U.S.-RUSSIAN RELATIONS IN THE SHADOW OF THE 1999 KOSOVO WAR

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1/2020) ◽  
pp. 11-31
Author(s):  
Mladen Lisanin
Keyword(s):  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
European Security ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Nato Bombing ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Kosovo War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Out Of Area ◽  
The U.S

The paper examines the changing relations between the U.S. and Russia since the end of the twentieth century, shaped by the experience of NATO’s war with Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over Kosovo. The first decade after the termination of the Cold War brought about the American ‘unipolar moment’, and with it the attempt of Russian political elites to approach the unipole and find a sustainable modus vivendi with it: the relationship between Yeltsin and Clinton administrations is a vivid example of such endeavors. At the same time, policies such as NATO expansion induced suspicion on the Russian side with regard to the possibilities of achieving an understanding and allowing Russia to become a legitimate part of European security architecture. When, in March of 1999, NATO began with the attacks against FRY (a country perceived as traditionally friendly towards Russia) without the consent of the United Nations Security Council, a long shadow was cast over the prospects of a Russian – American rapprochement. All subsequent episodes of cooperation and competition between Russia and the U.S. have been observed through the lens shaped by the Kosovo war. Drawing from contemporary Russian and western academic literature and memoir materials (Primakov, Guskova, Narochnitska, Baranovsky, Tsygankov, Sushenkov; Wohlforth, Walt, Clarke, Hill, Galen Carpenter et al.) and building upon the traditional realist concepts of great power competition and balancing, the author assesses the development of U.S.-Russian security relations in the context the Kosovo war experience. It is argued that, in addition to being an attack against a country perceived as a traditional Russian friend or protégé, NATO bombing of FRY in 1999 posed a major concern to Russia because it was a signal that the alliance was ready to change its strategic posture and engage in out-of-area operations.

scholarly journals United States–Pakistan Relations in Post-Cold War Era: A Political–Security Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 2050001
Author(s):  
KHANH VAN NGUYEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Political Security ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

In this article, the political–security relations between the United States and Pakistan in the Post-Cold War era are analyzed. The allied relationship between the two countries during the Cold War was abruptly disrupted following the conclusion of the Cold War in 1991 and the United States imposed a series of sanctions against Pakistan following the nuclear issue in 1990. However, the September 11 attacks of 2001 and the global anti-terrorism war launched by the G. W. Bush government resumed the relationship. Again, Pakistan became one of the principal allies of the United States and bilateral political–security relations were promoted unprecedentedly thanks to their collaboration against terrorism. The war against terrorism, however, has also produced many contradictions, which brought the relationship between the two countries into disputes and crises. This article discusses the U.S.–Pakistan relations in the Post-Cold War Era with special attention to the political–security aspects. Attempts will be made to clarify the nature, impacts and tendencies of the relationship. The U.S.–Pakistan relationship is a typical example of the international relationship between a superpower and a middle power, and it is also typical of the U.S.’s changing alliance relations.

Russia says no: Power, status, and emotions in foreign policy

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 269-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
Alexei Shevchenko
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Missile Defense ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
The West ◽  
The Status ◽  
Ukrainian Crisis ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

Since 2003, Russian foreign behavior has become much more assertive and volatile toward the West, often rejecting U.S. diplomatic initiatives and overreacting to perceived slights. This essay explains Russia’s new assertiveness using social psychological hypotheses on the relationship between power, status, and emotions. Denial of respect to a state is humiliating. When a state loses status, the emotions experienced depend on the perceived cause of this loss. When a state perceives that others are responsible for its loss, it shows anger. The belief that others have unjustly used their power to deny the state its appropriate position arouses vengefulness. If a state believes that its loss of status is due to its own failure to live up to expectations, the elites will express shame. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has displayed anger at the U.S. unwillingness to grant it the status to which it believes it is entitled, especially during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and most recently Russia’s takeover of Crimea and the 2014 Ukrainian Crisis. We can also see elements of vengefulness in Russia’s reaction to recognition of Kosovo, U.S. missile defense plans, the Magnitsky act, and the Snowden affair.

