The New Welfare—Warfare State: Challenges to the Sociological Imagination

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinus Ossewaarde
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Two Sides

C. Wright Mills introduced his concept of the sociological imagination during the Cold War to warn against what he perceived as increasing moral and political indifference and the incapacity of people to relate their own private worlds to world history. Hence, social scientists failed to see that the welfare and peace at home, to which they contributed, were supported by wars waged somewhere far away. The post-Cold War epoch is characterised by new unprecedented challenges raised by neo-liberalism, global capitalism, biotechnology, eugenics, racial hygiene and the biologisation of social policy. The new world is ruled by political, economic and technological forces that closely cooperate with each other and determine world and local histories. The changed social structures also imply that domestic and foreign policies undergo mutations. Yet, they remain the two sides of the same coin, which has now become the neo-liberal objective of unhindered global capitalism. The ‘new’ or ‘updated’ social imagination still strives to unmask hidden powers that justify their dominion.

Democratic peace as global errand

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Dunmire
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Global Mission ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Focusing on the foreign policy discourse of George H. W. Bush and William Clinton, I examine the role the American jeremiad played in conceptualizing the geopolitical change initiated by the ending of the Cold War. I identify “extending the democratic peace” as the nation’s post-Cold War “errand” and argue that this global mission represented the contemporary “re-dedication” of American policy to the nation’s “divine cause.” I demonstrate that a key issue facing the nation was whether the U.S. would reap the benefits of its Cold War victory by extending its political-economic system globally or whether it would turn inward and, thereby, give rein of the future to the forces of “anarchy” and chaos.” As with earlier renditions of the jeremiad, the post-Cold War variant turned this liminal moment into a “mode of socialization” (Bercovitch 2012, 25) by deploying the concept of democratic peace to legitimate an interventionist foreign policy.

scholarly journals Contributions by Canadian Social Scientists to the Study of Soviet Ukraine During the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-52
Author(s):  
Bohdan Harasymiw
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Personal Interest ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Canadian Institute ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Cultural Order ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

This article surveys major publications concerning Ukraine by Canadian social scientists of the Cold War era. While the USSR existed, characterized by the uniformity of its political, economic, social, and cultural order, there was little incentive, apart from personal interest, for social scientists to specialize in their research on any of its component republics, including the Ukrainian SSR, and there was also no incentive to teach about them at universities. Hence there was a dearth of scholarly work on Soviet Ukraine from a social-scientific perspective. The exceptions, all but one of them émigrés—Jurij Borys, Bohdan Krawchenko, Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, Peter J. Potichnyj, Wsevolod Isajiw, and David Marples—were all the more notable. These authors, few as they were, laid the foundation for the study of post-1991 Ukraine, with major credit for disseminating their work going to the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) Press.

scholarly journals Russia, United States and China in South Asian Politics: Implications for Pakistan

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
Iftikhar Ahmad ◽  
Ramzan Shahid
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Regional Factor

End of the Cold War caused a paradigm shift in world politics by converting the bipolar world into a unipolar world with the emergence of the USA as a sole superpower in the field of international politics. Indo-US obnoxious nexus has put the security situation in perils in South Asia. America is in a full endeavor to contain China to halt her everexpanding sphere of influence. Positive and proactive development in PakRussia relations, in the post-Cold War period, has caused ripples in the stagnant waters of political, economic and strategic areas of mutual interest. On the global level Sino-US rivalry in Indian Ocean Region (IOR). While, on the other hand, so far as a regional factor is concerned, Pakistan and China have evolved very cordial and cooperative relations in order to complete China's Belt and Road (BRI) and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pak-Russia relations would go on to enter, from both sides, into complete trust, confidence-building and mutual reliance on each other.

scholarly journals Notes on exhaustionism, the latest moment of the global organic crisis

Race & Class ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030639682110548
Author(s):  
Blake Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
New Left ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Temporal Horizon

This essay seeks to build on the concept of exterminism developed by E. P. Thompson in his 1980 New Left Review essay ‘Notes on exterminism, the last state of civilization’. Thompson’s polemical focus on weapons systems in his analysis was the product of a particular moment in history; one where the most precipitous threat to human security was the Cold War. The concept of exhaustionism developed in this piece describes the governance ideologies and frameworks found within advanced capitalist state/societal complexes in response to the present ‘organic crisis’ of post-Cold War global capitalism; one accelerated by the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic. The exhaustionism of political leadership within the contemporary world order has contributed to widely held assumptions that the collapse of civilisation and the planet is either occurring or imminent. Moreover, it is also implied that it is too late for a novel or fundamental transformation in governing ideology, global governance and political economy to reverse the current predicament. This exhaustionism in many ways mirrors the absurdity and cynicism of the Cold War military technicians and nuclear regimes described by Thompson’s concept of exterminism, but with notable differences related to the host of actors involved, temporal horizon, and emphasis on class, imperialism and supremacism.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

Worse Than a Monolith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Opposing Camp ◽  
The Cold War

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Truth to Power

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War

This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.

Serbia and Croatia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Ejdus
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Small States ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Defence Strategy ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Defence

During the cold war, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was a middle-sized power pursuing a non-aligned foreign policy and a defence strategy based on massive armed forces, obligatory conscription, and a doctrine of ‘Total National Defence’. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in the creation of several small states. Ever since, their defence policies and armed forces have been undergoing a thorough transformation. This chapter provides an analysis of the defence transformation of the two biggest post-Yugoslav states—Serbia and Croatia—since the end of the cold war. During the 1990s, defence transformation in both states was shaped by the undemocratic nature of their regimes and war. Ever since they started democratic transition in 2000, and in spite of their diverging foreign policies, both states have pivoted towards building modern, professional, interoperable, and democratically controlled armed forces capable of tackling both traditional and emerging threats.

Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Coticchia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the bipolar era, Italy has regularly undertaken military interventions around the world, with an average of 8,000 units employed abroad in the twenty-first century. Moreover, Italy is one of the principal contributors to the UN operations. The end of the cold war represented a turning point for Italian defence, allowing for greater military dynamism. Several reforms have been approved, while public opinion changed its view regarding the armed forces. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive perspective of the process of transformation that occurred in post-cold-war Italian defence, looking at the evolution of national strategies, military doctrines, and the structure of forces. After a brief literature review, the study highlights the process of transformation of Italian defeshnce policy since 1989. Through primary and secondary sources, the chapter illustrates the main changes that occurred, the never-ending cold-war legacies, and key challenges.

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia: Maintaining the “Minimal Peace”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhubhindar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
The Cold War

Northeast Asia is usually associated with conflict and war. Out of the five regional order transitions from the Sinocentric order to the present post–Cold War period, only one was peaceful, the Cold War to post–Cold War transition. In fact, the peaceful transition led to a state of minimal peace in post–Cold War Northeast Asia. As the chapter discusses, this was due to three realist-liberal factors: America’s hegemonic role, strong economic interdependence, and a stable institutional structure. These factors not only ensured development and prosperity but also mitigated the negative effects of political and strategic tensions between states. However, this minimal peace is in danger of unraveling. Since 2010, the region is arguably in the early stages of another transition fueled by the worsening Sino-US competition. While the organizing ideas of liberal internationalism—economic interdependence and institutional building—will remain resilient, whether or not minimal peace is sustainable will be determined by the outcome of the US-China competition.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document