scholarly journals Russell the Rainmaker: Touring in Early Cold War Australia

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo-Anne Grant
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Technical Ability ◽  
Wet Weather ◽  
Lecture Tour ◽  
Third World War

During his 1950 lecture tour of Australia, Bertrand Russell was given the nickname “Russell the Rainmaker” due to unseasonably wet weather in the eastern states that appeared to accompany his travels. This humorous name represents a central idea that shaped his tour. Russell was convinced that the technical ability to make rain could transform Australia’s largely dry landscape and boost the nation’s farming potential, which could, in turn, support a new age of happiness and prosperity. Russell used this vision of the future to imagine a safe refuge for Western civilization in case Europe was destroyed in a possible nuclear Third World War. This paper will discuss how his Australian tour was an important moment of both hope and anxiety in his life. Russell’s idea of a pastoral utopia in Australia that relied on optimism about the capability of science to transform the landscape can be understood as a key way in which he responded intellectually to the events of the early Cold War.

The Military Doctrines of Mao Tse Tung Applied in Vietnam

1963 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-172
Author(s):  
Lea E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Near East ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Limited Warfare ◽  
The Military ◽  
Third World War ◽  
Nuclear Arms

Einstein once refused to speculate on the types of weapons to be used in a hypothetical third world war; but he was succinct and specific in naming those of an ensuing fourth global contest – “rocks”. Just as nuclear arms have very possibly made World War II the penultimate great conflict, the super bombs have created a climate in which international rivalries contend through cold war confrontation, police actions and limited warfare. The total terror of our nuclear age has thus far served to confine military clashes to the battlefields of Korea, Vietnam and the Near East, all restricted arenas in comparison to those of 1914–18 and 1939–45. Fear of thermonuclear retaliation has prevented attacks on, to use MacArthur's term, the “privileged sanctuaries” of our era's prime combatants.

Politics and Utopia

Worldview ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Thomas Molnar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Third World ◽  
World War ◽  
New Era ◽  
Power Block ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Third World War

The question of the Chinese off-shore islands is not, for the time being, a central issue. But this situation is not likely to last; the theatre of operations is quickly shifting from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and back, from Formosa to North Africa. Is this still the Cold War, is it the Third World War asjkmes Burnham calls it, or a new era of permanent conflicts, taking place in One World where three billion people are just too jnany to coexist?Whichever it is, die West must fight it on two fronts: on the wide world scene and, simultaneously, against those whose Utopian frame of mind, and consequent blindness to the realities of power, block the way of elementary realism.

Emotions and Play-acting in the Cold War: How Leonid Brezhnev Won and Lost the West’s Trust

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-341
Author(s):  
Susanne Schattenberg
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Political Action ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Sleeping Pills ◽  
Foreign Politics ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Third World War

This article seeks to prove that not only do emotions matter in foreign politics, but they are strong catalysts for political action. In Brezhnev’s case, it was fear of a third world war that made him strive for endurable peace. To gain the trust of the West, he tried to act like a Western statesman in order to be perceived as “familiar” and recognized as “one of us”. The article is structured along four key emotions: fear, trust, stress and mistrust, which are debated as concepts and as decisive states for Brezhnev’s foreign policy. I argue that Brezhnev won the trust of his supporters by showing he was different, but lost it when he became addicted to sleeping pills and had to retreat after 1974.

The Third World War?

Survival ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 61-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Third World War
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