scholarly journals Development of Z. Brzezinski’s Geostrategic Concept Regarding Ukraine (1950 – 2017)

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Right ◽  
Ukrainian Society ◽  
Post Soviet Space

The article considers the development of Z. Brzezinski’s geostrategic concept regarding Ukraine in the period from 1950 to 2017. The author attempts to determine the role Ukraine plays in Brzezinski’s geostrategy. The study concludes that Brzezinski’s geostrategic concept in relation to Ukraine is by and large the result of many years of geopolitical confrontation between the United States and Russia. Its key imperatives were first formulated as a means of undermining the national unity of the Soviet Union, and then were combined into a system for restraining Russia’s imperial aspirations and geopolitical ambitions in the post-Soviet space. In the author’s judgment, it is for this reason that the main fundamentals of this concept remained unchanged throughout the entire period under review (1950–2017), while certain aspects and tactical approaches were changed and adjusted depending on the state of relations between the West and Russia. This was most evident in the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Until 2014, when there were no sharp conflicts and contradictions in relations between the West and Russia, Brzezinski acted as a staunch advocate for Ukraine’s admission to the alliance in the foreseeable future. It is characteristic that during this period he was far from being embarrassed by the fact that Ukrainian society was divided on this issue, as was repeatedly pointed out by his opponents. He did not deny this, but he never considered reality to be something immutable and predetermined. On the contrary, in his opinion, it can and should be changed when necessary. From 2014, in a changing environment of escalating geopolitical confrontation with Russia, Brzezinski came to suggest that Ukraine should be denied the right to join the North Atlantic Alliance and Russia should be guaranteed the non-aligned status of Ukraine, referring, inter alia, to the lack of unity on this issue within Ukrainian society.

The Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movements

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Michael Mandelbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
First Time

Of all modern machines, indeed of all the artifacts of modern culture, the bomb is the most frightening. It is the most dangerous of all human inventions. The American, European, and Soviet people have always known how dangerous it is. They have, nevertheless, left nuclear weapons in the hands of the nuclear priesthood. (In the Soviet Union this has not been a matter of choice.) In the 1980s some in the West resolved to take control of the bomb. They began to demand that disarmament replace deterrence as the principal nuclear business of the Atlantic alliance.Probably from 1945 onward the average American or European would, if asked, have said that he wanted to do away with all nuclear arsenals rather than refine or increase them. But the average Westerner was not asked, and did not say so, at least not in any way that influenced public policy. In the 1980s citizens of the West did begin to say so, publicly, loudly, and in growing numbers. For the first time, a mass movement dedicated to shaping the nuclear future appeared on both sides of the Atlantic.In this, as in other things, the North American and the European wings of NATO differ. Opposition to the alliance's nuclear weapons policies made itself known earlier in Europe than in the United States. Both European and American anti-nuclear weapons activists aimed ultimately to lift the nuclear siege that the world must endure as long as these weapons exist. But each rallied around a more immediate issue, and the issues were different. The Europeans opposed the stationing of 572 intermediate-range missiles on the continent, which the NATO governments deemed necessary to offset comparable Soviet weapons. In the United States a proposal to freeze the deployment, testing, and manufacture of all weapons by both superpowers attracted wide support.

The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlène Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Post Soviet Space

The Eurasianist ideology is coming back on the Russian political and intellectual scene but also among the Turkic and Muslim elites in the Russian Federation and in Kazakhstan. The political, economic, social and identity difficulties of the transition invite Russians and other post-Soviet citizens to think about their relations with Europe and about the relevance of taking the West as a model. In this context of destabilization, Eurasianism proposes a geopolitical solution for the post-Soviet space. It presupposes the existence of a third continent between East and West, called “Eurasia,” and supports the idea of an organic unity of cultures born in this zone of symbiosis between Russian, Turkic, Muslim and even Chinese worlds. Neo-Eurasianism is the main ideology born among the different Russian conservative movements in the 1990s. Its theories are very little known, but the idea of an entity called Eurasia, regrouping the center of the old continent in which Russia would be “at home,” is more and more rife. It attracted many intellectuals and politicians in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Eurasianism was a way to explain the “disaster.”

Overcoming Barriers to Cooperation: Territorial and Issue Neutralization as Tools of Conflict Management

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Michael O. Slobodchikoff
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Design Feature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Post Soviet Space

This article investigates how states can begin to cooperate and form bilateral relationships given severe barriers to cooperation. Certain issues can prevent cooperation from occurring despite strategic interests in doing so by both states. However, if states agree to use the institutional design feature of territorial or issue neutralization, then conflict can be averted even if some of the major hindrances to cooperation remains unresolved. I examine in greater detail how both territorial and issue neutralization are used as institutional designs feature in building a cooperative bilateral relationship. Through two major case studies, the self-imposed territorial neutralization of Finland in its relations with the Soviet Union as well as issue neutralization in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union, I am able to show that territorial and issue neutralization may be effective tools for resolving conflict in the post-Soviet space and could create cooperative relationships instead of conflictual ones.

Choice in the West

1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Working Out

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.

