Suchergebnisse

All through the Cold War US foreign policy approached Latin America and the Caribbean through the lens of the East–West confrontation. With the implosion of the Soviet bloc – and the Soviet Union – this approach became outdated. Since then, US foreign policy towards the region has moved through several regional goals, from promoting economic hemispheric integration under the aegis of neoliberal economic policies to fostering so-called market democracies together with fighting drug trafficking. In the aftermath of 9/11, fighting terrorism in the region became the central objective of the US government approach to the rest of the world, with most of policy resources addressed toward regions and actors quite far away from the western hemisphere. While shifting concerns from US foreign policy-makers can be interpreted as downgrading Latin America from a previous higher position in the US government agenda, they can also be understood as enlarging the room for Latin American countries to advance alternative development strategies more in tune with the demands of their populations as well as building or strengthening intra-Latin America agreements at both government and civil society levels – as long as they are not seen by the US government as obstacles to its war against terrorism.

THE AUTHOR SUGGESTS THAT THE MODERN ERA HAS EXPERIENCED SEVEN GREAT WAVES OF REVOLTS. THIS IS NOW SEEN AS INCOMPLETE, WE NOW STAND AT THE CUSP OF THE EIGHTH WAVE OF MODERN REVOLT. INSURGENCY HAS BEEN ONE OF THE MOST PERVASIVE TYPES OF CONFLICT THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND TODAY IS EPIDEMIC, AS IT CONTINUES TO EVOLVE FROM IT'S COLD WAR FORM. FACTORS WILL DRIVE OR FORCE THE EVOLUTION OF INSURGENCY. INTERNATIONALLY, THE MOST OBVIOUS IS THE DEMISE OF THE SOVIET UNION. CHARTING THE DIRECTION OF THIS CHANGE IS COMPLEX. INSURGENCY IS BORN, LIVES AND DIES IN IN A SPECIFIC STRATEGIC, HISTORICAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTEXT. IN THE BROADEST SENSE, IT'S ENVIRONMENT IS OFTEN THE THIRD WORLD. IRONICALLY, THE INCREASING CAPACITY OF THE THIRD WORLD GOVERNMENTS TO PROVIDE GOODS AND SERVICES TO THEIR POPULATIONS CAN ALSO LEAD TO VIOLENCE, MODERNIZATION TENDS TO DESTROY TRADITIONAL VALUE SYTEMS WITHOUT A FULLY DEVELOPED AND APPEALING REPLACEMENT. THE PHYSICAL ENLARGEMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD CHANGED THE CONTEXT OF INSURGENCY. PUT SIMPLY, MUCH OF WHAT WAS ONCE LABELED THE "SECOND WORLD" - THE FORMER SOVIET BLOC - BECAME PART OF THE THIRD WORLD. ALSO DISCUSSED ARE THE TWO DOMINANT FORMS OF INSURGENCIES, AND A CONCLUSION ON WHAT ACTIONS CAN BE TAKEN TO DIFFUSE FUTURE CONFLICTS.

CIS Microfiche Accession Numbers: CIS 88 S401-19 ; Includes bibliographies. ; Microfiche. ; Mode of access: Internet.

My research examined American attitudes towards the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc at the 1960, Squaw Valley Winter Olympics. This includes the press" prevailing attitude in its depictions of American and western European athletes, versus those of Eastern European athletes. Parallels between these and the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games are of especial import; a Cold War era Olympics, on American soil, pitting American capitalism against Soviet communism, where the underdog Americans score an ice hockey victory over the Soviets en route to a gold medal. In 1980 the ice hockey competition was highly politicized, and historians have devoted increasing attention to how nation states have used sport as a means of justifying national ideologies. Yet in 1960, the same result met little fanfare, and no attention from historians. My research also examined the American government"s attitudes towards Soviet Russia to help explain this disconnect. I found that the Soviet Union was at this time making a concerted effort, through diplomacy and sport, to be more conciliatory to the U.S. The American public and government recognized this, and the generally harmonious spirit of the "60 Winter Games is attributable to this fact. The political environment surrounding these games, then, allowed them to be played only in the sporting arena, and not as much in the political arena. This research is based on relevant secondary monographs and articles which explore the rise of international, state-driven sport beginning with the modern Olympics; sport and international politics in the 20th Century, especially as it pertains to competition between and among capitalism, communism, and fascism; the importance of pageantry and glorification to competing and hosting Olympic nations; the 1980 Olympic hockey competition, and nationalistic bias in Olympic figure skating judging. It is also based on examination of government documents, the Final Report of the VIII Winter Olympic Games, and a variety of contemporary newspapers and mass-circulation magazines such as Sports Illustrated and Time.

"Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism is the first historical study of the P.O.U.M. to appear in English. Drawing from his multi-volume work on the subject, which was published in Spanish and Catalan, Victor Alba has collaborated with Stephen Schwartz to produce a condensed and amplified study that is far more than a translation.Outside Spain, the political movement known as the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxist or P.O.U.M.) is chiefly known as the revolutionary group with which George Orwell fought during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. The events in which the P.O.U.M. found itself at the center of conflict between Iberian revolutionaries and Soviet interests remain a controversial topic for historians and other writers. This book presents a detailed picture of the organization and its main antecedent, the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc, in the context of a stimulating working class political culture.Those interested in Catalan history as well as historians of Western European Marxism and the Spanish Civil War will find this book useful. It will also be of interest to those concerned with Orwell and his experience in Spain. A fitting tribute to the P.O.U.M.'s great struggle against Stalinism, Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism will surely stand out among the array of books that have been published on the Spanish Civil War period as a definitive study."--Provided by publisher.

Difícilmente caben dos transiciones de la dictadura a la democracia más diferentes que la española y la de la antigua RDA. En la española no cambia nada en la organización socioeconómica, ni en la estructura del Estado, y la de la RDA vino marcada por una intromisión directa del otro Estado alemán que transplanta su organización socioeconómica y política. La unificación fue posible en un tiempo récord, gracias a las negociaciones de Kohl con Gorbachov. La dificultad mayor era privatizar toda la riqueza del país. En febrero de 1990 el Gobierno de la RDA puso en marcha una compañía fiduciaria Treuhandgesellschaft, que se convirtió en la propietaria de todo el patrimonio de la RDA, pasando después de la unificación a depender del Ministerio de Hacienda, con la capacidad de decidir qué vendía, a quién y a qué precio. La privatización de los bienes públicos constituye el mayor negocio para los amigos de los gobernantes, pero cuando lo que está en venta es un país entero, la corrupción sobrepasa con mucho los contactos personales. La anexión de la RDA costó muchísimo a los ciudadanos alemanes, pero significó también un colosal negocio para las grandes empresas. Los enormes costos los pagaron todos, los también enormes beneficios recayeron en unos pocos. ; Hardly there are two transitions from dictatorship to democracy more different than the Spanish and the former GDR. In Spanish does not change the socio-economic organization or the structure of the state, and the GDR was marked by direct interference of the other German state that transplanted their socioeconomic and political organization? The unification was possible in a record time, thanks to Kohl negotiations with Gorbachev. The greatest difficulty was to privatize all the wealth of the country. In February 1990 the GDR government launched a trust company, Treuhandgesellschaft, which became the owner of all the assets of the GDR, passing after unification under the Ministry of Finance, with the capacity to decide which sold, to whom and at what price. The privatization of public goods is the biggest deal for friends of the governors, but when what is for sale is a whole country, corruption far exceeds personal contacts. The annexation of the GDR took much money to the Germans, but also meant a huge business for large companies. Everybody paid huge costs, the huge profits also fell on a few.

