IN THIS ISSUE

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Melber
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Intellectual Capacity ◽  
Development Goals

It is no news to anybody that the power structures in our world have considerably shifted during the last quarter of a century. Glasnost and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union towards the end of the 1980s brought an end to the bipolar world dominated by the East-West conflict and the Cold War since the aftermath of World War II. The end of the Soviet bloc also paved the way towards an appeasement strategy inthe Southern African sub-region. What was praised as "the end of history", meaning the ultimate victory of capitalism as the uncontested mode of production structuring societies (and classes), however, led to an only short-lived sole hegemony of the main Western powers and in particular the United States (US) during the 1990s. These were the days when 'good governance' became the terminology of a crusade against which regimes were measured and judged. The criteria were based on Western capitalist notions of development as conceptualised and imposed by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). But as we know, little changed for many towards the better. The problem of affordable access to higher education, a demand erupting these days forcefully on South African campuses, was not least enhanced through policy recommendations in the 1990s, which neglected such investment in the social and intellectual capacity of countries and their people.1) While old conflicts were solved, new conflicts and ideologicalbattlefields emerged. The rise of China as the world's next superpower marked the beginning of the 21st century, and the shock waves sent through the world with 9/11 opened a new era of "war against terror", in which human rights were the first victim. Development and security became integral elements of a global governance system, which since the turn of the century set paradigmatic frameworks, first with the Millennium Development Goals and now with the Sustainable Development Goals, while continuous efforts to achieve agreed measures to curb carbon emissions and bring environmental degradation and climate change to a halt have remained futile efforts. The tokenism so far only shows that governments continue to remain loyal to their own agendas. Guided by such shortsightedness,  they do not act in solidarity with humanity as an integral part of nature and habitat to increase the chances for survival. Profit maximisation at all costs remains the ultimate goal even if in the long term at too high a price. 

scholarly journals Friends – of a Kind: America and its Allies in the Second World War Mary E. Glantz, FDR and the Soviet Union: The President's Battles Over Foreign Policy (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2005, $34.95). Pp. 253. ISBN 0 7006 1365 X. Steven Merritt Miner, Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, $55.00). Pp. 407. ISBN 0 8078 2736 3. Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and American Against the Axis Powers 1940–1945 (London and New York: Hodder Arnold, 2005, £25.00). Pp. 291. ISBN 0 340 72026 3. David Stone, War Summits: The Meetings that Shaped World War II and the Postwar World (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005, $29.95). Pp. 304. ISBN 1 57488 901 X.

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-644
Author(s):  
MARTIN H. FOLLY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

The Second World War continues to be an attractive subject for scholars and even more so for those writing for a general readership. One of the more traditional areas of focus has been the ‘Big Three’ – the alliance of the United States with Britain and the Soviet Union. Public interest in the three leaders – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – remains high, and their decisions continue to resonate in the post-Cold War era, as demonstrated by continued (and often ahistorical) references to the decisions made at the Yalta Conference. Consequently, while other aspects of Second World War historiography have pushed into new avenues of exploration, that which has looked at the Grand Alliance has followed fairly conventional lines – the new Soviet bloc materials have been trawled to answer old questions and using the frames of reference that developed during the Cold War. This has left much to be said about the nature of the relationship of the United States with its great allies and the dynamics and processes of that alliance, and overlooked full and rounded analysis of the role of that alliance as the instrument of Axis defeat.

The Truth About Friendship Treaties: Behind The Iron Curtain

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Selvage
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Cold War

The basic, legal building blocks for the Soviet sphere of influence during the Cold War were the bilateral ‘Treaties of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance’ between the states of East Central Europe and the Soviet Union. Germany was the main potential enemy, but the treaties also applied to any state allied with it or any third state in general – most importantly, the United States. This article traces the evolution of the East Central European states' limited sovereignty from the origins of the friendship-treaty system during World War II through to its final reformulation in the mid-1970s. In terms of the Soviet bloc friendship treaties, one can speak of three periodsm the first of which began with the establishment of the system of friendship treaties under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, 1943–1948, and ended with his death in 1953. A second period began after Stalin's death in 1953 and the eventual assumption of power by Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, whose removal ushered in a third and final period for the friendship-treaty system under his successor, Leonid Brezhnev.

Exploiting the Exiles: Soviet Émigrés in U.S. Cold War Strategy

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simo Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the abortive U.S. government effort to organize Soviet émigrés after World War II. After years of a lack of interest on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Soviet émigrés and émigré politics came to the fore with the onset of the Cold War. The U.S. government sought to use émigrés in political and psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc. The many studies that have looked at Cold War-era psychological warfare have largely ignored U.S. plans to enlist Soviet émigrés on the West's behalf. Attempts to create a political forum for anti-Bolshevik Soviet émigrés were broader than have been understood thus far, revealing important information about the postwar emigration from the Soviet Union, the émigrés' role in the Cold War in general, and the development of U.S. Cold War strategies in relation to the émigrés.

