Commonwealth and the Third World

1984 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88
Author(s):  
Rasheeduddin Khan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Fields ◽  
Text Book ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
New States ◽  
The Third World

What is the Commonwealth? Is it the continuation of the British Empire by other means? Does it constitute a form of neo-colonialism? Is it a trap laid by the old colonialists to lure the newly freed countries into newer forms of dependence? The answer to questions like these used to be in the affirmative in 1948, by a wide variety of perceptive analysts of international politics. Thirty-five years later and wiser today in 1983, except the ignorant, the naive or the hardcore text-book dogmatist, indeed none with an understanding of the new and complex international situation and an awareness of the logic of an interdependent world, would be prone to give a straight-cut answer. The international context in which the Commonwealth took its shape and form in the fifties of this century was basicaliy different in terms of political power-equation; the situation of world finance, trade and commerce; the far-reaching effects of the revolution in technology, electronics, communication, aeronautics, defence technology and in the many critical fields with an impact on human life and group relations. Together with this the phenomenal proliferation of human population and explosion of democratic human consciousness and the surging passion for national identity, freedom and equality, had brought into being a global situation that was qualitatively different from any epoch in human history. It was a new world, a radically different world, but an amazing world of contrasts and of opportunities. On the collapse of the European imposed global order around 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged on the world scene (to borrow the current jargon) as Super-Powers. The global spread of the United States and the US dominated TNC's created a situation of new challenges even to the old world. The formation of the socialist commity of nations in eastern Europe and Asia, and the spread of socialist ideas and perceptions the world over, provided sustenance and support to the struggling people and established an alternative focus in the balance of power. The ferment in the colonies was such that with the breaking of the chains in India, one by one new states in Asia, Africa, Central America and Oceania appeared on the horizon of the expanding international community. Since the Commonwealth was not born in an age of imperialism but in the age of the winding-up of imperialism, its roots can be traced not in British constitutional practices and institutions — part of it as the starting point are undoubtedly there — but in their “distuption” mutation and transformation by the triumphant liberation movements which congregated in the commanwealth.

Paving the Way for Reagan

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Review ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Third World

The book analyzes the influence of National Review, Human Events, and Commentary on the foreign policy ideas of the Republican Party from 1964–1980. During that eighteen-year period, the publications of conservative opinion provided ideological clarification on important national issues that played a fundamental role in reviving the political fortunes of the American Right, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan. Those who wrote for these publications used their positions to offer suggestions to conservative policy makers that called for a more confrontational approach toward the Soviet Union and the nations that sought to compromise the United States’ interests around the world. In recommending a shift in foreign policy, Human Events, National Review, and Commentary assisted right-wing decision makers by contributing arguments to revive what these publications believed was a weak and indecisive United States that had become uncertain about its role in the world following the defeat in Vietnam. By criticizing policies, such as détente, or the aggressiveness of the Third World within the United Nations, opinion makers on the Right offered conservative political leaders information and analysis that called for the return of American power in the face of an ever more confident Soviet Union.

Security Council

1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-230
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
States Government

The Security Council discussed this question at its 1022nd–1025th meetings, on October 23–25, 1962. It had before it a letter dated October 22, 1962, from the permanent representative of the United States, in which it was stated that the establishment of missile bases in Cuba constituted a grave threat to the peace and security of the world; a letter of the same date from the permanent representative of Cuba, claiming that the United States naval blockade of Cuba constituted an act of war; and a letter also dated October 22 from the deputy permanent representative of the Soviet Union, emphasizing that Soviet assistance to Cuba was exclusively designed to improve Cuba's defensive capacity and that the United States government had committed a provocative act and an unprecedented violation of international law in its blockade.

The Emergence of the New Cold War: The Syrian and Ukraine Conflicts

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Mediel Hove
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World

This article evaluates the emergence of the new Cold War using the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts, among others. Incompatible interests between the United States (US) and Russia, short of open conflict, increased after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. This article argues that the struggle for dominance between the two superpowers, both in speeches and deed, to a greater degree resembles what the world once witnessed before the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991. It asserts that despite the US’ unfettered power, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is now being checked by Russia in a Cold War fashion.

scholarly journals How successful was Joseph Stalin in establishing Soviet Union as a superpower?