Countless studies have assessed the dramatic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, but their analysis of the impact on European communism has focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. This ambitious collection takes a much broader view, reconstructing and evaluating the historical trajectories of glasnost and perestroika on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moving beyond domestic politics and foreign relations narrowly defined, the research gathered here constitutes a transnational survey of these reforms collective impact, showing how they were variably received and implemented, and how they shaped the prospects for proletarian internationalism in diverse political contexts

Abstract Drawing on new archival evidence, this paper focuses on the origins of Vietnam's foreign economic policy of 1986, better known as doi moi (renovation). The existing scholarship contends that doi moi ideas emerged amid Vietnam's socio-economic crisis during the late 1970s through a bottom-up process of market-oriented activities by local authorities. I argue, however, that these scholars overlooked the early ideas of economically engaging the West to obtain advanced technology to raise the Vietnamese products' quality, and therefore, their competitiveness in the socialist bloc. Following the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, Vietnamese diplomats-turned reformists studied the role of western technology and capital investment in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Politburo entrusted Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Co Thach, a senior advisor to Hanoi's chief negotiator Le Duc Tho in Paris, to conduct a series of clandestine studies on the role of western technology in economic relations between East and West. Thach's learning about the West's technological revolution led them to the shocking conclusion that the Soviet bloc was at least a decade behind the West in technological development. The fear of Vietnam being trapped in economic backwardness propelled these reformers to advocate bold ideas of economically engaging the West in the post-Vietnam War era to extract advanced technology to support post-war economic development and modernisation. However, it took an economic crisis (1977–78), followed by another costly two-front war against Cambodia and China between 1979 and 1985, for reformist Nguyen Co Thach's ideas to prevail over the conservative faction's military-first policy.

This study concerns the NATO image in Soviet and Russian media. The empirical research of this work centers on the analysis of political cartoons depicting NATO in the main Soviet daily Pravda and Russian newspaper articles concerning NATO in President Putin s time. The method of study is content analysis with the qualitative approach. This work examines the changes NATO s image has undergone in the depiction by Soviet and Russian media depending on time and circumstances. The Soviet media served as a mouthpiece for those in power and all published material was under the strict control of the Communist Party. The main Soviet daily at the time, Pravda, was a propaganda tool for the Soviet echelons of power during the Cold War. The world was divided into two hostile camps, capitalists and socialists, and propaganda was one of the main weapons in this war. The mass media were used as a battlefield. The image of the enemy on the pages of Pravda was clear it was the NATO military bloc and the USA as its leader. However, this image did alter with time, as did the perception of NATO, and this Thesis analyses these changes and their significance. When the USSR collapsed, there were big changes in the field of the Russian media. After the wild 1990s, a chaotic time for the Russians, Vladimir Putin came into office and set a different tone in NATO-Russia relations; this was depicted in the Russian media. However, as there were both governmental and independent media in existence now, it is important to analyze how the same event in NATO-Russia relations is interpreted in these two different types of media. In this Thesis, Nezavisimaya gazeta has been selected to represent independent media, while Izvestia is an example of government-oriented media. Much time has elapsed and the political map of the world has changed; the USSR is no longer, while Russia has come to be its successor so the question is whether the image of NATO has also undergone great changes in the shift from Soviet to Russian media. The research conducted in this Thesis indicates that, despite the great alterations on the world political scene, there is a great amount of continuity in Soviet and Russian media approaches to NATO.

The Advisory Opinion handed down by the World Court on July 20, 1962, concerning Certain Expenses of the United Nations has become a political cause célèbre in so far as the majority judicial position in it was backed up by the Western-sponsored action, in terms of Article 19 of the United Nations Charter, to deprive the Soviet Union and France of their vote in the General Assembly. The Advisory Opinion of the World Court has, however, its own intrinsic interest in terms of juristic method and of basic Soviet and Western differences in scientific approach to law. In his dissenting, judicial opinion in that case, the then President of the Court, the Polish jurist, Judge Winiarski, formulated principles of interpretation which reveal, very dramatically, the basic doctrinal differences between Soviet bloc and Western jurists as to the nature and character of the Charter. As President Winiarski commented:The Charter has set forth the purposes of the United Nations in very wide, and for that reason too indefinite, terms. But… it does not follow, far from it, that the Organisation is entitled to seek to achieve those purposes by no matter what means. The fact that an organ of the United Nations is seeking to achieve one of those purposes does not suffice to render its action lawful. The Charter, a multilateral treaty which was the result of prolonged and laborious negotiations, carefully created organs and determined their competence and means of action.