Cold War Exiles and the CIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Home Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

Labor’s Cold Warriors: The American Federation of Labor and “Free Trade Unionism” in Cold War Japan

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 207-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gerteis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
United States Government ◽  
American Federation Of Labor ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
American Federation

AbstractDuring the 1950s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) led a global covert attempt to suppress left-led labor movements in Western Europe, the Mediterranean, West Africa, Central and South America, and East Asia. American union leaders argued that to survive the Cold War, they had to demonstrate to the United States government that organized labor was not part-and-parcel with Soviet communism. The AFL’s global mission was placed in care of Jay Lovestone, a founding member of the American Communist Party in 1921 and survivor of decades of splits and internecine battles over allegiance to one faction or another in Soviet politics before turning anti-Communist and developing a secret relation with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after World War II. Lovestone’s idea was that the AFL could prove its loyalty by helping to root out Communists from what he perceived to be a global labor movement dominated by the Soviet Union. He was the CIA’s favorite Communist turned anti-Communist.

Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala: The Soviet Union, the United Nations, and “Hemispheric Solidarity”

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Denise Getchell
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Cold War

This article reevaluates the U.S.-backed coup in 1954 that overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The coup is generally portrayed as the opening shot of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere and a watershed moment for U.S.–Latin American relations, when the United States supplanted its Good Neighbor Policy with a hardline anti-Communist approach. Despite the extensive literature on the coup, the Soviet Union's perspectives on the matter have received scant discussion. Using Soviet-bloc and United Nations (UN) archival sources, this article shows that Latin American Communists and Soviet sympathizers were hugely influential in shaping Moscow's perceptions of hemispheric relations. Although regional Communists petitioned the Soviet Union to provide support to Árbenz, officials in Moscow were unwilling to prop up what they considered a “bourgeois-democratic” revolution tottering under the weight of U.S. military pressure. Soviet leaders were, however, keen to use their position on the UN Security Council to challenge the authority of the Organization of American States and undermine U.S. conceptions of “hemispheric solidarity.” The coup, moreover, revealed the force of anti-U.S. nationalism in Latin America during a period in which Soviet foreign policy was in flux and the Cold War was becoming globalized.

Military Technology Races

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vally Koubi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Distribution ◽  
Strategic Defense ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Military

Because of the nature of modern weapons, significant innovations in arms technology have the potential to induce dramatic changes in the international distribution of power. Consider, for example, the “strategic defense initiative” (SDI), a program initiated by the United States in the early 1980s. Had the program been successfully completed, it might have led to a substantial devaluation of Soviet nuclear capabilities and put the United States in a very dominant position. It should not then come as a surprise that interstate rivalry, especially among super powers, often takes the form of a race for technological superiority. Mary Acland-Hood claims that although the United States and the Soviet Union together accounted for roughly half of the world's military expenditures in the early 1980s, their share of world military research and development (R&D) expenditures was about 80 percent. As further proof of the perceived importance of R&D, note that whereas the overall U.S. defense budget increased by 38 percent (from $225.1 billion to $311.6 billion in real terms) from 1981 to 1987, military R&D spending increased by 100 percent (from $20.97 billion to $41.96 billion). Moreover, before World War II military R&D absorbed on average less than 1 percent of the military expenditure of major powers, but since then it has grown to 11–13 percent. The emphasis on military technology is bound to become more pronounced in the future as R&D becomes the main arena for interstate competition.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Afghanistan: Martial Society Without Military Rule

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amin Tarzi
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Military

Since its inception as a separate political entity in 1747, Afghanistan has been embroiled in almost perpetual warfare, but it has never been ruled directly by the military. From initial expansionist military campaigns to involvement in defensive, civil, and internal consolidation campaigns, the Afghan military until the mid-19th century remained mainly a combination of tribal forces and smaller organized units. The central government, however, could only gain tenuous monopoly over the use of violence throughout the country by the end of the 19th century. The military as well as Afghan society remained largely illiterate and generally isolated from the prevailing global political and ideological trends until the middle of the 20th century. Politicization of Afghanistan’s military began in very small numbers after World War II with Soviet-inspired communism gaining the largest foothold. Officers associated with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were instrumental in two successful coup d’états in the country. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ending the country’s sovereignty and ushering a period of conflict that continues to the second decade of the 21st century in varying degrees. In 2001, the United States led an international invasion of the country, catalyzing efforts at reorganization of the smaller professional Afghan national defense forces that have remained largely apolitical and also the country’s most effective and trusted governmental institution.

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