New World Disorder: Black Hawk Down and the Eclipse of U.S. Military Humanitarianism in Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
New World ◽  
American Military ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
Global North ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City ◽  
The U.S

Abstract:This article argues that Ridley Scott's film Black Hawk Down (2001) may be seen with the benefit of historical hindsight as a portrait of the fear of imperial overreach and failure as written through the psyche of elite U.S. soldiers. In Black Hawk Down, Mogadishu and its denizens are made to stand in for the worst fears of the American military and the civilian policymaking establishment: the city, and, by extension, urban Africa, is represented as a feral zone in which the U.S. military's unmatched firepower and technology are overwhelmed in densely populated slums. The Mog, as the film's Special Forces troops call the city, is a ramshackle megacity whose residents are armed to the teeth with the military detritus of the Cold War. Mogadishu thus embodies the new Heart of Darkness, a stateless urban world of vicious Hobbesian war of all against all. This view of Africa as the vanguard of anarchy is shared by a significant segment of the elite in the global North, who see the criminalization of the state in Africa as a direct threat to U.S. interests. If, as these analysts hold, it is from such feral zones that future threats to American society are likely to originate, then potent new weapons systems must be developed to deal with this racialized new world disorder. This article unpacks the ahistorical character of such selfserving representations of urban Africa, underlining the extent to which policies pursued during the Cold War and neoliberal era by powers such as the U.S. have helped to create the conditions that Black Hawk Down represents in such spectacular excess.

scholarly journals “Disoriented Superpower”: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Bipolar World

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
O. I. Rebro ◽  
M. A. Suchkov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Global Events ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This article seeks to fi ll the gap between well theorized upon constants of the U.S. strategic thinking and the divergent approaches of various administrations to practical actions on the international arena. Grounded in the concept developed by Christopher Hammer, the analysis presents the U.S. foreign policy as the product of a never-ending internal debate about the most optimal ways of promoting values, dealing with international institutions and prioritizing threats within a security perimeter. Taking stock of the choices made by consecutive presidents in each of the three areas the authors study the roots of foreign policy inertia of the sole superpower that resulted in unforced mistakes undermining its own political cohesion as well as hindering the emergence of lasting international architecture to replace the cold-war order. Thus, the article argues that the key feature of the last thirty years – the absence of an enemy as an organizing principle for the U.S. foreign policy – prompted the American public to pay less attention to global events which became the area of opportunistic decisions. Overall, the authors conclude that the mistakes were made precisely when the domestic debates in the U.S. about international relations were absent and note that the current divisions in the American society as an impetus for self-scrutiny and the emergence of China as a focal point for the American elites may result in a more coherent foreign policy and make the U.S. a more responsible international actor.

Converting the Military-Industrial-Toxic Economy—Lessons from the U.S., Part I

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-203
Author(s):  
Fred Rose ◽  
John MacDougall
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Community Stability ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
Large Corporations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

This article draws lessons from the military conversion organizing since the end of the Cold War for how communities and workers can influence conversion decisions of corporations and government. National conversion policy has favored corporate over community interests because it has been ideologically committed to liberal reforms. Part 1 of this article outlines the need for national policy to guide the conversion of large corporations to preserve jobs and community stability. Part 2 draws lessons from local and national conversion efforts which have had impacts on smaller firms, communities, and regions and could create a shift in public understanding about the role of public intervention in the economy.

Philip Wayne Powell, the Cold War, and the Conquest of Northern Mexico

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Raphael B. Folsom
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The writings of the U.S. scholar Philip Wayne Powell have had an enduring influence on the historiography of colonial Mexico and the Spanish borderlands. But his writings have never been examined as a unified corpus, and so the deeply reactionary political ideology that lay behind them has never been well understood. By analyzing Powell’s political convictions, this article shows how contemporary scholarship on the conquest of northern Mexico can emerge from Powell’s long shadow. Los escritos del estudioso estadounidense Philip Wayne Powell han ejercido una influencia perdurable sobre la historiografía del México colonial y las zonas fronterizas españolas. Sin embargo, dichos escritos nunca han sido examinados como un corpus unificado, de manera que la ideología política profundamente reaccionaria detrás de ellos nunca ha sido bien comprendida. Al analizar las convicciones políticas de Powell, el presente artículo muestra cómo puede surgir un conocimiento contemporáneo sobre la conquista del norte de México a partir de la larga sombra de Powell.