Recent developments in science and technology make obsolete not only previous weapons but also previous foreign policies and, even, ideologies. The arms race and the clash of ideologies between the Western world and the Soviet bloc are ominous facts. The world, however, need not be a prison in which mankind must await eventual execution. Four hopeful factors provide a possible basis for peaceful solution: the nuclear standoff and the development of workable deter rence; the gradual evolution of the Soviet Union toward more acceptable standards; the growth and development of the At lantic community and the United Nations; and the common interest of the Soviet. Union and the Western in avoiding gen eral war and in proceeding with economic improvement. The United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency is the first of its kind in the world. It reflects the United States po sition that arms control and disarmament can serve as a means for communication, increasing understanding and reducing tensions, can reduce the chances of war by accident, miscalcu lation, and surprise attack, can be a practical means for stop ping the arms race and reducing armaments, and can be the pathway to a free, peaceful, and disarmed world. The criteria for acceptability of a disarmament plan to the United States are military or security soundness, for all countries, and the possibilities in it for serious negotiation.—Ed.

Joseph Stalin had been dead for three years when his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, stunned a closed gathering of Communist officials with a litany of his predecessor's abuses. Meant to clear the way for reform from above, Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" of February 25, 1956, shattered the myth of Stalin's infallibility. In a bid to rejuvenate the Party, Khrushchev had his report read out loud to members across the Soviet Union that spring. However, its message sparked popular demands for more information and greater freedom to debate. Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring brings this first brief season of thaw into fresh focus. Drawing on newly declassified Russian archives, Kathleen Smith offers a month-by-month reconstruction of events as the official process of de-Stalinization unfolded and political and cultural experimentation flourished. Smith looks at writers, students, scientists, former gulag prisoners, and free-thinkers who took Khrushchev's promise of liberalization seriously, testing the limits of a more open Soviet system. But when anti-Stalin sentiment morphed into calls for democratic reform and eventually erupted in dissent within the Soviet bloc--notably in the Hungarian uprising--the Party balked and attacked critics. Yet Khrushchev had irreversibly opened his compatriots' eyes to the flaws of monopolistic rule. Citizens took the Secret Speech as inspiration and permission to opine on how to restore justice and build a better society, and the new crackdown only reinforced their discontent. The events of 1956 set in motion a cycle of reform and retrenchment that would recur until the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.--

In this memoir, Ambassador Ray Garthoff paints a dynamic diplomatic history of the cold war, tracing the life of the conflict from the vantage points of an observant insider. His intellectually formative years coincided with the earliest days of the cold war, and during his forty-year career, Garthoff participated in some of the most important policymaking of the twentieth century: • In the late 1950s he carried out pioneering research on Soviet military affairs at the Rand Corporation. • During his four-year tenure at the CIA (1957-61), in addition to drafting national intellingence estimates, Garthoff made trips to the Soviet Union with Vice President Richard Nixon and as an interpreter for a delegation from the Atomic Energy Commission. • As a special assistant in the State Department, Garthoff worked with Secretary Dean Rusk., and he was directly involved in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Later he served as executive officer and senior State Department adviser for the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) delegation. • In the 1970s he served as a senior Foreign Service inspector, leading missions to a number of countries around the globe. • As U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria (1977-79), Garthoff gained first-hand knowledge of the workings of a communist state and of the Soviet bloc. • In the 1980s, Garthoff wrote two major studies of American-Soviet relations. He traveled to the Soviet Union nearly a dozen times in the final decade of the cold war, and in the early 1990s he had access to the former Soviet Communist Party archives in Moscow. Garthoff¡'s journey through the Cold War informs the views, positions, and actions of the past. His anecdotes and observations will be of great value to those anticipating the challenges of reevaluating American post-cold war security policy.