scholarly journals INTRODUCTION by Co-editors and Contributors of the Special Section Elena Chebankova and Piotr Dutkiewicz

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Elena Chebankova ◽  
Petr Dutkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Special Section ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Virtual Currency ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Western Idea ◽  
Global Discourse

The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the twentieth century ended the pre-existing bipolar Cold War system and resulted in a unipolar moment in which the United States enjoyed a position of almost unchallenged global and civilizational leadership [Krauthammer 1991; Waltz 1993; Wohlforth 1999]. However, despite the initial elation of some Western politicians and analysts [Fukuyama 1992; Brooks, Wohlforth 2008; Kagan 2008], who hoped to see the triumph of the Western idea universally, this situation was relatively short-lived. Global dialogue soon moved beyond this moment of unipolarity toward its more conventional form, in which states struggle for power and influence and search for areas of mutually beneficial co-operation. At the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, we see a qualitatively different world. There have been profound political changes since the post-Cold War unipolarity. In this world, the idea of civilization has become a virtual currency of international relations and global dialogue. Many analysts [Coker 2019; Acharya 2020; Stuenkel 2016; Higgott 2019] discuss the rise of civilizations in world affairs as the new sociopolitical reality. Countries such as Russia, China, India, Turkey, and Brazil are often considered civilizational states – challengers to the West. Historically, philosophers have oscillated between the idea of multiple civilizations, with the West being one civilization of many (Spengler, Huntington, Danilevsky), and a single and universal Western civilization (Hayek, Kant). The former approach became a cardinal frame of reference of the global discourse during the past decade.

Cold War consumption and the marketing of childhood in the Soviet Union and the United States, 1950-1960

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
The Cold War

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.

The United States and the Soviet Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-152
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The Cold War

Otto von Bismarck famously said that “God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Divine providence may not have hurt, but it was America’s domestic political institutions that transformed a smattering of British colonies in North America into, first, an independent nation and, then, a global superpower with a network of allies and partners spanning six continents. The United States faced off against the Soviet Union for a half century during the Cold War. But Washington possessed the better institutions, and the stress of the competition caused Moscow’s political system to collapse altogether. In the post–Cold War period that followed, Washington deepened and expanded the Pax Americana, and spread unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom. For the first time since Ancient Rome, a single superpower so overawed any potential competitors that great power rivalry itself came to a temporary halt.

American power and the empire of capitalist democracy

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 191-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
American Power ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Capitalist World

The United States is today a global superpower without historical precedent. It stands at the centre of an expanding democratic-capitalist world order that is itself, fifty years after its creation, the dominant reality in world politics. Despite expectations that American hegemony would disappear and trigger the emergence of a new and unstable multipolar post-Cold War order, the opposite has in fact happened. American power has grown even greater in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although American power is not uniformly welcome around the world, serious ideological challengers or geopolitical balancers are not to be found. Scholars who a decade ago were debating the prospect of co-operation and conflict in a post-hegemonic world are now debating the character and future of world politics within an American unipolar order.

The United States at the End of the Cold War, 1989–1993

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Graham Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Military Campaign

The Cold War may have ended on the evening of November 9, 1989, when East German border guards opened up checkpoints and allowed their fellow citizens to stream into West Berlin; it certainly was over by January 28, 1992, when U.S. president George H. W. Bush delivered his annual State of the Union Address one month after President Mikhail Gorbachev had announced his resignation and the end of the Soviet Union. After the Berlin Wall came down, Bush and Gorbachev spoke of the Cold War in the past tense in person and on the telephone. The reunification of Germany and U.S. military campaign in the Persian Gulf confirmed that reality. In January 1991, polls indicated that, for the first time, a majority of Americans believed that the Cold War was over. However, the poll results obscured the substantial foreign and domestic crises, challenges, and opportunities created by the end of the Cold War that occupied President Bush and his national-security team between November 1989 and Bush’s defeat in the 1992 presidential inauguration and the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as America’s first post–Cold War president in January 1993.

After the Cold War: Wilsonianism Resurgent?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Selective Approach ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the United States's Wilsonianism in the post-Cold War era, first under George H. W. Bush and then under Bill Clinton. It considers how Bush, who became president as the Soviet Union was disintegrating and its leaders were looking for a new framework of understanding with the West, used Wilsonianism to address the question of establishing a world order favorable to American national security. It also discusses various Bush initiatives that were designed to establish a new world order after the cold war, Clinton's selective approach to liberal democratic internationalism, the effects of liberal economic practices on American national security, and the link between nationalism and liberal democracy. Finally, it assesses some of the challenges involved in the United States' efforts to bring about stable constitutional governance in many parts of the world.