China: A Challenge or Opportunity for the United States?

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-334
Author(s):  
Jianwei Wang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soft Landing ◽  
The Government ◽  
Nato Bombing ◽  
The Taiwan Strait ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the United States—from the government to the public, from the White House to Congress, from policymakers to pundits, from China specialists to people who know little about China—has engaged itself in the seemingly endless debate on China. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people debated whether China was still important to the United States and whether the Sino-U.S. special relationship was worth preserving. Since the early 1990s, with China's remarkable economic “soft landing” and the consequent robust and sustained economic growth, Americans seemed to have reached a consensus that China still matters to the United States for better or worse. U.S.-China relations were often referred to as one of the most important bilateral relations to the United States. But important in what way? Much debate ensued with a series of frictions between the two countries that climaxed in the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the South China Sea during the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the U.S.-led NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the midair collision between the two air forces in 2001. The U.S. media tirelessly asked the question: “China: friend or foe?” The pattern for U.S. China policy since the end of the Cold War is that whenever the relationship appeared to be stabilizing and a consensus was shaping, new crises emerged and destroyed the hard-won progress, triggering another round of debate on China as if people never learned anything from the previous debate; the old and familiar discourse started all over again.

Cold War II

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Phase ◽  
The U.S

Today, Hollywood cinema has made a striking turn regarding its portrayals of Russians, returning to the images of the Cold War. To explore the reasons for this sudden renewed interest in the Cold War, this book examines, among others, Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (2015), Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s Hail, Caesar! (2016), David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde (2017), Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017), Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018), and Francis Lawrence’s Red Sparrow (2018), as well as such TV shows as Comrade Detective (2017) and The Americans (2013-2018). Are these recent films and series attempting to interpret the tightened political relations between the United States and Russia, suggesting the beginning of “Cold War II”? The chapters in this collection investigate the revival of the Cold War movie genre under multiple angles, including questions of patriotism, national identity, otherness, gender, and corruption. They are sensitive to the cinematic aesthetics and ethics of these representations as they reveal how these new images of the Cold War shape audiences’ understanding of the Cold War in general as well as of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia in particular. This collection defies the traditional definitions of the Cold War film and invites readers to discover the new phase in the Cold War movie genre: Cold War II.

“Our Honeymoon with the U.S. Came to an end”

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-163
Author(s):  
Joslyn Barnhart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Soviet Policy ◽  
Status Seeking ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Potential Challenge ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the significant role that national humiliation played in shaping Soviet policy during the most dangerous period of the Cold War. It defines the relationship between the Soviets' sense of humiliation perpetuated by U.S. surveillance flyovers between 1957 and 1961 through Soviet airspace and Nikita Khrushchev's decision to break ties with the Americans and place missiles in Cuba. It also establishes the important role that humiliating events played in stimulating the symbolic competition for status on the African continent. The chapter examines the status dynamics in the period of intense status competition at the end of the nineteenth century. Just as French and German status-seeking strategies in Africa challenged the status and interests of England and Italy, the Soviet Union's attempts to seek status through material practices befitting their desired superpower status presented a potential challenge to the status of the United States.

The Cold War and Chinese Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1963–1975

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-174
Author(s):  
Gangzheng She
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Palestine Liberation Organization ◽  
Chinese Policy ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Arab Israeli Conflict ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This article explores the key issues in China's changing relations with the Arab countries and Israel from 1963 to 1975. Based on interviews, archival sources, and other materials, the article shows Beijing's attempts to justify its self-portrait as the only genuine patron of “national liberation movements” and to help foster the conditions for revolution in the Middle East by supporting a “people's war” against Israel. Although this radical design failed after the liquidation of Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan in the 1970s and the U.S.-Chinese rapprochement soon thereafter, the Sino-Soviet competition in the 1970s still gave enormous impetus to the visibility of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the international arena. The article discusses the roles of Chinese Communist leaders and diplomats in formulating Beijing's policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, which also served Mao Zedong's domestic mobilization before and during the Cultural Revolution. The article thus highlights a special connection across the international and domestic dimensions of China's Cold War experience.

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.

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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