“But the Story Was True”: A Research Note on Canadian Intelligence Activities in Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Andrews Sayle
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Future Study ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
International Commission ◽  
International History ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
And Control ◽  
New Evidence

Recently declassified records reveal new information and confirm old assumptions about Canadian intelligence activities in Vietnam during the 1950s and 1960s. These records are now available online at Canada Declassified. This research note describes the new evidence and considers its implications for existing historiography regarding Canada and the International Commission for Supervision and Control and Canadian policy towards the American war in Vietnam. It suggests new opportunities for research on Canadian intelligence activities during the Cold War. More broadly, the note responds to the discussion in the Canadian Historical Review’s December 2015 issue (volume 96, number 4) regarding the future study of Canada’s diplomatic history and international action by suggesting that Canadian intelligence activities should be considered by scholars crafting narratives of Canadian international history.

Reality Check: Revising Theories of International Politics in Response to the End of the Cold War

1998 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 650-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Wohlforth
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Natural Focus ◽  
Unexpected Event ◽  
Reality Check ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
New Evidence

The end of the cold war has produced a sustained debate on international relations theory. Some scholars argue that the unexpected and unexpectedly peaceful demise of the post-World War II international order undermines the entire research agenda of the subfield; others maintain that it warrants an adjustment of the balance between theories or theoretical traditions; and still others hold that it has little or no relevance to theory. This essay reviews the debate in light of the new evidence that has accumulated over the past five years. It finds that because scholars rarely make the empirical implications of their arguments explicit, the cascade of new information concerning the event cannot advance the debate. However, the natural focus provided by a sudden and unexpected event of seminal importance and the outpouring of new data suggest the possibility of empirically driven progress in one's understanding of change in world politics. The article concludes with guidelines designed to increase the likelihood of such progress by clarifying the debate in advance of new releases of primary data.

TICAD: The Context of Japan’s Development Aids to Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayokunle Olumuyiwa Omobowale
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Development ◽  
Development Assistance ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Usual Practice ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
And Control

Most of the discourse on development aid in Africa has been limited to assistance from Western countries and those provided by competing capitalist and socialist blocs during the Cold war era. Japan, a nation with great economic and military capabilities; its development assistance for Africa is encapsulated in the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) initiative. The TICAD started in 1993 and Japan has so far held 5 TICAD meetings between 1993 and 2013 during which Africa’s development challenges and Japan’s development assistance to the continent were discussed. The emphasis on “ownership”, “self-help” and “partnership” are major peculiar characteristics of Japan’s development aid that puts the design, implementation and control of development projects under the control of recipient countries. This is a major departure from the usual practice in international development assistance where recipient countries are bound by clauses that somewhat puts the control of development aid in the hands of the granting countries. Such binding clauses have often been described as inimical to the successful administration of the aids and development in recipient countries. Though Japan’s development aid to Africa started only in 1993, by the 2000s, Japan was the topmost donor to Africa. This paper examines the context of Japan’s development aid to Africa by analyzing secondary data sourced from literature and secondary statistics.

The Rudolf Slánský Affair: New Evidence

Slavic Review ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Lukes
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Socialist Economy ◽  
International Capital ◽  
The West ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
General Secretary

Rudolf Slánský's arrest in November 1951 by Statni bezpecnost (StB), the Czechoslovak secret police, his Kafkaesque trial a year later, and his execution caused a sensation during the early years of the Cold War. For a full week, the trial could be followed live on the radio in Prague. The transcript of the proceedings was published and widely distributed. Yet the affair remained a mystery. Slánský, until recently the general secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC), and thirteen of his colleagues, all of them lifelong party members, confessed to crimes of high treason against the Prague government, espionage on behalf of the west, and sabotage of the socialist economy. In tired, monotonous voices, they described their lives as being motivated by their hatred of the CPC and loyalty to such sponsors as the Gestapo, Zionism, western intelligence services, and international capital. In their final speeches, all the defendants demanded that the court impose upon them the death penalty. The judge disappointed only three—they received life sentences. Slánský and ten others were executed in December 1952.

Soviet-Brazilian Relations and the Cuban Missile Crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-209
Author(s):  
James G. Hershberg
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Ministry ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The U.S

Using materials from the Russian Foreign Ministry archive in Moscow (combined with previously obtained Brazilian and U.S. sources), this research note presents fresh evidence about Soviet-Brazilian relations and the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, supplementing a detailed, two-part article published in the Journal of Cold War Studies in 2004 exploring Brazil's secret mediation between John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro at the height of the crisis. The new evidence illuminates a previously hidden “double game” that Brazil's president, João Goulart, played during the crisis as he alternated between meetings with the U.S. ambassador and Nikita Khrushchev's recently arrived envoy (Brazil and the Soviet Union had just restored diplomatic relations after a fifteen-year break). The new evidence from Moscow suggests that Goulart, who vowed solidarity with Washington and even toasted Kennedy's “victory” when talking to the U.S. ambassador, took a completely different approach when speaking to Soviet officials, expressing strong sympathy and even support for Khrushchev.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Rebecca Lissner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
New Information ◽  
Strategic Adjustment ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
The Cold War

More than 75 years after the end of World War II, military interventions—rather than major wars—have emerged as a defining feature of contemporary geopolitics. Yet, for all the fierce policy debates over interventions and their lessons, scholars have largely ignored the systematic linkages between these smaller-scale wars and transformations in the grand strategies of states that prosecute them. This book develops a new theory—the informational theory of strategic adjustment—to explain why military interventions can be crucibles of grand strategy. It argues that, by prosecuting a military intervention, states glean rich and rare information about adversaries’ capabilities and intentions, as well as their own military power and cost tolerance. The uniquely costly nature of warfighting renders this data particularly credible. Amidst background conditions of intense interstate competition and pervasive uncertainty, states face strong incentives to reassess their grand strategies in light of this new information. This process of grand strategic updating begins with a reassessment of the strategic assumptions directly tested on the battlefield, but it doesn’t end there. Indeed, the grand strategic effects of military interventions are far-reaching because information conveyed via warfighting is widely extrapolated to related strategic assessments. This book demonstrates the plausibility of the informational theory of strategic adjustment in three historically detailed case studies that trace the evolution of American grand strategy over the course of the Cold War and into the early post–Cold War era: the Korean, Vietnam, and First Gulf Wars.

Sexing up the Cold War: New Evidence on the Molotov–Truman Talks of April 1945

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
New Evidence

Philatelic Propaganda: U.S. Postage Stamps during the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-201
Author(s):  
Matin Modarressi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Postage Stamps ◽  
The Cold War

Throughout the Cold War, the leading powers used postage stamps to promote their foreign policy goals. This brief research note cites illustrative examples of U.S. and Cuban postage stamps and discusses how and why they were produced.

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