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The article comments on an article which examines the state of foreign relations 25 years after the Cold War. Topics discussed include the impact of the Cold War on the perspectives of historians and the relevance of the Cold War to 20th-century history. Also discussed are interpretations of the Cold War and of its geography.

Brazil is traditionally regarded as having been distant from its Latin American neighbours. However, new documents show that it was actually very involved in the Cold War struggles that engulfed the Southern Cone during the early 1970s. In Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay, Brazil's military regime intervened to prevent or overturn left-wing gains. It also did its best to encourage the United States to play a greater role in fighting the region's Cold War. Finally, it served as the model that military leaders in the Southern Cone looked to as they plotted to seize power. Examining these direct and indirect forms of influence, with particular reference to the relationship between Brazil and Chile, this article argues that Brazil's experience after 1964 was a game changer when it came to the way in which the inter-American Cold War unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Openly critical at times of the United States for its actions in the Vietnam War, Canada was not for all that in a position to put its continental interests into question, and advocated therefore a conciliatory agenda towards its neighbour in this matter. This was particularly true in 1973 when it accepted an American invitation to take part in the international commission for implementing a ceasefire in Vietnam, thereby providing the US with a chance to withdraw without losing face completely. This article also notes that, in a show of North Atlantic solidarity, as the Cold War went on, Canada's measures were supported all along by Great Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Editors of the journal Cold War History have the pleasure to present this paper as the winner of the Best Paper Award at the last Graduate Conference on the Cold War, jointly organised every year by the University of California, Santa Barbara, the George Washington University, Washington DC, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, London. It is not often that a paper, as was the case with this one, won unanimous endorsement from prominent Cold War scholars from all three institutions, present at the Conference. The last Conference was organised in April 2009, at LSE, in London and the host of the next one to be held on 22-24 April 2010 will be the George Washington University. By continuing with the practice we inaugurated last year, we wish to underline our commitment to promoting and encouraging new and substantive research of the Cold War by young scholars. As the colonial system collapsed quicker than anticipated in the post-Second World War period, the Soviet Union found itself unprepared, and it hurriedly tried to build the institutions necessary to conduct an active foreign, economic and military policy in the newly emerging states. The development of the Sino-Soviet split triggered a Chinese challenge to this Soviet push for influence, with Beijing portraying the USSR as another white, imperialist power that valued relations with the West over the cause of national liberation. Moscow was consequently forced to adapt its policy, particularly by taking a more militant approach, in order to neutralise the Chinese threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting out to assess Soviet policy toward Syria and Israel in the two years that preceded the Six Day War, this article argues that the Soviets were trying to implement a policy of detente in the Middle East. Therefore, they were wary of war between Israel and Syria and did their best, albeit clumsily at times, to prevent it from erupting. Their policy moved in cross-purposes to Syrian needs and little by little they lost control over their ally. This story should be read against the backdrop of the rebellion of radical regimes in the Third World against Soviet detente policy, thus emphasizing the ability of actors in the periphery of the Cold War to undermine superpower designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of the Cold War have been the subject of numerous debates among international historians. On different occasions, historians have looked at International Relations Theory for insights and concepts to help understanding why and how the Cold War originated. While the postrevisionist paradigm was inspired by realism, for the last decade and a half, running parallel with broader theoretical developments in IR, large parts of the debate on the origins of the Cold War have focused on the role of ideas, ideology, and culture. However, the imported innovations had the effect of fragmenting our theoretical understanding of the origins of the Cold War, rather than offering a workable, coherent synthesis. Moreover, these accounts do not always sufficiently address problems of agency and causality. The debate on the origins of the Cold War, therefore, is in need of coherent theoretical frameworks which are capable of remedying these problems. This article argues that a possible way of generating such a framework is taking a closer look at hermeneutics and constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study states that Turkish President İsmet İnönü did not use