The Dialectics of Supranational Unification

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 927-935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitai Etzioni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Trade Association ◽  
Customs Union ◽  
New Members ◽  
European Free Trade Association ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Communities

The application of several European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries for membership in the Common Market (EEC) is viewed in Washington with great pleasure: the development of a United States of Europe is widely anticipated. Many observers have already calculated the combined manpower, economic resources, military power, etc. of the new union, and have pointed to the decisive advantage the United States, in coalition with this “third power,” will have over the Soviet Union. Even the fact that the EEC and EFTA, if completely merged, would have 13 members is not considered unlucky: after all, the United States itself evolved out of a union of 13. It may however, be premature to prepare a celebration for the birthday of the United States of Europe. The following theoretical excursion suggests that loading the EEC with new members may well reduce it to the level of a glorified customs union rather than forward it to a political federation. Moreover, I shall argue, political communities often unify not by increasing their membership, but in a dialectic fashion: two or more groups form; they appear to be moving in opposite directions until each is well integrated, then they are “synthesized” (not merged) in a superior union. That is, they form one encompassing union without dissolving the bonds that held together the units that composed a group before the larger unification. The earlier autonomous groups become sub-groups in one union, adjusting to the new over-riding bond without being fused into one group that knows no internal divisions.

Optimists and pessimists about nuclear arms

1987 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-161
Author(s):  
Dan Keohane
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World ◽  
Nuclear Arms

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in an intense and often deeply hostile contest for predominance in the international system. The dedication by each superpower of its most valued technological, engineering and economic resources first to acquiring and thereafter to ceaselessly enhancing a comprehensive inventory of nuclear arms, is an especially prominent and important manifestation of USA-USSR rivalry.

The Fall of Two Presidents and Extraparliamentary Opposition: France and the United States in 1968

1970 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Cerny
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Baby Boom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Communities

EXTRAPARLIAMENTARY OPPOSTION MADE ITS APPEARANCE IN THE midst of the political upheavals of 1968 both as part of a wider phenomenon of social and political life and as the result of a specific combination of factors in certain countries, especially France and the United States. In the wider sense, it resulted from the age-old problem: are established political structures willing (or indeed able) to answer the needs of the larger socio-political communities for whose welfare they have been made responsible? The problems of the technological age—popular participation in governmental processes, the coming of age of the post-war ‘baby boom’ generation, the quality of life in the consumer society, and, perhaps most significantly, the increasing bureaucratization of administration and politics on both sides of the iron curtain—served to stoke the furnaces of scepticism and open rejection of accepted answers. As the year progressed, the collective leadership of the Soviet Union continued to pull back from the de-Stalinization of the Krushchev era, American leaders were assassinated and racial strife continued, hopes for a Middle East settlement faded, and the Vietnam war exploded in the Tet offensive. The atmosphere of hopeful progress which had permeated the early 1960s was shattered for good, and a widespread mood of frustration came to predominate.

Security Council

1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-500
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
Republic Of Korea ◽  
New Members ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Republic

Application of the Republic of Korea: The report of the Committee on the Admission of New Members concerning the application of the Republic of Korea for admission to the United Nations was considered at the 423rd meeting of the Council on April 8, 1949. Attacked by the Soviet and Ukrainian representatives as a puppet regime illegally established by the intervention of an illegally constituted Interim Committee of the Assembly, the Republic of Korea was strongly defended by the representatives of the United States, China and Argentina as an independent state willing and able to assume the obligations of membership. The vote on the Chinese resolution to recommend the admission of Korea recorded nine members in the affirmative, with the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR in the negative. The resolution therefore failed to pass because of the negative vote of the Soviet Union.

European Communities

1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-355
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Association ◽  
New Members ◽  
European Economic ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
European Free Trade Association ◽  
The World ◽  
General Improvement ◽  
The Creation

Meeting from September 22 to 25, 1959, the European Parliamentary Assembly discussed the principles and problems involved in the establishment of a multilateral European trading association. Opening the debate, Mr. M. P. A. Blaisse (Dutch Popular Catholic) stated that experience had shown that the common market could be considered the driving force of European economic integration. Although at present involving only a part of Europe, it could expand and develop in several ways—by the accession of new members, by the creation of a multilateral association, or by the conclusion of bilateral agreements. Whatever the form of its evolution, the obligations undertaken by member states within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) could not be ignored; similarly, it was imperative to take into account the interests of the United States and Canada. Thus he suggested that special agreements could be concluded with these two countries, to minimize the effects of trade discrimination, along with continued negotiations with members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). He warned against compromise on the final aim, namely, the establishment of a multilateral association. The President of the European Economic Commission, Mr. W. Hallstein, thereupon presented the Commission's recommendations for a trade program on which the six nations could agree. He stated that such a program had to be pragmatic and realistic, and fulfill several conditions: improvement of economic conditions of the nations both inside and outside the European Economic Community (EEC), taking into account Europe's relations with the rest of the world, in particular with the United States; strengthening of the feelings of solidarity between the Community and all those affected by its external commercial policy; and general improvement of trade relations. He urged that care be taken to avoid giving the impression that EEC practiced a policy of discrimination and asked therefore that every effort be made to prove that its aim was the liberalization of trade throughout the world. Specifically, after the next GATT conference, EEC should, in his opinion, forthwith give its agreement to further tariff reductions and, in addition, promote the granting of aid to underdeveloped countries. At the European level, he proposed the creation of a “contact committee, comprised of representatives of the Community and other countries or groups to study the question of the development of external commercial relations. Mr. Hallstein concluded by pointing out that the proposals of his Commission were neither complete nor final. The speakers that followed agreed, on the whole, with the above-mentioned suggestions, but no resolution was adopted and it was decided to re-examine the whole matter at future sessions.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

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