Cold Warfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-112
Author(s):  
Thomas Waldman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
World War ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
The World ◽  
Aerial Vehicle ◽  
Cruise Missiles ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This chapter discusses America's ascent to great power status following the Second World War. It argues that the nation emerged out of the war with great wealth, unparalleled military capabilities and a series of bases spread around the world. The chapter then elaborates the key factors that compelled policymakers to aggressively defend US primacy in the new geopolitical context. It also discusses the profound militarization of US foreign policy and a new level of worldwide vicarious warfare following the onset of the so-called Second Cold War in the 1980s. Ultimately, the chapter presents fierce controversy that surrounds the question of responsibility for the onset of the Cold War. It then details the most potent and pervasive weapons system of contemporary vicarious warfare: the sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, guided by advanced communications technologies and armed with precision-guided cruise missiles.

Post-modernity and the end of the Cold War: has war been disinvented?

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Coker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Way ◽  
Oswald Spengler

At the end of the Second World War, Arnold Toynbee sat down to complete the last volume of his magnus opus, A Study of History. What was his main conclusion? That the world had just entered the last phase of Western history—the ‘post-modern’ era, an age that would be marked by anxiety and despair. A Study of History has gone the way of all meta-historical studies. Toynbee himself is now less regarded than Oswald Spengler. But if he is remembered for nothing else, it might be for giving a name—post-modernity—to a concept with which we are still coming to terms.

scholarly journals Taming the Expellee Threat in Post–1945 Europe: Lessons from the Two Germanies and Finland

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
PERTTI AHONEN
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
World War ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article analyses the process through which the dangers posed by millions of forced migrants were defused in continental Europe after the Second World War. Drawing on three countries – West Germany, East Germany and Finland – it argues that broad, transnational factors – the cold war, economic growth and accompanying social changes – were crucial in the process. But it also contends that bloc-level and national decisions, particularly those concerning the level of autonomous organisational activity and the degree and type of political and administrative inclusion allowed for the refugees, affected the integration process in significant ways and helped to produce divergent national outcomes.

Democracy and Dictatorship in the Cold War: the Two Germanies, 1949–1961

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew I. Port
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
German States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The ‘long 1950s’ was a decade of conspicuous contrasts: a time of dismantling and reconstruction, economic and political, as well as cultural and moral; a time of Americanization and Sovietization; a time of upheaval amid a desperate search for stability. But above all, it was a time for both forgetting and coming to terms with the recent past. This article focuses on the two forms of government that controlled Germany, democracy, and dictatorship. The Cold War was without doubt the main reason for the rapid rehabilitation and integration of the two German states, which more or less took place within a decade following the end of the Second World War. This article further elaborates upon the political conditions under dictatorship and its effect on the social life. East Germany, under the Soviet control underwent as much political upheaval. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Germany became a democracy.

On the group matrix and the morality of the nuclear deterrent: The worldview of Gregory van der Kleij

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-376
Author(s):  
Harold Behr
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Group Matrix ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article presents the writings of Gregory van der Kleij, group analyst and Catholic priest, whose experiences of the holocaust during the Second World War shaped his thinking, not only as a therapist but also as a campaigner against the nuclear arms race. The author re-visits two significant articles on the group matrix published in this journal in the 1980s and introduces the reader to a little-known monograph addressed to the Catholic community which examines the moral dilemma faced by Christians during the Cold War. The monograph contains an exhortation to rise up in protest against what Gregory considers to be ‘the madness’ of high-level thinking on the morality of the nuclear deterrent.

‘Communism Is a Religion That Is Inspired, Directed and Motivated by the Devil Himself’: Billy Graham’s Apologetics and the Cold War West

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Uta Andrea Balbier
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
End Times ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

Anti-Communism constituted a core feature of Billy Graham’s preaching in the 1950s. In Graham’s sermons Communism did not just stand for the anti-religious thread of an atheistic ideology, as it was traditionally used in Protestant Fundamentalist circles, but also for its opposition to American freedom and Free Market Capitalism. This article argues that the term Communism took on significantly new meaning in the evangelical milieu after the Second World War, indicating the new evangelicals’ ambition to restore, defend, and strengthen Christianity by linking it into the discourse on American Cold War patriotism. This article will contrast the anti-Communist rhetoric of Billy Graham and other leading evangelical figures of the 1950s, such as Harold Ockenga, with the anti-Communist rhetoric used by early Fundamentalists in the 1910s and 1920s. Back then, Communism was predominantly interpreted as a genuine threat to Christianity. The term also made appearances in eschatological interpretations regarding the imminent end-times. The more secular interpretation of Communism as a political and economic counter-offer by evangelical preachers such as Billy Graham will be discussed as an important indicator of the politicization and implied secularization of the evangelical milieu after the Second World War.

Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.

Allied diplomacy in the Second World War

1975 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-292
Author(s):  
Graham Ross
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Short Term ◽  
American Policy ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

Is there such a subject? The study of Allied diplomacy has been slow to establish itself, partly because the bulk of the American and British records have only recently become available, but mainly because of the debate about the origins of the Cold War – the contemporary equivalent of the war-guilt question. Because of the paucity of Soviet material it has in practice turned into an argument about American policy and has not, of course, been confined to the wartime period. The search for origins, turning-points and causes employs the advantage of hindsight in deciding what is relevant. It, therefore, tends to overlook the side issues, dead ends and the short-term nature of much wartime diplomacy. Nobody would deny the importance of the origins of the Cold War or of wartime American-Soviet relations. Yet it is misleading to see Allied diplomacy solely in terms of this one theme. There is room for an attempt to examine some other wartime issues and to indicate topics worthy of further exploration. In the rest of this article, therefore, the Cold War will as far as possible be ignored.

The Start of the Cold War in Bulgaria: A Personal View

1979 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril E. Black
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
Personal View ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

My direct experience with the Bulgarian aspect of the interallied rivalries following the Second World War extended from the planning of postwar policy in the Department of State in 1943–44 through the first year (1944–45) of American participation in the implementation of the Bulgarian armistice.

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