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In keeping with Robert J. McMahon's series Issues in the History of American Foreign Relations, Jussi M. Hanhimäki offers students and scholars a survey of the evolution of American foreign policy during a key period in recent history, the era of superpower détente and global transformation in the 1960s and 1970s. Describing détente as not only an era but also a strategy of waging the Cold War, the author examines the reasons that led to the rise of détente, explores the highlights of the era's reduced East-West tensions, and explains the causes of détente's demise. Hanhimäki addresses many questions: What were the long-term and short-term causes of détente? Was it a policy "invented"...
In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism. When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population. Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe's analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.
This Omnibus E-Book brings together Piero Gleijeses's two landmark books for the first time: Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cu...
Essays and comments presented at an international conference held at University of Ottawa, Oct. 9-10, 2008.
Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History
Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, the United States pledged to give increased economic and military aid to receptive Middle Eastern countries and to protect--with U.S. armed forces if necessary--the territorial integrity and political independence of these nations from the threat of "international Communism." Salim Yaqub demonstrates that although the United States officially aimed to protect the Middle East from Soviet encroachment, the Eisenhower Doctrine had the unspoken mission of containing the radical Arab nationalism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom Eisenhower regarded as an unwitting agent of Soviet expansionism. By offering aid and protection, the Eisenhower administratio...
The twentieth century in Europe witnessed some of the most brutish episodes in history. Yet it also saw incontestable improvements in the conditions of existence for most inhabitants of the continent - from rising living standards and dramatically increased life expectancy, to the virtual elimination of illiteracy, and the advance of women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals to greater equality of respect and opportunity. It was a century of barbarism and civilization, of cruelty and tenderness, of technological achievement and environmental spoliation, of imperial expansion and withdrawal, of authoritarian repression - and of individualism resurgent. Covering everything from war and politics to social, cultural, and economic change, Barbarism and Civilization is by turns grim, humorous, surprising, and enlightening: a window on the century we have left behind and the earliest years of its troubled successor.
Since its independence in 1991, Russia has struggled with the growing pains of defining its role in international politics. After Vladimir Putin ascended to power in 2000, the country undertook grandiose foreign policy projects in an attempt to delineate its place among the world’s superpowers. With this in mind, Robert Nalbandov examines the milestones of Russia’s international relations since the turn of the twenty-first century. He focuses on the specific goals, engagement practices, and tools used by Putin’s administration to promote Russia’s vital national and strategic interests in specific geographic locations. His findings illuminate Putin’s foreign policy objective of reinstituting Russian global strategic dominance. Nalbandov argues that identity-based politics have dominated Putin’s tenure and that Russia’s east/west split is reflected in Asian-European politics. Nalbandov’s analysis shows that unchecked domestic power, an almost exclusive application of hard power, and determined ambition for unabridged global influence and a defined place as a world superpower are the keys to Putin’s Russia.
In A Lost Peace, Galen Jackson rewrites an important chapter in the history of the middle period of the Cold War, changing how we think about the Arab-Israeli conflict. During the June 1967 Middle East war, Israeli forces seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This conflict was followed, in October 1973, by a joint Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel, which threatened to drag the United States and the Soviet Union into a confrontation even though the superpowers had seemingly embraced the idea of détente. This conflict contributed significantly to the ensuing deterioration of US-Soviet relations....