Just Deserts

The Race Card ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 47-76
Author(s):  
Tara Fickle
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
World War ◽  
Lay Understanding

This chapter argues that the lay understanding of games as fair and unbiased allowed World War II military officials to invoke game theory to resolve the thorny contradictions of imprisoning American citizens on racial grounds. A branch of applied mathematics which would eventually form the backbone of U.S. Cold War foreign policy as a “scientific” means of predicting enemy behavior, game theory has often been considered a defining discourse of Cold War America. Juxtaposing internment-era novels and military correspondence alongside game theory textbooks and popular media accounts, this chapter reveals, however, that a decade before it was applied to the “red menace,” a prefiguration of game theory amplified and then neutralized the threat posed by the “inscrutable intentions” of one hundred thousand Japanese Americans by reframing their fervent claims of U.S. loyalty as little more than a bluff.

Containment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Preston
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
World War ◽  
Land War ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War Consensus

Assessing the application of the liberal consensus idea to postwar foreign policy, this chapter contends that myths about the bipartisan spirit of U.S. foreign policy have too long found ready acceptance from historians. Politics did not stop at the water’s edge, even when bipartisanship was at its supposed zenith during World War II and the early Cold War. While there was unanimity during the post-war era that the growth of international communism was a threat to U.S. interests, this did not mean that foreign policy was free of political conflict, and partisan charges that the government of the day was losing the Cold War were commonplace. Meanwhile, non-elite opinion evinced little support for confrontation with the main Communist powers, reluctance to engage in another land war like Korea, and concern about survival in the nuclear era. The divisiveness wrought by Vietnam was supposed to have brought an end to the “Cold War consensus,” but uncertainty over its meaning was evident well before this.

5. Nuclear deterrence and arms control

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-79
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siracusa
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Ballistic Missiles ◽  
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

Did the nuclear revolution contribute to an era of peace? ‘Nuclear deterrence and arms control’ looks at the post-World War II stalemate and Cold War détente. The concept of deterrence did not come up until the second decade of the nuclear age. The introduction of thermonuclear weapons and nuclear-tipped, long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles turned foreign policy on its head. Mutual deterrence was less of a policy than a reality. With the Cuban Missile Crisis, Moscow mounted a show of defiance at a moment when it was relatively weak. The Carter and Reagan administrations were beset by external and internal disagreements, but prudence and luck prevailed.

Harry S. Truman and US Foreign Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaete O'Connell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Us Foreign Relations ◽  
American Foreign Relations

Sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Harry S. Truman faced the daunting tasks of winning the war and ensuring future peace and stability. Chided by critics for his lack of foreign policy experience but championed by supporters for his straightforward decision-making, Truman guided the United States from World War to Cold War. The Truman presidency marked a new era in American foreign relations, with the United States emerging from World War II unmatched in economic strength and military power. The country assumed a leadership position in a postwar world primarily shaped by growing antagonism with the Soviet Union. Truman pursued an interventionist foreign policy that took measures to contain Soviet influence in Europe and stem the spread of communism in Asia. Under his leadership, the United States witnessed the dawn of the atomic age, approved billions of dollars in economic aid to rebuild Europe, supported the creation of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization, recognized the state of Israel, and intervened in the Korean peninsula. The challenges Truman confronted and the policies he implemented laid the foundation for 20th-century US foreign relations throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Henry A. Wallace, the Liberals, and Soviet-American Relations

1968 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alonzo L. Hamby
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Progressive Party

Several significant works on post-1945 American politics have dealt with the career of Henry A. Wallace. These studies have tended to depict Wallace as a one-dimensional character, either a fuzzy-minded idealist influenced and manipulated by Communists and fellow travelers or a wise and dedicated apostle of peace fighting a losing battle to prevent the Cold War. Both views have in common the assumption that Wallace stood for the same thing in foreign policy from the end of World War II through his Progressive Party campaign for the presidency. It is true that there were important continuities; there were also significant transformations in the content and quality of his thinking.

