scholarly journals Eyes on target: ‘Stay-behind’ forces during the Cold War

2020 ◽  
pp. 096834452091434
Author(s):  
Tamir Sinai
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Stay Behind ◽  
The Way

This article examines the concept of ‘stay-behind’ as a war-fighting tactic used by North Atlantic Treaty Organization to maximize its defensive efforts against a possible Soviet onslaught during the Cold War. It outlines how the concept developed, describes the military and clandestine units involved and what the division of tasks was between them, the way they operated, and how North Atlantic Treaty Organization was involved in coordinating these efforts. By providing a holistic look at military and clandestine stay-behind doctrine, it fills a gap in Cold War intelligence research.

Security dilemmas and the end of the Cold War

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASON RALPH
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Security Community ◽  
The Us ◽  
Common Identity ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
The Way

Alan Collins is to be congratulated for highlighting the role Gorbachev’s strategy of Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction (GRIT) played in ending the military conflict between East and West. By offering an alternative view to the conservative opinion that America’s material strength forced the Soviets into submission, it suggests that statesmen caught in security dilemmas have real options and are not simply forced to compete for power. As a policy that fostered transparency which assisted the creation of security regimes, GRIT undoubtedly played a role in the way the military conflict ended. Yet the Cold War was not simply about the military balance. Collins’ account of this period is restricted by his bias towards state-centric and rationalist explanations of state behaviour. He underestimates the role ideology played in ending the Cold War and as such only offers half a Cold War story. The influence of the US during this period, as a cautious agent of liberal individualism, is completely ignored, yet, as this reply demonstrates, it is crucial to understanding the way the US reciprocated Soviet policies. Moreover, if ‘debate over what the Cold War was is part of the politics of deciding what the post-Cold War is’, the significance of this criticism is not merely academic. The implication of Collins’ unwritten assumption that state’s identities are egoistic is that a security community based on a common identity is impossible. The lesson that the Cold War, as opposed to the military conflict, only ended when a common identity based on liberal individualism was instituted, suggests that a transatlantic security community including Russia was and still is a possibility.

scholarly journals Decolonization and the Cold War

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
International System ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines decolonization during the Cold War. It suggests that decolonization can be considered both as a response to the globalization of European influence and as a process of globalization which paved the way for the dismantling of the North Atlantic-centered international system. The chapter contends that decolonization during the Cold War was about the rethinking of the nature of the global order and the role of race and citizenship therein. It also argues that decolonization is the proof and constant reminder that the bipolar order pursued by the superpowers and their allies after the war was never a stable framework for the management of international relations.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization towards the war in Syria 2011-2015

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-284
Author(s):  
Jakub Olchowski
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ◽  
International Organization ◽  
The North ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
Syrian Conflict ◽  
The Cold War

The conflict in Syria that started in 2011 has quickly evolved from a local uprising inspired by the events of the so-called “Arab Spring” into a multidimensional and complicated conflict of a civil war character, with many diverse participants and a very significant religious factor apart from political and socioeconomic reasons. Furthermore, the conflict has become internationalized: more and more external parties have gotten involved in it with a view to furthering or safeguarding their own interests. A vast majority of these actors were states (as far as legal entities are concerned). In the context of their activity, operations of non-state entities, such as international organizations, were rather limited and focused on social and humanitarian issues. This also pertains to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Evolving from a typical defensive alliance towards a security organization and, since the end of the Cold War, consistently operating outside the area covered by the Treaty (understood as the territories of member states), NATO as an autonomous entity has not taken any consistent, coordinated, or decisive actions during the first years of the Syrian conflict. This is due to both the specific features of this international organization and the determinants of the international environment with their dynamics.

NATO's persistence after the cold war

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. McCalla
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
International Security ◽  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ◽  
Alliance Formation ◽  
The North ◽  
Security Institution ◽  
Organizational Theories ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
The Cold War

Neorealist theories help explain alliance formation and longevity but have trouble explaining why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) continues to exist after the cold war. Organizational theories further our understanding by noting that organizations have strong survival instincts, yet NATO survives only as long as its members wish it to. To understand NATO's persistence after the cold war, we must turn to international institutionalist theories to explain why, contrary to neorealist expectations, NATO remains the key international security institution for its members. International institutionalist theories add the conception of NATO as part of a broad multilevel and multi-issue relationship among member states, and this broader context is necessary to explain NATO's persistence.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

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.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

The Futurists. Experts in World Futures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Images Of The Future ◽  
The Way

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.

Soviet Atomic Blackmail and the North Atlantic Alliance

1957 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Speier
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Atomic Weapons ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Future War ◽  
The Cold War

The uncertainty about whether atomic weapons will be used in future war, whether local or general, lends itself to political exploitation in the cold war. The efficiency of nuclear weapons in wartime, and their resulting threat-value in either war- or peacetime, constitute their political-military worth. In peacetime, the threat-value of weapons can be exploited in many ways: by an ultimatum, by authoritative or inspired statements on capabilities or intentions, by studied disclosures of new weapons at ceremonial occasions, by means of maneuvers, redeployments of forces, or by so-called demonstrations.

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.

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