democracy merely as a tool to bring his country into the US-led Western alliance at the onset of the Cold War. Instead, Inonu was inspired by a true sense of mission to fulfil Ataturk's legacy to bring democracy to Turkey. Admittedly, the Truman administration used democracy as rhetoric in order to realize its strategic goals in, and secure congressional aid for, Turkey, and yet Washington did not put pressure on Turkey to democratize faster or more thoroughly. There is no causal link between Turkey's democratization and either the Truman Doctrine or Turkey's admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of the Cold War era on a historic event with serious consequences for Greece, namely the Greek Colonels' regime, which lasted between April 1967 and July 1974. Greece, due to its strategic position, served as guarantor of stability in NATO's southeastern flank, a benefit that the alliance considered indispensable to its strength, therefore impossible to compromise. In the light of this consideration, NATO tolerated, to put it mildly, the dictatorial, albeit pro-NATO regime that the Greek Colonels imposed on Greece on 21 April 1967. This paper will attempt to account for NATO's reactions to the Greek regime and the factors dictating them - a small, albeit indicative, peripheral segment of the puzzle of the global antagonism between the West and the East during the Cold War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay maintains that detente, rather than stabilizing the international situation as many of its architects had hoped for, fundamentally altered the Cold War international system. Detente did not end the Cold War nor provide a clear road map towards 1989 (or 1991). But by bringing about an era of East-West engagement, detente was instrumental in setting in motion the many processes that ultimately caused the collapse of the international system that it was supposed to have stabilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers of international relations frequently assume that human rights challenge realpolitik. This article shows that in the context of negotiations about European security in the early 1970s, the two went hand-in-hand. Despite significant transatlantic differences, Americans and Europeans conceptualized human rights as products of the Cold War, and principles for assuming more order and stability in the international system. Human rights discussions and agreements were not designed to end the Cold War in the 1970s. This analysis challenges assumptions about the absence of human rights in detente, and the alleged connection between the Helsinki Final Act and the Revolutions of 1989. The anti-Cold War quality of human rights activism in the 1980s was not present a decade earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switzerland only played a marginal role in the Cold War, even though the small country was situated very close to the central battleground of any potential armed conflict in Europe the 'special role' that Switzerland played in the East-West conflict was closely linked to its policy of strict neutrality. Swiss Cold War historians have focused on the reasons for the emergence of Switzerland's 'special case' in foreign and security policy and on the consequences of this policy for the political, economic, military, and social relations between Switzerland and its international environment. With the launching of the Parallel History Project (PHP) at ETH Zurich in 1998, Switzerland has become the home of one of the major Cold War History networks. As a result, the findings of a new generation of Swiss Cold War historians are increasingly integrated into an emerging international history of the East-West confrontation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching and research on the Cold War in the United Kingdom developed in three phases. The first phase ran from the emergence of the Cold War in the 1940s up to the 1970s, a period which saw studies produced by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, various polemical works and some attention to the conflict in the memoirs of politicians and officials. These years witnessed some teaching by political scientists but no teaching and very little work by historians. By the 1970s, however, the rise of an interest in contemporary history and releases of documents under the new thirty year rule led to a major growth in courses and publications on the Cold War. This trend continued until the end of the conflict in 1988/1991. Since the demise of the Cold War there has been a continued interest in the topic but the range of approaches has widened from diplomacy and strategy to include propaganda and cultural policies, the impact on everyday life, and the roles of sport and religion. At the same time, new topics have gained prominence: from the Middle East to climate change, from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons to terrorism. Nevertheless, the field remains vibrant with a dedicated journal, a specialist centre at the LSE and an impending three-volume study from Cambridge University Press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historiography on the 'Cold War', as written by Serbian and Yugoslavian historians, developed through many phases. These were defined by political and social circumstances, accessibility of historical sources, as well as the expertise and sensibility of generations of historians. In general, there was little of sustained and systematic research on the history of the Cold War. The post-Second World War Yugoslav historiography is 'full of blanks'. At the same time, however, it is important to acknowledge that it progressed along the long road from claim, as a form of ideological thought, to knowledge which is never final. