Desert Dreams of Drinking the Sea, Consumed by the Cold War: Transnational Flows of Desalination and Energy from the Pacific to the Persian Gulf

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Christopher Low
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Saline Water ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Original Target ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, from the early 1950s through the 1970s, the US Office of Saline Water was instrumental in spearheading the basic research and development that incubated the desalting techniques we see today. American technical assistance programs were fundamental to the growth of desalination capacity in the Middle East and its eventual globalisation. However, the federal government's original target for desalination was southern California and the arid Southwest. Desalination was proposed as the emergency backstop in the event that California's unquenchable thirst would inevitably overtax the dams of the Colorado River. And yet, American desalination never fully came to fruition. Instead, the promise of domestic desalination was co-opted and cannibalised by Cold War foreign policy. This essay traces how the Office of Saline Water's domestic desalination plans were repackaged and exported to Israel and Saudi Arabia. This essay considers how and why the United States slipped from the vanguard of desalination research while the Middle East emerged as its global leader. By connecting and comparing the divergent experiences of the American West and the Middle East, it also sheds new light on the nexus between the production of desalinated water and its key ingredient, energy.

Surveying the Revolutionary Arc

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-325
Author(s):  
Guy Laron
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Third World ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Population ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

In the last decade, influenced by current economic trends, Cold War historians have made an effort to de-center the story of the Cold War. They have shifted their gaze from the center of the conflict—the face-offs in Europe between the Soviet Union and the United States—and cast an observing eye on the Third World. Unlike many Middle East historians who seek to understand the Middle East in terms of its unique cultures, languages, and religions, Cold War historians treat that area as part of a revolutionary arc that stretched from the jungles of Latin America to the jungles of Vietnam. Rather than emphasizing the region's singularity, they focus on the themes that united guerilla fighters in the West Bank and the Makong Delta as well as leaders from Havana to Damascus: anticolonial and anti-imperial struggles, the yearning for self-definition, and the fight against what Third World revolutionaries perceived as economic exploitation. The sudden interest in what was considered, until recently, the periphery of the Cold War has undoubtedly been fueled by the zeitgeist of a new century in which the so-called peripheral regions are set to become more dominant economically. Southeast and Southwest Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East have a surplus of young skilled workers who are increasingly in demand by the global economy as the growth of world population slows and more prosperous countries in West Europe and North America are graying fast. The Third World consists today of the very regions where most of the economic growth in coming decades will take place. Dependency theory has gone topsy-turvy: leading economists now look with hope at countries such as China, India, Turkey, and Egypt and expect them to become the new engines of global growth. It is not surprising, then, that historians are now taking a stronger interest in the tangled history of the Cold War in the Third World and discovering the agency that these countries always had.

The United States at the End of the Cold War, 1989–1993

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Graham Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Military Campaign

The Cold War may have ended on the evening of November 9, 1989, when East German border guards opened up checkpoints and allowed their fellow citizens to stream into West Berlin; it certainly was over by January 28, 1992, when U.S. president George H. W. Bush delivered his annual State of the Union Address one month after President Mikhail Gorbachev had announced his resignation and the end of the Soviet Union. After the Berlin Wall came down, Bush and Gorbachev spoke of the Cold War in the past tense in person and on the telephone. The reunification of Germany and U.S. military campaign in the Persian Gulf confirmed that reality. In January 1991, polls indicated that, for the first time, a majority of Americans believed that the Cold War was over. However, the poll results obscured the substantial foreign and domestic crises, challenges, and opportunities created by the end of the Cold War that occupied President Bush and his national-security team between November 1989 and Bush’s defeat in the 1992 presidential inauguration and the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as America’s first post–Cold War president in January 1993.

scholarly journals Problems of international governance in the middle east during the cold war period

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (49) ◽  
pp. 101-108
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Fisanov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The article is devoted to little-known aspects of the political and military developments in the Middle East during the Cold War – from the division of Palestine into two states and until the mid-1950s. The focus is on the confrontation between the two superpowers of the United States and the USSR for their influence on Arab countries. This article uses little-known documentary material, as well as the display of some of the described international events in contemporary film documentaries. It was clarified that in the investigated period the first steps of the policy of large foreign military aid and cooperation on development issues in the Middle East were carried out, first of all, on the part of the USSR and the USA. It was emphasized in particular that then two international coalitions were formed – the monarchical Arab regimes and Israel were supported by the official Washington, and the national revolutionary regimes, where the military forces came to power (Egypt, Syria), cooperated with Moscow. Keywords: Middle East, Great Britain, USA, USSR, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Cold War, supply of weapons, digital cinema collections

