Will New Blood in the Leadership Produce New Blood on the Battlefield? The Impact of Regime Changes on Middle East Military Rivalries

2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Tures
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

The Middle East has witnessed a recent spate of alterations in rulers and regimes. These new leaders are coming to power in countries having a history of international conflict with other states in the region. Will the change in government exacerbate interstate crises, producing disputes and wars? Or will the nascent leadership steer their countries to peace, choosing instead to focus on an internal consolidation of power? To answer this question, this article examines the theories of foreign policy behavior of new leaders. It discusses the results of a quantitative analysis of an earlier time frame: the initial years of the Cold War. The article then conducts a series of case study analyses of contemporary times to determine if the theory and prior statistical tests remain valid. The results show that new administrations are more likely to target rivals with a threat, display, or limited use of force. Such incoming leaders, however, seem reluctant to drag their countries into a full-scale war. These findings hold for a variety of countries in a number of different contexts. Such results are relevant for Middle East scholars, conflict mediators, as well as American foreign policymakers who seem to have adopted a taste for regime change in the region.

scholarly journals Swedish Media Research in the Service of Psychological Defence During the Cold War?

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Peter Jakobsson ◽  
Fredrik Stiernstedt
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Methodological Development ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Research ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Media And Communication

AbstractIn this article, we address the history of Nordic media research through a case study of the formation of media research in Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s and the role that The Board for Psychological Defence played in the formation of Swedish academic media research during the Cold War era. Based on archival research, we find that the impact of the psychological defence on Swedish media research was mainly concentrated to one Swedish university, and that the impact on the theoretical and methodological development of the discipline has been rather limited. This distinguishes the Swedish case from what has been argued in historical research on the development of media and communication research in the US.

‘The Timpani Beats Just Hit on My Heart!’ Music, Memory, and Diplomacy in the Philadelphia Orchestra's 1973 China Tour

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-418
Author(s):  
BESS XINTONG LIU
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Musical Diplomacy

AbstractThis article examines the underexplored history of the 1973 Philadelphia Orchestra China tour and retheorizes twentieth-century musical diplomacy as a process of ritualization. As a case study, I consult bilingual archives and incorporate interviews with participants in this event, which brings together individual narratives and public opinions. By contextualizing this musical diplomacy in the Cold War détente and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I argue for the complex set of relations mobilized by Western art music in 1973. This tour first created a sense of co-dependency between musicians and politicians. It also engaged Chinese audiences by revitalizing pre-Cultural Revolution sonic memories. Second, I argue that the significance of the 1973 Orchestra tour lies in the ritualization of Western art music as diplomatic etiquette, based on further contextualization of this event in the historical trajectory of Sino-US relations and within the entrenched Chinese ideology of liyue (ritual and music).

Central Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 600-616
Author(s):  
Árpád von Klimó
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Religious Landscape

Central Europe is still imagined as an area dominated by Christianity, for the most part the Catholic Church, in close alliance with Christian rulers who minimized the impact of both the Protestant Reformation and minorities such as Judaism. This idea rests, however, on an oversimplified picture of the religious history of the region. Recent research has shown that the reality was more complex, and that historians still know very little about what the overwhelming majority of people believed or how they practised their religion. Christianity has never completely monopolized the religious landscape of Central Europe and has itself been constantly changing. The history of Christianization, Reformation, empires, and nationalism present in Central Europe as well as state socialism, the Cold War and today’s relative pluralism give an idea of this complexity.

Europe and the Arab-Israel Conflict: A Survey

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Paul-Marie de La Gorce
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
European Community ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

With France in the lead, the European Community in 1996 seemed on the verge of cautiously asserting a more independent role in the Middle East peace process. This is in marked contrast to Europe's passive role for more than a decade following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and especially since the Gulf War, a period during which France and other major European powers acquiesced in U.S. domination of Arab-Israeli peace issues. Reviewing the history of European initiatives and absences during the cold war era, the author examines whether Europe now has the determination to chart its own peace policy despite U.S. and Israeli antagonism to its involvement.

Contemporary Lao Buddhism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrice Ladwig
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Lao Pdr ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indochina War

Lao Buddhism’s histories are deeply fragmented. Most Lao were deported to Siam in the nineteenth century, and after the demise of the French colonial regime, the country was drawn into the Second Indochina War. After two decades of brutal warfare and massive destructions, the Lao communist movement took power in 1975. This chapter examines the history of Lao Buddhism in the context of these events, and puts its main focus on the entanglement of religion and politics in the postcolonial phase, as the political polarization of the Lao sangha during the Cold War and the impact of the subsequent revolution remain crucial for understanding Buddhism’s position in the current Lao PDR. While under reformed socialism there has been a resurgence of Buddhism in the last two decades, the social and religious transformations resulting from rapid modernization through the capitalist economy and globalization bring new challenges for the Lao sangha.