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the main centres for the study of the Cold War in the United States, the key repositories of relevant documents, and the main publication outlets and conferences on the Cold War. It also describes the principal texts and approaches to teaching the Cold War and portrays the essential scholarly, public and political debates on the Cold War. The article concludes with a study of the contending and increasingly politicized views of the lessons of the Cold War and the relevance of the Cold War to our world today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American victory in World War II was perceived to be due in large part to its scientific and technological superiority, best exemplified by the development of the atom bomb. Throughout the Cold War, scientific theories and methodologies were recruited even more extensively to weigh on military and strategic affairs. Cybernetics, along with operations research and systems analysis, sought to impose order and predictability on warfare through the collection, processing, and distribution of information. The emergence of the notion of command-and-control epitomized a centralizing approach which saw military organization purely as a vast techno-social machine to be integrated and directed on the basis of the predictions of mathematical models and the deployment of cybernetic technologies. Preparation for a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union was the primary focus of this conception of warfare but it failed spectacularly the test of Vietnam, thereby dramatically revealing its theoretical and practical bankruptcy. Indeed, cybernetic warfare was deeply flawed in its restrictive assumptions about conflict, its exclusive focus on quantitative elements, its dismissal of any views that did not conform to its norms of scientificity, and its neglect of the risks of information inaccuracy and overload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author comments on the article "Another Transatlantic Split? American and European Narratives at the End of the Cold War," by Michael Cox, that appeared in an earlier edition of the journal "Cold War History." In the piece the author offers her reasons as to why European actions taken during period following the end of the Second World War and the development of the Cold War have been overlooked by American historians and researchers. She also addresses issues surrounding isolationism and the egocentric nature of American newspapers and foreign correspondents.

In the heyday of the Cold War, China remained confrontational toward the United States and other Western powers but at the same time seemed conciliatory toward Asian nations. This was largely reflected in Beijing's diplomacy of 'peaceful coexistence' and 'united front' at the Geneva and Bandung conferences. Based on recently declassified archives and material in China and probing into the insights of China's foreign policy calculations in the mid-1950s, this article argues that, through actively participating in multilateral diplomacy, the Chinese leaders expected to construct an image of a 'normal state' and play a leading role in normalizing international politics in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-communism has often been seen as a marginal aspect of white Rhodesian political ideology, designed to manipulate eccentric metropolitan and American opinion. However, it was neither shallow nor peripheral, but integral to it and essential to an understanding of the politics and ideological resilience of White Rhodesia in its closing decades. Many white Rhodesians regarded African disaffection as externally fomented and international, so that there appeared to be no need to address any grievances. The Cold War crucially sealed Rhodesia's political fate, since the successful encouragement of anti-communist sentiment made it difficult for a Rhodesian government to advocate compromise of any kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Careful examination of relations between Zambia and the USA during Lyndon Johnson's presidency, based on archival research in both nations, provides valuable insights into their often very different perspectives in the midst of the Cold War. The Johnson administration at times sympathized with Zambia but dismissed southern Africa as a low priority in the confrontation with communism, whereas Kenneth Kaunda feared for his nation's survival on the racial frontier and desperately needed help, but insisted on a non-aligned foreign policy nonetheless. American officials questioned Zambian policy decisions such as accepting Chinese aid and opposing non-proliferation as naïve or irrational; however, from his perspective, Kaunda was upholding national security and resisting superpower hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues, on the basis of a close examination of archival sources (including Politburo minutes) and the numerous memoirs of leading Soviet political actors, that an interdependent mixture of new leadership, new ideas, and long-standing institutional power in the Soviet Union was primarily responsible for the Cold War ending when it did. While acknowledging