The Communist Contest for Status

2019 ◽  
pp. 82-133
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
Alexei Shevchenko
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Competition ◽  
The West ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
The Us ◽  
Catch Up

This chapter argues that both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) pursued social competition with the Western states while at the same time seeking recognition from the states they were trying to subvert. Stalin sought to increase the power and prestige of the Soviet state through coerced industrialization, and Khrushchev made an effort to “catch up and surpass” the West in economic production. The PRC sought to improve its status by allying with the Soviet Union, but the Chinese chafed under their status as “younger brothers” to their senior ally, and eventually Mao challenged the Soviets for leadership of the international communist movement. In the 1970s, China took advantage of the US need to balance Soviet military power by putting aside communist ideology to become a tacit ally of the United States, part of a “strategic triangle.”

scholarly journals One for all, each on its own: Analysing the post-Soviet system of collective security

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-110
Author(s):  
David Erkomaishvili
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
Subsequent Transformation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
Post Soviet Space

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 allowed independent states, which emerged in its place, to construct their own alignments. The choice of the case for empirical analysis had been made based on several unique characteristics. Orthodox Alliance Theory had almost never properly addressed alignments in the post-Soviet space due to the lack of access to information during the Soviet period - along with the structure of the state: only Soviet alignment policies were taken into consideration, instead of those of its constituent republics as well - and modest interest of alliance theorists in the region. Continued disintegration of the post-Soviet space, which has not stopped with the collapse of the Soviet Union but keeps fragmenting further, creates a unique setting for researching the adequacy of Alliance Theory's classic assumptions as well as developing new approaches. This work traces the development of the post-Soviet system of collective security and its subsequent transformation into a series of bilateral security relations, along with the shortfall of multilateralism.

Shaping the postwar balance of power: multilateralism in NATO

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 633-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Weber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Multilateral Organization ◽  
John Ruggie

At the end of the 1940s, the United States and several West European states allied to defend themselves against invasion by the Soviet Union. Balance-ofpower theory predicts the recurrent formation of such balances among states. But it says little about the precise nature of the balance, the principles on which it will be constructed, or its institutional manifestations. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been a peculiar mix. As a formal institution, NATO has through most of its history been distinctly nonmultilateral, with the United States commanding most decision-making power and responsibility. At the same time, NATO provided security to its member states in a way that strongly reflected multilateral principles. Within NATO, security was indivisible. It was based on a general organizing principle, the principle that the external boundaries of alliance territory were completely inviolable and that an attack on any border was an attack on all. Diffuse reciprocity was the norm. In the terms set out by John Ruggie, NATO has generally scored low as a multilateral organization but high as an institution of multilateralism.

Punk in Russia: From the “Declassed Elements” to the Class Struggle

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Gololobov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Right

This chapter discusses the evolution of punk in Russia since its inception at the end of the 1970s. It pays particular attention to the changing perception of class belonging and the political engagement of the punk scene in Russia. Whereas in the West punk was a political movement closely associated with its working-class background, in the Soviet Union it emerged as a protest of middle-class intellectuals fighting for the right to be different and to stand out from the uniformed workers’ and peasants’ collective. This defined the particular stand of early Russian punk toward the genre’s social engagement and political appeal. Working-classness and political commitment—initial conditions of punk identity in the West—became something early Russian punk was positioned against. The dramatic transformation of Russian society over the following decades inevitably affected the cultural ideology of Russian punk, and from the 1990s onward it had to find its place and defend its significant difference amid the realities of “wild” neoliberal capitalism. The chapter shows how in Russia punk evolved from being a highly individualistic and apolitical practice to one of the most radical and politically committed scenes, closely affiliated with other struggles on the Left.

Prokofiev, Soviet Influence, and the Music World in Stalinist Central Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 405-422
Author(s):  
David G. Tompkins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sergei Prokofiev ◽  
The West ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Definition Of

In the aftermath of World War II, the Red Army as a symbol of power was supported in many other arenas so as to counteract the rival influence of the United States on Central Europe. The Soviet Union brought new urgency to these efforts from 1948, with music—and culture more broadly—providing a case for Russia’s attractiveness and superiority with respect to the West. This chapter discusses the nature and scope of Soviet influence in the Central European music world through the examples of East Germany and Poland, and through the prism of the music and persona of Sergei Prokofiev. After his return to the USSR in 1936, Prokofiev, along with Shostakovich, became associated with the very definition of what made music Soviet and thus worthy of emulation. And even more than Shostakovich, Prokofiev and his music functioned as powerful but malleable symbols that could be appropriated by all Soviet actors for their own ends.

The continuing threat of nuclear war

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Cirincione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Winter

The American poet Robert Frost famously mused on whether the world will end in fire or in ice. Nuclear weapons can deliver both. The fire is obvious: modern hydrogen bombs duplicate on the surface of the earth the enormous thermonuclear energies of the Sun, with catastrophic consequences. But it might be a nuclear cold that kills the planet. A nuclear war with as few as 100 hundred weapons exploded in urban cores could blanket the Earth in smoke, ushering in a years-long nuclear winter, with global droughts and massive crop failures. The nuclear age is now entering its seventh decade. For most of these years, citizens and officials lived with the constant fear that long-range bombers and ballistic missiles would bring instant, total destruction to the United States, the Soviet Union, many other nations, and, perhaps, the entire planet. Fifty years ago, Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, On the Beach, portrayed the terror of survivors as they awaited the radioactive clouds drifting to Australia from a northern hemisphere nuclear war. There were then some 7000 nuclear weapons in the world, with the United States outnumbering the Soviet Union 10 to 1. By the 1980s, the nuclear danger had grown to grotesque proportions. When Jonathan Schell’s chilling book, The Fate of the Earth, was published in 1982, there were then almost 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled with a destructive force equal to roughly 20,000 megatons (20 billion tons) of TNT, or over 1 million times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile system was supposed to defeat a first-wave attack of some 5000 Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 missile warheads streaking over the North Pole. ‘These bombs’, Schell wrote, ‘were built as “weapons” for “war”, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man’.

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