American-European Relations in U. S. World History Textbooks, 1921-2001

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Martin Alm
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World History ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Democratic Tradition ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S ◽  
English Heritage ◽  
Better Than

This article studies U.S. views of the historical relationship between the U.S. and Europe as conceived during the 20th century. This is examined through U.S. World history text books dating from 1921 to 2001. The textbooks view relations within a general teleological narrative of progress through democracy and technology. Generally, the textbooks stress the significan ce of the English heritage to American society. From the American Revolution onwards, however, the U.S. stands as an example to Europe. Beginning with the two world wars, it also intervenes directly in Europe in order to save democracy. In the Cold War, the U.S. finally acknowledges the lea ding role it has been assigned in the world. Through its democratic ideals, the U.S. historically has a spe cial relationship with Great Britain and, by the 20th century, Western Europe in general. An American identity is established both in conjunction with Western Europe, by emphasizing their common democratic tradition, and in opposition to it, by stressing how the Americans have developed this tradition better than the Europeans, creating a more egalitarian and libertarian society. There is a need for Europe to become more like the U.S., and a Europe that does not follow the American lead is viewed with suspicion.

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.

Atomized urbanism: secrecy and security from the Gulag to the Soviet closed cities

Urban History ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Asif Siddiqi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Urban Geography ◽  
General Public ◽  
Early History ◽  
Physical Isolation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Camp System ◽  
Spatial Terms ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City

Abstract This article recovers the early history of the Soviet ‘closed city’, towns that during the Cold War were absent from maps and unknown to the general public due to their involvement in weapons research. I argue that the closed cities echoed and appropriated features of the Stalinist Gulag camp system, principally their adoption of physical isolation and the language of obfuscation. In doing so, I highlight a process called ‘atomized urbanism’ that embodies the tension between the obdurate reality of the city and the goal of the state to obliterate that reality through secrecy. In spatial terms, ‘atomized’ also describes the urban geography of these cities which lacked any kind of organic suburban expansion.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

Civil conflicts and the conditions for successful international intervention: a comparative study of Cambodia and El Salvador

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerardo L. Munck ◽  
Chetan Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Territorial Conflicts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

As the Cold War has receded, it has left behind a world system characterized by two divergent trends. On the one hand, as the two superpowers have withdrawn their security umbrellas, a host of ethnic and territorial conflicts have sprouted around the globe. On the other hand, as former rival blocs now create alliances, international mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of contentious issues have proliferated. A central concern of our times, then, is whether, and under what circumstances, these new mechanisms will be successful in dealing with the disorderly aspects of the new world ‘order’.

Costa Rica in 1948: Cold War or Local War?

1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Olander
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Panama Canal Zone ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The years following World War Two produced a strong resurgence of U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean couched in Cold War terms. Although the U.S. intervention in Guatemala to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 has generally been seen as the first case of Cold War covert anti-Communist intervention in Latin America, several scholars have raised questions about U.S. involvement in a 1948 Costa Rican civil war in which Communism played a critical role. In a 1993 article in The Americas, Kyle Longley argued that “the U.S. response to the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948, not the Guatemalan affair, marked the origins of the Cold War in Latin America.” The U.S. “actively interfered,” and achieved “comparable results in Costa Rica as in Guatemala: the removal of a perceived Communist threat.” Other authors have argued, even, that the U.S. had prepared an invasion force in the Panama Canal Zone to pacify the country. The fifty years of Cold War anti-Communism entitles one to be skeptical of U.S. non-intervention in a Central American conflict involving Communism. Costa Ricans, aware of a long tradition of U.S. intervention in the region, also assumed that the U.S. would intervene. Most, if not all, were expecting intervention and one key government figure described U.S. pressure as like “the air, which is felt, even if it cannot be seen.” Yet, historians must do more than just “feel” intervention. Subsequent Cold War intervention may make it difficult to appraise the 1948 events in Costa Rica objectively. Statements like Longley's that “it is hard to believe that in early 1948 … Washington would not favor policies that ensured the removal of the [Communist Party] Vanguard,” although logical, do not coincide with the facts of the U.S. role in the conflict.

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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