The politics of phosphorus-32: A cold war fable based on fact

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN KRIGE
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Atomic Energy Commission ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT In July 1949, and again in January 1950 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission shipped useful amounts of the short-lived isotope phosphorus-32 to a sanatorium in Trieste, Italy. They were used to treat a patient who had a particularly malignant kind of brain tumor. This distribution of isotopes abroad for medical and research purposes was hotly contested by Commissioner Lewis Strauss, and led to a bruising confrontation between him and J. Robert Oppenheimer. This paper describes the debates surrounding the foreign isotope program inside the Commission and in the U.S. Congress. In parallel, it presents an imagined, but factually-based story of the impact of isotope therapy on the patient and his doctor in Trieste, a city on the Italian-Yugoslavian border that was at the heart of the cold war struggle for influence between the U.S. and the USSR. It weaves together the history of science, institutional history, diplomatic history, and cultural history into a fable that draws attention to the importance of the peaceful atom for winning hearts and minds for the West. The polemics surrounding the distribution of isotopes to foreign countries may have irreversibly soured relationships between Oppenheimer and Strauss, and played into the scientist's loss of his security clearance. But, as those who supported the program argued, it was an important instrument for projecting a positive image of America among a scientifc elite abroad, and for consolidating its alliance with friendly nations in the early years of the cold war——or so the fable goes.

The Middle Eastern Cold War: Unique Dynamics in a Questionable Regional Framework

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-322
Author(s):  
Jeffrey James Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
International History ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Ideological Identity

One of the more prominent themes to emerge from this roundtable is the desire to integrate the history of the modern Middle East with broader trends in international history, particularly with regard to the recent emphasis on “decentralizing” and “globalizing” the Cold War narrative. My own research interests are consistent with this approach, as one of the central concerns of my current project is to show how Algeria's revolutionary nationalists defied the regional categories imposed on them from the outside by pursuing overlapping diplomatic initiatives under the rubrics of Maghribi unity, African unity, Arab unity, Afro-Asianism, and Third Worldism. After independence in 1962, the Algerian foreign ministry's main geographical divisions differed significantly from those used by the U.S. State Department—and most history departments’ hiring committees—by dividing the world into “the West,” “the Socialist Countries,” “the Arab World,” “Africa,” and “Latin America/Asia.” These categories were the product of both practical considerations and ideological/identity politics on the part of Algeria's new leaders, and to my mind suggest that the “Middle East” may itself be a particularly arbitrary and misleading geographical framework, even in comparison to other parts of the developing world where European imperialism exerted a heavy cartographical influence.

scholarly journals Scientists of the State, Science of the State, and the State: Austrian and German Public Lawyers in the Short 20th Century Part 1: The Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1945

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Roman Puff
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Biographical Sketches ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

ABSTRACT Between the First World War and the end of the Cold War, Germany and Austria, whose legal cultures were highly interdependent in terms of persons, conceptions, and institutions, saw eleven or twelve fundamentally different regimes, depending on the interpretation of Austria’s status from 1938-45. Lawyers often ensured the legal functioning of these regimes and legitimized their existence. This again affected their notions of law, legality, and justice, and of the principles underlying these concepts, as well as their personal preferences and societal roles. Based on the analysis of about two hundred biographical sketches of Austrian and German lawyers, mostly from the field of public (international) law, of about 2,500 contributions to the leading “(Österreichische) Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht” from 1914 to 1945, and of the respective legal history-literature, this contribution analyzes the relation of Austrian and German lawyers to their respective states and regimes, and outlines the typical patterns of how they were affected by regime changes and how they reacted to them. Proceeding from this analysis, in the second part of this study, the relation between lawyers and the state until the end of the cold war will be illustrated and it will be shown that some typical patterns in the lawyers’ reaction to regime changes can be identified. Also the impact the state-lawyers-relation had on the development of Austria and Germany to stable, functioning democracies will be outlined.

scholarly journals Intervision

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Yulia Yurtaeva
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Administrative Data ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
Basic Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western View ◽  
The Cold War

The research on the “Intervision”, used as an empiric case study about the inter-cultural communication between its participants, consists of examining primary sources spread over several archives throughout Europe to collect structural and administrative data, making interviews with contemporary witnesses and evaluating statistics – with mainly the task to widen the perspective on a subject, that was formerly nation-focused or being described with a Western view only. As the preliminary steps of a basic study on the History of the Program Exchange in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, this research became an example, with which challenges one is confronted within an Media Archaeological task.

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