Mathematics, Peace, and the Cold War

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 556-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brit Shields
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
New York University ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Exchange Program ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

This paper seeks to combine studies of émigré scientists, Cold War American science, and cultural histories of mathematical communities by analyzing Richard Courant’s participation in the National Academy of Sciences interacademy exchange program with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Following his dismissal by the Nazi government from his post as Director of the Göttingen Mathematics Institute in 1933, Courant spent a year at the University of Cambridge, and then immigrated to the United States where he developed the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Courant’s participation with the National Academy of Sciences interacademy exchange program at the end of his career highlights his ideologies about the mathematics discipline, the international mathematics community, and the political role mathematicians could play in contributing to international peace through scientific diplomacy. Courant’s Cold War scientific identity emerges from his activities as an émigré mathematician, institution builder, and international “ambassador.”

Trygve Lie, 1946–1953

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Jenny Ravndal
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Political Negotiation

This chapter explores all aspects of Trygve Lie’s interaction with the Security Council, beginning with his appointment process and the negotiation of the relative domains of the Council and the Secretary-General. This was a time when the working methods of the UN system were rapidly evolving through political negotiation and responses to external crises. It examines Lie’s personality and character, how he viewed his own responsibilities in the maintenance of international peace and security as crises arose, the legal and political tools he developed and exercised, and his changing relationship with individual permanent members and the six elected members. In the emerging Cold War, Lie’s position in the Security Council would be determined in particular by his relationships with the United States and the Soviet Union. Taking initiative in response to external crises in Iran, Palestine, Berlin, and Korea, Lie succeeded in laying foundations for an expanded political role for the Secretary-General.

The Kimbalitos: The Plan Kimball, Cold War, and Medicine in Paraguay, 1956–64

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget María Chesterton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Medical School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
State University ◽  
New York University ◽  
University Of Buffalo ◽  
Government Records ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This article studies a faculty exchange from the medical school at the University of Buffalo (later the State University of New York, University at Buffalo) to the medical school in Asunción, Paraguay in the 1950s and 1960s. The arrival of U.S.-trained medical professionals spurred a new pedagogical program designed to improve medical education by reducing the number of students enrolled, making the curriculum more scientifically oriented, and demanding the professionalization of its future doctors. Moreover, the program was strategically designed to depoliticize the medical school in Asunción at the height of the Cold War. Using oral interviews of Paraguayans who participated in the reforms, government records, and documents produced by U.S. medical professionals, the article tracks how the program was started and under what conditions it operated, and concludes that both the United States and Paraguayan medical professionals considered the program a success—it improved the quality of Paraguayan medical professionals and, at least temporarily, neutralized the political leanings of the medical school.

scholarly journals The End of Yugoslavia

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesna Drapac
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
State University ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
The Cold War

Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation (Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), 288 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-8133-2096-8. Eric D. Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 230 pp., $17.95, ISBN 0-271-01958-1. Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 246 pp., $40, ISBN 0-271-01629-9. Reneo Lukic and Allen Lynch, Europe from the Balkans to the Urals: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Monographs, 1996), 436 pp., £35.00, ISBN 0-19-829200-7. Viktor Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise, trans. Sabrina Petra Ramet (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 279 pp., £16.99, ISBN 0-415-18596-3. Aleksandar Pavkovic, The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans, 2nd edn (London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 2000), 243 pp., £42.50, ISBN 0-312-23084-2. Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 354 pp., $30.00, ISBN 0-8133-2559-5. Richard H. Ullman, ed., The World and Yugoslavia's Wars (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), 230 pp., $18.95, ISBN 0-87609-191-5. Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 536 pp., $16.95, ISBN 0-8157-9513-0.

Worse Than a Monolith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Opposing Camp ◽  
The Cold War

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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