The Sultan's Communists

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alma Rachel Heckman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

Structured around the stories of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Asssidon), The Sultan’s Communists examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly independent Morocco. It also explores how Communism facilitated the participation of Moroccan Jews in Morocco’s national liberation struggle with roots in the mass upheavals of the interwar and WWII periods. Alma Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and ’60s, and how Communist Jews survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy. These stories unfold in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War all while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. Heckman’s manuscript contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East, filling in the gaps on the Jewish history of 20th-century Morocco as no other previous book has done.

3. The Cold War in the Middle East

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Sluglett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how the Cold War affected the states of the Middle East. More specifically, it considers the evidence of which factors drove regional developments and how it has been contested by both international relations and regional scholars. After providing an overview of the immediate origins of the Cold War, the chapter discusses the role played by oil during the Cold War. It then analyses early manifestations of the rivalry between the Soviets and the United States in Greece, Turkey, and Iran at the beginning of the Cold War, and uses Iraq as a case study of the changing nature of the relations between a Middle Eastern state and both superpowers from the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Finally, it evaluates the overall impact of the Cold War on the Middle East as a whole.

The Clinton Administration and the Americas: The Postwar Rhythm and Blues

1996 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Pastor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
George Bush ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
The People ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Cold War

For 40 years, the United States was so fearful of a thermonuclear bang that it barely noticed the whimper when the Cold War ended. There was not even any agreement on the date of the war’s end. Still, the people of the United States sensed its eagle had completed a great adventure and was returning to its nest, and that’s where they wanted it.President George Bush was more sensitive to the shift in the balance of power in the Persian Gulf than to the swing in US mood. His quick success in the Persian Gulf lifted his popularity to a zenith, making his reelection defeat the next year all the more painful and seemingly inexplicable.

scholarly journals The Middle East Policy of America after the Cold War

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Kübra Dilek Azman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Middle East Policy ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Policy Discourses

The aim of this study is to discuss the Middle East policy of the United States’ (U.S.) after the Cold War. In the period following the Cold War, the Middle East has been a place that the U.S’ has projected upon as if it were its own private land. This is an attractive and important issue for political research area. In briefly, it can be divided the policies of the U.S. in the post-Cold War concerning the Middle East into three just like a tripod and these are security, economy and politics. Firstly, eliminate the danger of radical Islamic groups, especially war against to acts of terrorism, secondly; controlling oil and energy resources and the finally is ensuring the security of Israel state. This paper will examine the September 11 attacks and the U.S. Greater Middle East Project and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In that period U.S. tend to use the hard power. Than after this period, new President Barack Obama has changed the American Middle East policy discourses. The Obama’s foreign policy discourses show us that he is tend to use soft power instruments. This study argues that the U.S. foreign policy in Middle East after the Cold War has changed periodically. However the aim of Middle East policy of the U.S.’ has not changed, but the policy instruments have been changed from hard power to soft power Then, the question has been raised about the whether the U.S. will be success or not with this new policy. These concerning issues are going to be discussed.

scholarly journals The Middle East Policy of America during the Cold War

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Tülin Tuna
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Middle East Policy

Abstract This article aims to explain the Middle East policy of America during the cold war. The structure of international politics has changed after World War II. Two new powers, the United States of America and the Soviet Russia, have dominated the world politics. In this period, the Middle East was of great importance for the United States economically, politically and strategically. The United States has been struggling to prevent a power threatening the interests of the West from controlling or dominating the Middle East. Especially in the period after 1945, it has been responsive to the Soviet Union’s developing control or influence over the region. In the present article, the importance of the Middle East for the United States is going to be emphasized first. Then, the doctrines called by the names of the US presidents and some conflicts and depressions experienced in this period are going to be discussed. Key Words: the Middle East policy of USA, the Cold War, Doctrines. 

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