that the ‘Reagan factor’ was important in some ways, he rejects the view that the Reagan administration played the decisively important role in ending the Cold War, and he contests various arguments which have been advanced in the attempt to sustain a Realist interpretation of its ending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been remarked that the victors do not merely harvest the fruits of war, but are then situated by virtue of their position to write the ‘real’ history of how that war began, who fought it most ethically, and the key part they then played in bringing it to a victorious and just end. This article argues that this pattern of writing the past, and thereby defining it, has been much in evidence in the wider American historiography on the end of the Cold War in Europe. This is not to reduce a complex literature to a single narrative. It is to suggest however that many Americans – politicians, policy-makers and academics alike – have too readily adopted the politically convenient view that it was America (and in some cases America alone) that through dint of effort and skill of diplomacy effectively changed the world by actively ‘winning’ the Cold War on the continent. As I argue, this not only makes for a one-sided triumphalist history; it has also had the effect of writing others – especially Europeans – out of the events that finally led to the overcoming of Europe's 45-year-old division. I then go on to point to the many important, and sometimes forgotten, ways in which Europe and Europeans helped make their own history. By so doing, I not only seek to redress the intellectual balance, but challenge American writers to reflect more critically on their own ways of viewing what, by any measure, still remains the most important event of the last part of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's response to a review of his book "The Cold War: A New History." He contends that the reviewers failed to accurately summarize his book before evaluating it. He reacts on the reviewers' claim that the book failed to advance new hypotheses regarding the subject and its inconsistent viewpoint on Cold War history.

English [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stand-off of Soviet and American tanks in the heart of Berlin in October 1961 constituted the most dangerous moment of the Cold War in Europe. It has been attributed to unnecessarily confrontational policies of General Lucius D. Clay, who served as President Kennedy's Special Representative in Berlin. This article assesses how the crisis evolved from the Berlin Wall to the tank confrontation. It centres on the role of General Clay, his communication with Washington, and his activities in Berlin. This is a study of the process by which US government policy was translated into diplomatic and military action. The article concludes that the resulting combination of force and diplomacy is crucial to understanding the crisis management of John F. Kennedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1948 O. John Rogge, a prominent American liberal, was a contender for the Progressive Party's vice-presidential nomination. He was then a man of the Left: an activist in the international peace movement, a champion of radical causes and a defender of organizations deemed subversive by the Department of Justice. In 1951 he persuaded his client to turn government witness in the Rosenberg espionage trial and was converted into ‘Rogge the Rat’ by his former allies. In tracing this transformation, this paper will argue that Rogge was neither a typical Cold War apostate nor a typical anti-Stalinist intellectual. Instead, his political trajectory was the outcome of a failed attempt to steer global politics away from Cold War dichotomies. The paper will therefore throw new light both on the movement to find a ‘third way’ between East and West, and on the phenomenon of non-communist Left activism during the early Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the value of Cold War archives. Problems with collecting documents about Cold War; Information on the documents found in the "Cold War International History Project Bulletin"; Danger with the edited collections of the Cold War.

This article presents and examines new evidence from the Russian archives on the Truman-- Molotov talks of April 1945. This new evidence undercuts the conventional story that this was a rough and tough meeting that led to a significant deterioration of Soviet--American relations. The turn to Cold War came much later, and it was only in that context that the Molotov--Truman encounter came to be looked upon as a particularly negative event. That retrospective view fed into postwar memoirs and then into the historiography, thereby creating one of the mythical, emblematic events of the early Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses a paradigm for interpreting transatlantic relations in the period between the late 1940s and the early 1970s. Role of ideology in the Cold War; Importance of national traditions in the experience of the war; Idea behind westernization.

Presents formerly secret Communist Party of the Soviet Union documents from the holdings of the Russian State Archive in social and political history. Way in which the documents are considered peculiar; Motive for the creation of a council on foreign policy propaganda chaired by Andrei Zhdanov; Position of the Soviet Union on foreign-policy propaganda issues during the early Cold War.