Truman and the shift to a Cold War Paradigm mindset

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-53
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Baron
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Government Information ◽  
World War ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Truman Doctrine ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter details how the Cold War Paradigm mindset became institutionalized within the executive branch following the end of World War II. The threat from communism, both external and internal, provided the foundation from which Truman would alter American foreign policy through the Truman Doctrine, but also would focus internally in seeking to stop communist and subversive activities domestically. Once institutionalized, the Cold War Paradigm demonstrates how Truman's actions became a learned response to threats, which altered information policies within the executive branch. Congress heavily supported Truman's actions during this period, as members of Congress also learned and responded to threats. However, the Internal Security Act of 1950 created a rift between the president and Congress over control of government information, setting up an ongoing power struggle that would lead to Eisenhower's creation of executive privilege and Congress's response with the creation of the Moss Subcommittee on government information.

Foreign Policy and Social Change: Japan and the United States

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Tadashi Aruga
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Peace And War

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan moved from isolation and pacifism towards a militarized foreign policy. It relumed to pacifism after its defeat in World War II. The United States discarded its pacifist stance as it entered World War II and reaffirmed its commitment to a militarized foreign policy at the onset of the Cold War. Because both Japan and the United States had been outside or at the periphery of international relations for such a long time, these shifts tended to be far more dramatic than those experienced by European nations, accustomed as they were to an international milieu where peace and war coexisted.

Economists in the Cold War

2019 ◽  
pp. 263-296
Author(s):  
Alan Bollard
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Management Science ◽  
Input Output ◽  
World War ◽  
Output Analysis ◽  
Input Output Analysis ◽  
Dark Shadow ◽  
The Cold War

The last chapter covers the transition from World War II to the decade of the Cold War. The new divide was between East and West, and new tasks for economists included civilian reconstruction, a return to consumer economies, military expenditure, strategic deterrence, and the economic possibilities for peace. Von Neumann’s game theory provided an influential way of viewing the Communist threat, while in the USSR Kantorovich emerged from Stalin’s dark shadow to help develop Soviet computing and teach the new subject of management science. Both these Cold War geniuses died early of cancer. In the meantime Leontief was using his input-output analysis to build scenarios for world peace.

YASEMIN ÇELIK, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publications, 1999). Pp. 203.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-329
Author(s):  
FRANK TACHAU
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Turkish Foreign Policy ◽  
The Cold War

This book purports to be a study of Turkish foreign policy and decision-making in the post–World War II era. The author declares that her book “explores the contention that Turkish foreign policy has been greatly affected by the end of the cold war” (p. xi). She also “examines the argument that the . . . removal of the Soviet threat diminished Turkey's strategic importance for the United States and Western Europe” and led “Turkish policymakers . . . to search for new foreign policy partners” (p. xxii). Finally, Çelik suggests that the changed environment of the post–Cold War era entailed a shift from reliance on military power for the maintenance of national security to an emphasis on economic resources and relations.

Congress and the Cold War

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert David Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Future Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

Congress has received insufficient attention from scholars of Cold War foreign policy for a number of reasons, including historiographical patterns and the scattered nature of congressional sources. This gap in the literature has skewed our understanding of the Cold War because it has failed to take into account the numerous ways in which the legislature affected U.S. foreign policy after World War II. This article looks at Cold War congressional policy within a broad historical perspective, and it analyzes how the flurry of congressional activity in the years following the Vietnam War was part of a larger trend of congressional activism in foreign policy. After reviewing the existing literature on the subject of Congress and the Cold War, the article points out various directions for future research.

scholarly journals Global intellectual search and hemispheric balancing acts: the international face of Brazil’s quest for national development in the Cold War

2017 ◽  
pp. 296-326
Author(s):  
Rafael Ioris
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Present Article ◽  
National Development ◽  
Comparative Assessment ◽  
Political Connections ◽  
World War ◽  
Brazilian Government ◽  
The Cold War

Even though during its so-called developmentalist period Brazilian leaders sought to actively engage with similar events taking place globally, the historiography on the period continues to be remarkably silent on these important intellectual and political connections. The present article seeks to address this analytical silence by offering a comparative assessment of development-related reflections taking place in Brazil as well as in other parts of the emergent world in the aftermath of World War II. The piece also examines how the Brazilian government promoted its developmental goals by engaging in innovative foreign policy projects (e.g. Operation Pan-America) as a way to demonstrate the convergence between domestic developmental ideas and the country’s main international diplomatic actions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document