Deterrence in 1939

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Alexandroff ◽  
Richard Rosecrance
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Time Perspectives ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Time Perceptions

Rather than a case where deterrence was not tried, 1939 is a case where deterrence failed. As such, it has important implications for deterrence theory. Mutual deterrence must operate on roughly the same time perceptions. Britain felt impelled to deter Germany after Prague, but could offer only a long-term deterrent. Germany's short term appeared so favorable that the long-term uncertainties posed by Britain and France failed to restrain her. The experience of 1939 also underlines the importance of political factors, particularly realignment in mutual deterrence. The Russo-German Pact tipped the balance toward war. In the contemporary setting, calculations of time perspectives between the Soviet Union and the United States are important for mutual deterrence, especially in Europe. Changes in the Sino-Soviet split hold further implications for contemporary deterrence.

The United States and Southeast Asia: A Case of Strategic Surrender

1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Buszynski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
Global Context ◽  
The Soviet Union

Southeast Asia in United States policy fell from a region of high priority during the Vietnam war to become, after the fall of Indochina, an area of relatively minor interest. For the United States, Southeast Asia evoked memories of misperception, intensified over-commitment, and simplistic assumptions that characterized the American effort to defeat local Vietnamese national communism. Since the formulation of the Nixon doctrine of disengagement in 1969, United States policy towards Southeast Asia has been undergoing a process of long-term readjustment in recognition of the exaggerated significance that the region had assumed in American thinking. The fall of Saigon in April 1975 was a major stimulus to this readjustment as it gave the Americans compelling reasons to anticipate a reassertion of Soviet influence in the region. Successive American administrations attempted to place the region in a wider global context to avoid the dangers of extreme reaction to local national communism while developing the flexibility to coordinate a response to the Soviet Union at a global level. The main concern of American policy was to remove the basis for direct United States involvement in the region in a way that would satisfy post-Vietnam war public and congressional opinion and the demands of strategic planners for greater freedom of manoeuvre against the Soviet Union.

The Origins of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.

The Influence of Political Culture upon Cross-Cultural Misperceptions and Foreign Policy: The United States and Germany

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Kalberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Technology Products ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Trade Sanctions ◽  
The Military

The disagreement between Germany and the United States over thewar in Iraq was massive. During the winter of 2002, many observersspoke of a long-term rift between these longstanding allies and atotal loss of credibility on both sides. No one can doubt, regardlessof recent healing overtures,1 that the German-American partnershiphas been altered and significantly weakened. It has suffered a blowfar more damaging than those that accompanied past conflicts over,for example, Ostpolitik, the neutron bomb, the Soviet gas pipeline,the flow of high technology products to the Soviet Union, the impositionof trade sanctions in 1980 against the military government inPoland, the stationing in the late 1970s of middle-range missiles onGerman soil, and the modernization of short-range missiles in 1989.

Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Moss ◽  
James USN (Ret.) Stavridis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
White House ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
The 1960S

The changing international environment of the 1960s made it possible to attain détente, a relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Back-channel diplomacy—confidential contacts between the White House and the Kremlin, mainly between National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin—transformed that possibility into reality. This book argues that although back-channel diplomacy was useful in improving U.S.-Soviet relations in the short term by acting as a safety valve and giving policy-actors a personal stake in improved relations, it provided a weak foundation for long-term détente. This book traces the evolution of confidential channels during the Nixon administration and examines certain flashpoints in U.S.-Soviet relations, such as the 1970 Cienfuegos crisis, Sino-American rapprochement, and the Indo-Pakistani War in 1971. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Moscow’s support for Hanoi remained constant irritants in U.S.-Soviet relations. The back-channel relationships allowed both sides to agree to disagree and paved the way for the Moscow Summit of May 1972. This focused examination of U.S.-Soviet back-channel diplomacy mitigates some of criticisms levied against Nixon and Kissinger in their secretive conduct of diplomacy by showing that back channels were both necessary and an effective instrument of policy. However, back channels worked best when they supplemented rather than replaced more traditional diplomacy.