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Jakub Majkowski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact

This essay will firstly address the extent of Stalin’s achievements in leading the course for domestic policy of the Soviet Union and its contribution towards maintaining the country’s supremacy in the world, for example the rapid post-war recovery of industry and agriculture, and secondly, the foreign policy including ambiguous relations with Communist governments of countries forming the Eastern Bloc, upkeeping frail alliances and growing antagonism towards western powers, especially the United States of America.   The actions and influence of Stalin’s closest associates in the Communist Party and the effect of Soviet propaganda on the society are also reviewed. This investigation will cover the period from 1945 to 1953. Additionally, other factors such as the impact of post-war worldwide economic situation and attitude of the society of Soviet Union will be discussed.    

scholarly journals Ukraine in the Focus of US Foreign Policy Priorities

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-79
Author(s):  
N. Gegelashvili ◽  
◽  
I. Modnikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Radical Transformation

The article analyzes the US policy towards Ukraine dating back from the time before the reunification of Crimea with Russia and up to Donald Trump coming to power. The spectrum of Washington’s interests towards this country being of particular strategic interest to the United States are disclosed. It should be noted that since the disintegration of the Soviet Union Washington’s interest in this country on the whole has not been very much different from its stand on all post-Soviet states whose significance was defined by the U,S depending on their location on the world map as well as on the value of their natural resources. However, after the reunification of Crimea with Russia Washington’s stand on this country underwent significant changes, causing a radical transformation of the U,S attitude in their Ukrainian policy. During the presidency of Barack Obama the American policy towards Ukraine was carried out rather sluggishly being basically declarative in its nature. When President D. Trump took his office Washington’s policy towards Ukraine became increasingly more offensive and was characterized by a rather proactive stance not only because Ukraine became the principal arena of confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation, but also because it became a part of the US domestic political context. Therefore, an outcome of the “battle” for Ukraine is currently very important for the United States in order to prove to the world its role of the main helmsman in the context of a diminishing US capability of maintaining their global superiority.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitanism, Translocality, Astronoetics: A Multi-Local Vantage Point

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Gabriela Vargas-Cetina ◽  
Manpreet Kaur Kang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Special Volume ◽  
Multiple Flows ◽  
The World ◽  
Shed Light

The world in which we live is crisscrossed by multiple flows of people, information, non-human life, travel circuits and goods. At least since the Sixteenth Century, the Americas have received and generated new social, cultural and product trends. As we see through the case studies presented here, modern literature and dance, the industrialization of food and the race to space cannot be historicized without considering the role the Americas, and particularly the United States, have played in all of them. We also see, at the same time, how these flows of thought, art, science and products emerged from sources outside the Americas to then take root in and beyond the United States. The authors in this special volume are devising conceptual tools to analyze this multiplicity across continents and also at the level of particular nations and localities. Concepts such as cosmopolitanism, translocality and astronoetics are brought to shed light on these complex crossings, giving us new ways to look at the intricacy of these distance-crossing flows. India, perhaps surprisingly, emerges as an important cultural interlocutor, beginning with the idealized, imagined versions of Indian spirituality that fueled the romanticism of the New England Transcendentalists, to the importance of Indian dance pioneers in the world stage during the first part of the twentieth century and the current importance of India as a player in the race to space. 

The continuing threat of nuclear war

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Cirincione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Winter

The American poet Robert Frost famously mused on whether the world will end in fire or in ice. Nuclear weapons can deliver both. The fire is obvious: modern hydrogen bombs duplicate on the surface of the earth the enormous thermonuclear energies of the Sun, with catastrophic consequences. But it might be a nuclear cold that kills the planet. A nuclear war with as few as 100 hundred weapons exploded in urban cores could blanket the Earth in smoke, ushering in a years-long nuclear winter, with global droughts and massive crop failures. The nuclear age is now entering its seventh decade. For most of these years, citizens and officials lived with the constant fear that long-range bombers and ballistic missiles would bring instant, total destruction to the United States, the Soviet Union, many other nations, and, perhaps, the entire planet. Fifty years ago, Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, On the Beach, portrayed the terror of survivors as they awaited the radioactive clouds drifting to Australia from a northern hemisphere nuclear war. There were then some 7000 nuclear weapons in the world, with the United States outnumbering the Soviet Union 10 to 1. By the 1980s, the nuclear danger had grown to grotesque proportions. When Jonathan Schell’s chilling book, The Fate of the Earth, was published in 1982, there were then almost 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled with a destructive force equal to roughly 20,000 megatons (20 billion tons) of TNT, or over 1 million times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile system was supposed to defeat a first-wave attack of some 5000 Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 missile warheads streaking over the North Pole. ‘These bombs’, Schell wrote, ‘were built as “weapons” for “war”, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man’.

