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Encyclopedia of the Cold War. 2 vols.
3 short articles in Encyclopedia of the Cold War. 2 vols. Eds. Ruud van Dijk et al. “Chiang Kai-shek,” 1:138-141; “Great Leap Forward,” 1:379-381; “Liu Shaoqi,” 2:548-550. New York: Routledge, 2008. Between 1945 and 1991, tension between the USA, its allies, and a group of nations led by the USSR, dominated world politics. This period was called the Cold War – a conflict that stopped short to a full-blown war. Benefiting from the recent research of newly open archives, the Encyclopedia of the Cold War discusses how this state of perpetual tensions arose, developed, and was resolved. This work examines the military, economic, diplomatic, and political evolution of the conflict as well as its impact on the different regions and cultures of the world. Using a unique geopolitical approach that will present Russian perspectives and others, the work covers all aspects of the Cold War, from communism to nuclear escalation and from UFOs to red diaper babies, highlighting its vast-ranging and lasting impact on international relations as well as on daily life. Although the work will focus on the 1945–1991 period, it will explore the roots of the conflict, starting with the formation of the Soviet state, and its legacy to the present day.
Academia Letters, 2022
The English-language scholarship that emerged during the Cold War reflected the hegemony of the bipolar construct of international relations, a construct that has been under sustained assault for some time now by a wide variety of scholars working in various different fields. This scholarship has given us a good understanding of the Cold War in Europe and the interplay of ideology, geopolitics, and domestic politics in US and Soviet foreign policy, but its perspective was that of the Washington-Moscow axis, with its implicit assumption that Europe was always the primary theater in the Cold War. 1 Others pointed up the limits of this approach, making a powerful case that the "Third World" was actually the primary front in the Cold War, because it was viewed as the blank slate upon which these models could be tested, whereas Europe was viewed as a mature continent with deeply rooted cultural and intellectual traditions. The Cold War was thus something bigger-a product not merely of the ideological antagonism between communism and capitalism (which predated the Soviet Union, after all) but of its interaction with the globalizing forces of imperialism and decolonization. This revolutionized the study of Cold War history, but this approach too has its limits. 2 One factor scholars have not sufficiently appreciated is the international system, especially as reflecting the operation of certain multilateral organizations. With some significant exceptions, the scholarship of the United Nations has somehow remained a "silo of excel
Security dilemmas and the end of the Cold War
Review of International Studies, 1999
Alan Collins is to be congratulated for highlighting the role Gorbachev’s strategy of Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction (GRIT) played in ending the military conflict between East and West. By offering an alternative view to the conservative opinion that America’s material strength forced the Soviets into submission, it suggests that statesmen caught in security dilemmas have real options and are not simply forced to compete for power. As a policy that fostered transparency which assisted the creation of security regimes, GRIT undoubtedly played a role in the way the military conflict ended. Yet the Cold War was not simply about the military balance. Collins’ account of this period is restricted by his bias towards state-centric and rationalist explanations of state behaviour. He underestimates the role ideology played in ending the Cold War and as such only offers half a Cold War story. The influence of the US during this period, as a cautious agent of liberal individuali...
Cold War: False Dichotomies and Real Problems
The Soviet and Post-soviet Review, 1995
Between the "discovery" of the Cold War in 1946 and its "dissolution" in 1989, the world for scholars, citizens and policymakers was simple. There was an assumed and apparently undeniable dichotomy between "them" and "us"; the "evil empire" and "the City on the Hill"; a "Free World" and a "Communist" one that yvas in the "Soviet bloc" behind a virtually impregnable "Iron Curtain"; and pure democracy and capitalism yersus Communism. if effect, the assumptions that justified and kept the Cold War "heated" created a Cold War or, at least, 'Iron Curtain" from west to east in scholarship and in virtually every other area. To the extent the differences between the Soviet Union, its purported "satellites" in Eastern Eu
Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?
Journal of Cold War Studies, 2001
Under the security dilemma, tensions and conflicts can arise between states even when they do not intend them. Some analysts have argued that the Cold War was a classic example of a security dilemma. This article disputes that notion. Although the Cold War contained elements of a deep security dilemma, it was not purely a case in which tensions and arms increased as each side defensively reacted to the other. The root of the conflict was a clash of social systems and of ideological preferences for ordering the world. Mutual security in those circumstances was largely unachievable. A true end to the Cold War was impossible until fundamental changes occurred in Soviet foreign policy.