South Africa, the United States, and the Racial Politics of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South African ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter examines the relationship between anticommunism and transnational black activism. The racial politics of the United States and South Africa became even more closely interconnected during the early Cold War. The political, economic and military ties that were established between the U.S. and South African governments at this moment dramatically reshaped how African Americans and black South Africans engaged in one another struggles. As the apartheid state positioned themselves as a key bulwark against the spread of communism in Southern Africa, black activists on both sides of the Atlantic mobilized to challenge this relationship.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Cold War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans

This chapter provides an overview of racial politics in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. It traces how African Americans and black South Africans have historically configured their struggles as being interconnected, while documenting how anticommunism limited opportunities for transnational black activism between both countries during the early Cold War.

scholarly journals Testing the inescapable network of mutuality: Albert Luthuli, Martin Luther King Jr and the challenges of post-liberation South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan A. Boesak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Faith Commitment ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethical Stance ◽  
Martin Luther King

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, 50 years ago on 04 April 1968, has been recalled in the United States with memorial services, conferences, public discussions and books. In contrast, the commemoration in 2017 of the death of Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli, 50 years ago on December 1967, passed almost unremarked. That is to our detriment. Yet, these two Christian fighters for freedom, in different contexts, did not only have much in common, but they also left remarkably similar and equally inspiring legacies for South Africa, the United States and the world in the ways they lived their lives in complete faith commitment to ideals and ways of struggle that may guide us in the ongoing struggles to make the world a more just, peacable and humane place. For South African reflections on our ethical stance in the fierce, continuing struggles for justice, dignity and the authenticity of our democracy, I propose that these two leaders should be considered in tandem. We should learn from both. This article engages Martin Luther King Jr’s belief in the ‘inescapable network of mutuality’, applies it to the struggle for freedom in South Africa and explores the ways in which South Africans can embrace these ethical ideals in facing the challenges of post-liberation.

Western Europe

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Etges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
German Question ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter explores the role and experience of Western Europe in the Cold War. It explains that Western Europe is not a precise political or geographical entity, and that its role in the Cold War can only be understood in the context of its changing internal dynamics and changing relationship with the United States, the Soviet Union, and countries of Eastern Europe. The chapter argues that Western Europe both shaped and was shaped by Cold War in a political, economic, military, cultural, and ideological sense, and also considers the German question, Franco-German rapprochement and European integration, and military aspects of the Western alliance.

Apartheid's Bomb and Regional Liberation: Cold War Perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Anna-Mart van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
The South ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
The Cold War

South Africa had a small, highly classified nuclear weapons program that produced a small but potent nuclear arsenal. At the end of the 1980s, as South Africa was nearing a transition to black majority rule, the South African government destroyed its nuclear arsenal and its research facilities connected with nuclear armaments and ballistic missiles. This article, based on archival research in the United States and South Africa, shows that the South African nuclear weapons program has to be understood in the context of the Cold War battlefield that southern Africa became in the mid-1970s. The article illuminates the complex U.S.–South African relationship and explains why the apartheid government in Pretoria sought nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the face of extensive Soviet-bloc aid to black liberation movements in southern Africa, the escalating conflict with Cuban forces and Soviet-backed guerrillas on Namibia's northern frontier, and the attacks waged by the African National Congress from exile. A clear link can be drawn between the apartheid government's quest for a nuclear deterrent, liberation in southern Africa, and the Cold War.

Globalization and its implications for the sovereignty of the State

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Ayad Rashid Mohammed Al-Karim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Political Borders ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

The term globalization was commonly used in the last decade of the 20th century, especially at the end of the Cold War, the resulting collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, as well as the absence of ideological competition. Structural changes in the international environment were the opening of political borders and the unilateralization of the United States The United States as a superpower, which led to the reformulation of its policies towards the countries of the world in such a way that devotes the political, economic and cultural subordination of these countries.

The Endurance of New Deal Liberalism

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plotke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Cold War

The increase in writing by political historians and political scientists about the United States in the 1940s registers concerns aboutorigins– after some major endings, notably of Democratic political predominance and the Cold War. That decade also saw the beginning of serious national efforts at reform in racial politics.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

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