scholarly journals INTEGRATION PROCESSES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

2019 ◽  
Vol 2(13)/2019 (2(13)/2019) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Adam KUŹ
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Right

The purpose of the paper is to answer the question: what is the main reason why the Central and Eastern Europe countries did not enter into fruitful and long-term cooperation both in the interwar period and after the collapse of the Soviet Union despite a far-reaching commonality of interests? Conflicts between these countries are not decisive factors in their lack of integration. The degree of integration is proportional to the degree of involvement in Central and Eastern Europe of powers that could act as an external hegemony. In the interwar period, the United States, England and France, and after 1989, the United States had the right potential to undertake such a task in its interest. None of them, however, took up such a role in the long run. Attempts to integrate the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to date, starting from the Versailles conference, indicate that the American protectorate is a necessary factor for implementing closer forms of cooperation between these countries.

scholarly journals Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the resistance movements in Yugoslavia, 1941

Balcanica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 339-366
Author(s):  
Kosta Nikolic
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
The United States ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Post War ◽  
Kingdom Of Yugoslavia

During the Second World War a brutal and distinctly complex war was fought in Yugoslavia. It was a mixture of an anti-fascist struggle for liberation as well as an ideological, civil, inter-ethnic and religious war, which witnessed a holocaust and genocide against Jews and Serbs. At least a million Yugoslavs died in that war, most of them ethnic Serbs. In their policies towards Yugoslavia, each of the three Allied Powers (the United States of America, the Soviet Union and Great Britain) had their short-term and long-term goals. The short-term goals were victory over the Axis powers. The long-term goals were related to the post-war order in Europe (and the world). The Allies were unanimous about the short-term goals, but differed with respect to long-term goals. The relations between Great Britain and the Soviet Union were especially sensitive: both countries wanted to use a victory in the war as a means of increasing their political power and influence. Yugoslavia was a useful buffer zone between British and Soviet ambitions, as well as being the territory in which the resistance to the Axis was the strongest. The relations between London and Moscow grew even more complicated when the two local resistance movements clashed over their opposing ideologies: nationalism versus communism. The foremost objective of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) was to effect a violent change to the pre-war legal and political order of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Inauspicious Beginnings

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-52
Author(s):  
Edward M. Geist
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Strategic Bombing ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines the development of civil defense in the United States and Soviet Union up until the early 1950s. The predecessors of civil defense first appeared during the 19th century, but it only fully blossomed with the introduction of strategic bombing. Both the United States and Soviet Union possessed large civil defense organizations during the Second World War, but these proved ill-adapted to the requirements of the nuclear age in the postwar period. This chapter argues that the failure of the United States and the Soviet Union to pursue civil defense against nuclear weapons during the late 1940s can be attributed to domestic political factors as opposed to technical obstacles or strategic considerations. This tardy start left both superpowers ill-prepared when they decided to develop passive defenses to protect their populations form nuclear attack in the following decade.

scholarly journals Political Warfare: The People's Republic of China's Strategy "to Win without Fighting"

MCU Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-93
Author(s):  
Kerry K. Gershaneck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Marine Corps ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Warfare

The Commandant of the Marine Corps has identified the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an existential threat to the United States in the long term. To successfully confront this threat, the United States must relearn how to fight on the political warfare battlefield. Although increasingly capable militarily, the PRC employs political warfare as its primary weapon to destroy its adversaries. However, America no longer has the capacity to compete and win on the political warfare battlefield: this capacity atrophied in the nearly three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Failure to understand China’s political warfare and how to fight it may well lead to America’s strategic defeat before initiation of armed conflict and to operational defeat of U.S. military forces on the battlefield. The study concludes with recommendations the U.S. government must take to successfully counter this existential threat.

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.

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