America Abroad

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kal Raustiala
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Second World

The single most important feature of American history after 1945 was the United States’s assumption of hegemonic leadership. Europeans had noted America’s enormous potential since at least the nineteenth century. After the Civil War the United States had one of the largest economies in the world, but, as noted earlier in this book, in geopolitical terms it remained a surprisingly minor player. By 1900 the United States was playing a more significant political role. But it was only after 1945 that the nation’s potential on the world stage was fully realized. Victory in the Second World War left the United States in an enviable position. Unlike the Soviet Union, which endured devastating fighting on its territory and lost tens of millions of citizens, the United States had experienced only one major attack on its soil. Thanks to its actions in the war America had great influence in Europe. And the national economy emerged surprisingly vibrant from the years of conflagration, easily dominant over any conceivable rival or set of rivals. When the First World War ended the United States ultimately chose to return to its hemispheric perch. It declined to join the new League of Nations, and rather than maintaining engagement with the great powers of the day, America generally turned inward. The years following the Second World War were quite different. In addition to championing—and hosting—the new United Nations, the United States quickly established a panoply of important institutions aimed at maintaining and organizing international cooperation in both economic and security affairs. Rising tensions with the Soviet Union, apparent to many shortly after the war’s end, led the United States to remain militarily active in both Europe and Asia. The intensifying Cold War cemented this unprecedented approach to world politics. The prolonged occupations of Germany and Japan were straightforward examples of this newly active global role. In both cases the United States refashioned a conquered enemy into a democratic, free-market ally—a significant feat. The United States did not, however, seek a formal empire in the wake of its victory.

China’s Relations with Russia

2020 ◽  
pp. 233-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei D. Voskressenski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Post Soviet Period

Russia’s relations with China (and vice versa) have evolved steadily during the post-Soviet period. Leaders on both sides have proclaimed, for a number of years now, that their bilateral relations are at their best point in history. How did the China-Russia relationship reach such a stage, especially given their long (and largely discordant) history? This chapter traces the evolution of China-Russia relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It identifies the commonalities and common purposes Moscow and Beijing have in world affairs, as well as their bilateral economic, cultural, and military relations. The China-Russia relationship has important implications for the United States, as well as American allies in the world.

Popular Culture and US Foreign Relations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Falk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consumer Products ◽  
Information Campaigns ◽  
The World ◽  
American Foreign Relations ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Third World

Americans in and out of government have relied on media and popular culture to construct the national identity, frame debates on military interventions, communicate core values abroad, and motivate citizens around the world to act in prescribed ways. During the late 19th century, as the United States emerged as a world power and expanded overseas, Americans adopted an ethos of worldliness in their everyday lives, even as some expressed worry about the nation’s position on war and peace. During the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, though America failed to join the League of Nations and retreated from foreign engagements, the nation also increased cultural interactions with the rest of the world through the export of motion pictures, music, consumer products, food, fashion, and sports. The policies and character of the Second World War were in part shaped by propaganda that evolved from earlier information campaigns. As the United States confronted communism during the Cold War, the government sanitized its cultural weapons to win the hearts and minds of Americans, allies, enemies, and nonaligned nations. But some cultural producers dissented from America’s “containment policy,” refashioned popular media for global audiences, and sparked a change in Washington’s cultural-diplomacy programs. An examination of popular culture also shows how people in the “Third World” deftly used the media to encourage superpower action. In the 21st century, activists and revolutionaries can be considered the inheritors of this tradition because they use social media to promote their political agendas. In short, understanding the roles popular culture played as America engaged the world greatly expands our understanding of modern American foreign relations.

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