scholarly journals The Pinprick Approach: Whitehall’s Top-Secret Anti-Communist Committee and the Evolution of British Covert Action Strategy

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory Cormac
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Action Committee ◽  
Action Strategy ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
Covert Activity ◽  
First Time ◽  
Formative Years

This article examines Great Britain’s approach to covert action during the formative years of British Cold War intelligence operations, 1950–1951. Rather than shy away from such activity in the wake of the failure in Albania in the late 1940s, the British increased the number of operations they pursued. This was the start of a coherent strategy regarding covert activity that can be conceptualized as the “pinprick” approach. The strategy was overseen by a highly secretive Whitehall body, the Official Committee on Communism, which in effect became the government’s covert action committee. This article uses the commission’s recently declassified papers for the first time to assess the merits of this approach.

Christian Radicalism in the Church of England and the Invention of the British Sixties, 1957-1970

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Brewitt-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Moral Arguments ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

Like all transformative revolutions, Britain’s Sixties was an episode of highly influential myth-making. This book delves behind the mythology of inexorable ‘secularization’ to recover, for the first time, the cultural origins of Britain’s moral revolution. In a radical departure from conventional teleologies, it argues that British secularity is a specific cultural invention of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which was introduced most influentially by radical utopian Christians during this most desperate episode of the Cold War. In the 1950s, Britain’s predominantly Christian moral culture had marginalized ‘secular’ moral arguments by arguing that they created societies like the Soviet Union; but the rapid acceptance of ‘secularization’ teleologies in the early 1960s abruptly normalized ‘secular’ attitudes and behaviours, thus prompting the slow social revolution that unfolded during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. By tracing the evolving thought of radical Anglicans—uniquely positioned in the late 1950s and early 1960s as simultaneously moral radicals and authoritative moral insiders—this book reveals crucial and unexpected intellectual links between radical Christianity and the wider invention of Britain’s new secular morality, in areas as diverse as globalism, anti-authoritarianism, sexual liberation, and revolutionary egalitarianism. From the mid-1960s, British secularity began to be developed by a much wider range of groups, and radical Anglicans faded into the cultural background. Yet by disseminating the deeply ideological metanarrative of ‘secularization’ in the early 1960s, and by influentially discussing its implications, they had made crucial contributions to the nature and existence of Britain’s secular revolution.

Human Destiny Is a Choice

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
Military Spending ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Global World ◽  
First Time ◽  
Human Destiny

In this chapter, Haq outlines his optimistic outlook for global world order. For him the end of the Cold War had opened up many more choices for the global community. For the first time global military spending was seen to be declining every year. He saw potential to reallocate ODA aid funds, which were previously tilted in favour of cold war allies. For Haq the challenge is to link economic growth as the means to human development as an objective. He stresses on the need to reform institutions of global governance to translate globalization into opportunities for people.

An unfinished battle: George C. Marshall and intelligence in the early Cold War

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452110179
Author(s):  
Raphaël Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Truman Administration ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article deals with the influence of Gen. George C. Marshall on the foundation of the US intelligence community after the Second World War. It argues that his uneven achievements demonstrate how the ceaseless wrangling within the Truman administration undermined the crafting of a coherent intelligence policy. Despite his bureaucratic skills and prominent positions, Marshall struggled to achieve his ends on matters like signals intelligence, covert action, or relations between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet he crafted an enduring vision of how intelligence should supplement US national security policy that remained potent throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Rebecca West and the Double Agent

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-487
Author(s):  
Adam Piette
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Rebecca West ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
Double Agent

This essay will explore the figure of the double agent as it tests notions of citizenship mid-century, specifically the clash or fusion of internationalist/nationalist definitions of citizen loyalty in the construction of the traitor ‘revolutionary’ citizen. It will be look at Kaminsky in Rebecca West's 1966 historical novel The Birds Fall Down as a late rewriting of the double agent, which West had theorized through her analyses of William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’)’s wartime propaganda and Stephen Ward in the Profumo Affair of the early 1960s. West's thinking draws on Hannah Arendt's writings on the double agent in Origins of Totalitarianism. The essay will explore both the political Cold War contexts that motivated West's return to Tsarist Russia and the double agent, and the feminist light cast on treacherous intelligence operations as forms of patriarchal control over women's bodies and minds. West is shown to be revising the double agent trope of spy fiction, reimagining the mole traitor as totalitarian fanatic revealing the extremes of hostile patriarchy and of male political desire.

