the crisis that ensued when a U-2 surveillance plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, the CIA’s public and humiliating failure to oust Fidel Castro in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion undermined the CIA’s reputation for effectiveness. Though not a reason for the failure of the invasion, the press’s coverage of the anti-Castro operation demonstrated that press attitudes toward the agency had begun to shift as a younger generation of reporters and managers more willing to question the CIA emerged on the scene.

Ending the Korean War: The Role of Domestic Coalition Shifts in Overcoming Obstacles to Peace

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preference Information ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Bargaining Models ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Two Sides

Bargaining models of war suggest that war ends after two sides develop an overlapping bargaining space. Domestic mechanisms—domestic governing coalitions, a state's elite foreign policy decisionmaking group, and their role in ending interstate war—are critical in explaining how, when, and why that bargaining space develops. Through preference, information, and entrapment obstacles, wars can become “stuck” and require a change in expectations to produce a war-terminating bargaining space. A major source of such change is a shift in belligerents' governing coalitions. Events in the United States, China, and the Soviet Union during the Korean War illustrate the dynamics of these obstacles and the need for domestic coalition shifts in overcoming them before the conflict could be brought to an end.

“The World Was Not Turning in Their Direction”: The United States and the Decolonization of Angola

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Tiago Moreira de Sá
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
National Union ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Internal Context

In the mid-1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to export the Cold War to Angola at levels that were unprecedented on the African continent. In the case of the United States, this led to immense support for local allies—the National Liberation Front of Angola and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola—in the form of many tons of heavy weaponry, millions of dollars, and the use of mercenaries and even paramilitary operatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. This article explains U.S. actions in Angola from 1974 to 1976 against the backdrop of the Cold War, highlighting the decision-making process in Washington, the international context, the internal context, and the actions of both superpowers.

scholarly journals Soviet Union in the 1970s – 1980s in the mirror of foreign documentary heritage

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-71
Author(s):  
Dar'ya Viktorovna Yakupova ◽  
Roman Aleksandrovich Yakupov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The U.S

The subject of this article is the content of the foreign electronic archival documents of U.S. departments dedicated to the analysis of situation in the Soviet Union. The goal consists in carrying out a historiographical analysis of foreign documentary heritage of the United States within the framework of comprehension of historical experience of the development of the Soviet Union in the 1970s – 1989. The object this research is the published materials of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Historical Sector of the U.S. Department of State, which contain records on the analysis of development of the Soviet Union during this period. Relevance of this topic is substantiated by increased of the publically available foreign electronic archival materials, which requires their analysis, description, determination of information capacity, as well as assessment of information contained therein for further utilization in the historical (humanities) research on the contemporary history of Russia. The novelty is defined by the fact that this article is first based on interpretation of foreign historical sources to describe the capabilities and limitations of different types of published intelligence documents of the CIA and the U.S. Department of State that characterize the development of the Soviet Union in various spheres. Introduced into the scientific discourse documents allow concluding on the prospects of using the heritage of the U.S. electronic archives in the scientific research, as well as assessing their veracity and reliability. The authors note that these materials contain valuable information on the U.S. policy with regards to the USSR, and analytical awareness on socioeconomic development of the Soviet Union during the 1970s – 1980s. It is established that in many cases publication of the foreign archival documents is often of tendentious nature.

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