America's Wars

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Henriksen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Small Footprint

The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in American global hegemony in world affairs. In the post-Cold War period, both Democrat and Republican governments intervened, fought insurgencies, and changed regimes. In America's Wars, Thomas Henriksen explores how America tried to remake the world by militarily invading a host of nations beset with civil wars, ethnic cleansing, brutal dictators, and devastating humanitarian conditions. The immediate post-Cold War years saw the United States carrying out interventions in the name of Western-style democracy, humanitarianism, and liberal internationalism in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Later, the 9/11 terrorist attacks led America into larger-scale military incursions to defend itself from further assaults by al Qaeda in Afghanistan and from perceived nuclear arms in Iraq, while fighting small-footprint conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Arabia. This era is coming to an end with the resurgence of great power rivalry and rising threats from China and Russia.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 240-254
Author(s):  
Edward M. Geist
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This conclusion describes some general findings about the historical evolution of civil defense in the two superpowers over the course of the Cold War. Neither U.S. nor Soviet officials regarded their civil defense efforts as successful, but the shortcomings of the programs appear to have resulted from domestic political obstacles rather than technical, strategic, and budgetary considerations. In the United States, Congressional opponents blocked large-scale funding for civil defense before its unpopularity with the general public became a crippling obstacle. In the Soviet Union, ideological strictures simultaneously impelled the development of civil defense yet undermined its plausibility. This chapter also makes some observations about post-Cold War developments in U.S. and Russian civil defense and their possible policy implications.

HOW THE WEST WON: Post-Cold War negotiations on NATO enlargement in the 1990-2000s

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Kyrychenko
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Military Alliance ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nato Enlargement

With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, in 1991, the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) became the triumphant military alliance in Europe. Following prolonged deliberations, NATO eventually conducted a systematic enlargement of the alliance into Central and Eastern Europe. This expansion of the alliance was fiercely contested, and according to many critics was based upon a ‘broken promise’ of no-NATO expansion east of a newly-reunified Germany, an assurance given during the negotiations on German reunification by the leaders of the Western alliance. This paper will explore the enlargement of NATO in the 1990s, whether or not it was indeed based on a broken promise of non-expansionism, how this enlargement was accomplished, and how it has affected the subsequent geopolitics of Europe. In doing so, this paper shall argue that a multitude of false assurances on NATO expansion were given to Soviet officials during the negotiations on German reunification.

Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

Did the United States promise the Soviet Union during the 1990 negotiations on German reunification that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe? Since the end of the Cold War, an array of Soviet/Russian policymakers have charged that NATO expansion violates a U.S. pledge advanced in 1990; in contrast, Western scholars and political leaders dispute that the United States made any such commitment. Recently declassified U.S. government documents provide evidence supporting the Soviet/Russian position. Although no non-expansion pledge was ever codified, U.S. policymakers presented their Soviet counterparts with implicit and informal assurances in 1990 strongly suggesting that NATO would not expand in post–Cold War Europe if the Soviet Union consented to German reunification. The documents also show, however, that the United States used the reunification negotiations to exploit Soviet weaknesses by depicting a mutually acceptable post–Cold War security environment, while actually seeking a system dominated by the United States and opening the door to NATO's eastward expansion. The results of this analysis carry implications for international relations theory, diplomatic history, and current U.S.-Russian relations.

Litvinov's Lost Peace, 1941–1946

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Grand Alliance ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Realist Conception

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the ensuing conflict witnessed the political rehabilitation of the former People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maksim Litvinov. After serving as ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943, Litvinov returned to the Soviet Union and played a key role in charting Moscow's wartime Grand Alliance strategy. He urged So-viet leaders to convene a joint Anglo-Soviet-American commission to discuss military-political questions, and he helped organize the October 1943 foreign ministers'conference in Moscow. As the war drew to a close, Litvinov argued for a postwar settlement dividing the world into security zones. His realist conception of foreign policy suggested a more moderate alternative o Josif Stalin's reliance on confrontation with the West. Although Litvinov faded again from public view after his retirement in 1946, his belief that the Grand Alliance could continue suggests that the rapid, postwar descent into the Cold War might have been averted had it not been for Stalin.

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