Revolution in Iraq

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Rezk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Virus Spreading ◽  
First Time

In July 1958, an unknown nationalist, General Abdul Karim Qasim, came to the helm of power in Iraq. Chapter 3 reveals how analysts reacted to the brutal murder of his predecessor Nuri al Said, as Britain’s most important ally in the Middle East seemed to contract the Nasser ‘virus’ spreading through the region. Qasim quickly demonstrated that he was no Nasserist stooge however. Whilst British policymakers hoped in vain that the new Iraqi leader could be cultivated as a counterweight to Nasser, the intelligence community rapidly realised that Qasim had neither the charisma nor the popularity to compete with his Egyptian counterpart in the Arab Cold War. Qasim reliance on Iraqi Communists to counteract the influence of local Nasserites led to widespread fears that Iraq was on the brink of acquiring Soviet satellite status. This chapter brings to light for the first time the JIC’s nuanced analysis of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), suggesting to policy-makers that in fact the Soviet Union was acting as a restraining influence on the Iraqi communists. Qasim came to be increasingly depicted as ‘paranoid’ and ‘irrational’, whilst assessments of Nasser took on a new and more complimentary light as a ‘moderate’ potential ally in the quest to prevent Communist penetration of the Middle East.

The Sound of a Superpower

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Abrams Ansari
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
White House ◽  
American Composers ◽  
American Nationalism ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First Time

Classical composers seeking to create an American sound enjoyed unprecedented success during the 1930s and 1940s. Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Howard Hanson, and others brought national and international attention to American composers for the first time in history. In the years after World War II, however, something changed. The prestige of musical Americanism waned rapidly as anti-Communists made accusations against leading Americanist composers. Meanwhile, a method of harmonic organization that some considered more Cold War–appropriate—serialism—began to rise in status. For many composers and historians, the Cold War had effectively “killed off” musical Americanism. In this book, the author offers a fuller, more nuanced picture of the effect of the Cold War on Americanist composers. She shows that the ideological conflict brought both challenges and opportunities. Some leftist Americanist composers struggled greatly in this new artistic and political environment, especially as American nationalism increasingly meant American exceptionalism. But composers of all political stripes would find in the federal government a new and unique channel through which to ensure the survival of musical Americanism, as the White House sought to use American music as a Cold War propaganda tool and American composers as cultural diplomats. The Americanists’ efforts to safeguard the reputation of their style would have significant consequences. Ultimately, they effected a rebranding of musical Americanism, with consequences that remain with us today.

RETHINKING THE COLD WAR AND DECOLONIZATION: THE GRAND STRATEGY OF THE ALGERIAN WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Connelly
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
The United States ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Charles De Gaulle ◽  
The North ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First Time

October and November 1960 were two of the coldest months of the Cold War. Continuing tensions over Berlin and the nuclear balance were exacerbated by crises in Laos, Congo, and—for the first time—France's rebellious départements in Algeria. During Nikita Khrushchev's table-pounding visit to the United Nations, he embraced Belkacem Krim, the foreign minister of the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA). After mugging for the cameras at the Soviet estate in Glen Cove, New York, Khrushchev confirmed that this constituted de facto recognition of the provisional government and pledged all possible aid. Meanwhile, in Beijing, President Ferhat Abbas delivered the GPRA's first formal request for Chinese “volunteers.” U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked his National Security Council “whether such intervention would not mean war.” The council agreed that if communist regulars infiltrated Algeria, the United States would be bound by the North Atlantic Treaty to come to the aid of French President Charles de Gaulle and his beleaguered government. After six years of insurgency, Algeria appeared to be on the brink of becoming a Cold War battleground.1

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