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This article discusses the political influence of the Cold War. If one takes influence to mean the prevalence of one will over another, then one of the facts of contemporary international politics is that the superpowers exert very little influence over each other. This is certainly not very surprising when one recognizes that influence follows from the ability to coerce or threaten coercion, or from the ability to entice by offering rewards. Neither superpower can credibly threaten coercion save in the form of second strike retaliation. Observation reveals that what political movement there has been in superpower relations thus far has been generated in one of three ways: through indirect competition for alignment in the "third world," through slow-moving negotiations, and through confrontation politics at the nuclear threshold. More concretely, the goal of indirect superpower competition is to frustrate the opponent's political will, and realize one's own by shifting the world political status quo to the favor of one's ideological camp. Superpowers no longer act directly upon each other. Each acts instead on weaker "third world" countries and there attempts to thwart or otherwise interfere with the other's attempts to expand its sphere of political-ideological alignment.

This article discusses the issues related to the Cold War. More than twenty years have passed since scholars and journalists began their examination of the Cold War to explain its existence between the United States and the Soviet Union, which has been the central fact of international life, perhaps no less so than the British-French struggle for world leadership in the second hundred years war. The conflict between two giants, always diplomatically unsettling and potentially disastrous, led the existence of cold war. Those who attribute the cold war to ideology--be it the Soviet-based doctrines of communist expansion and revolution or the anti-Soviet attitudes which such doctrines produced--discover the origins of the Cold War in the second Russian revolution. Soviet penetration of Europe to the river Elbe in April 1945 upset western calculations on two fronts. Germany's total destruction, the high purpose of Allied wartime policy, had permitted the Red Army to challenge the traditional European balance of power. Secondly, Soviet military dominance of Slavic Europe, the result not of aggression but of victory, gave the Soviets the power, if not the intention, to impose their will on the states of eastern Europe.

This article discusses the nonalignment concept in the international relations. Almost two-thirds of the nations in the world have chosen not to join either of the two dominant alliance systems-the Communist or the Western. Most of these States, generally known as the "third world," are Afro-Asian and their nonalignment signifies freedom from constraints imposed by alliances with major powers. Many of the factors contributing to nonalliance are pertinent to alliance formation as well. The adoption of nonalignment by most of the Afro-Asian countries suggests the existence of common attitudinal characteristics uniting them in their lack of commitment to either of the major blocs. The background conditions contributing to a nonaligned position are created as a composite stimulus including general environmental influences as well as more particular variables such as geographic position, strategic importance, national weakness or strength and level of economic development. Two systemic stimuli are of particular significance in the development of Afro-Asian non alignment, the Cold War at the global level and colonialism at the regional.

Explaining or predicting patterns of alliance among nations has long been a central concern in the study of international politics and organization. There is, however, no satisfactory theory to indicate what nations will ally with what others in the system. This article is intended to outline an approach to the construction of such a comprehensive theory, suggesting some of the definitions and propositions that would be central to the effort, as well as some of the research obstacles that would be faced. Several seemingly contradictory. theoretical perspectives have been brought to bear on the question of what it is that determines alliance patterns. Much of the traditional literature, perhaps in part influenced by the Cold War, stresses the various bonds of community among nations, suggesting that countries ally with others that share certain common interests. While the theory rests upon an impressive piece of deductive reasoning, and some bits of empirical evidence as well, its limitations are severe. It is very nearly impossible to get a determinate solution when there are more than a few actors; with only five or six the complexities already become great.

The article deals with the mirror-image hypothesis of the U.S. and Soviet Union. Speeches made by former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev have been studied in order to strengthen the mirror image hypothesis. Even as Kennedy identified communism with imperialism and militarism, Khrushchev identified capitalism with imperialism and militarism. The typical statements on both sides would be consistent with the mirror-image theory of the cold war, according to which the United States' perception of itself in relation to the Soviet Union resembles, in many ways, a mirror-image of the Soviet Union's perception of itself in relation to the United States. This theory is in some degree confirmed by the value-judgments made by Kennedy and Khrushchev, both of whom presented their respective nations as champions of peace and freedom. As opposed to the interpretation of communist propaganda emphasizing offensive uses of military methods to achieve communist purposes, the U.S. was of a similar view of them, that there was a mirror image in the reciprocal perception of the American and Russian people, and that this image represented serious distortions by each party of realities on the other side.

The article discusses about the political and strategic choices of the European elites in relation to the setting for European arms controls. It brings into consideration the primary aims of two bloc leaders namely, the United States and the Soviet Union, both of whom consider Europe to be the main prize in the Cold War. Germany is the focal point of present and prospective instability in Central Europe. It deals with survey data from interviews conducted in Great Britain, France and Germany, where elite panelists have responded to questions asked over the last several years. While there has been a substantial desire for disarmament, there also has been an adherence to the Western deterrent system developed over the years. A successful American arms policy in Europe, would include firmness in negotiating with the Russians in order to avoid connotations of two superpowers deciding Europe's fate. Results suggest that there are important changes going on in elite attitudes, particularly in the view that the Soviet threat to Europe has been significantly reduced.

National decision-makers on both sides of the Cold War are continually faced with difficult choices about strategies and the allocation of resources for military security. Both democratic and Communist decision-makers are concerned with domestic opinions. International communications between national decision-makers are also subject to the stimulations and constraints of domestic opinion. The very possibility of such communications is augmented or threatened by the conciliatory state of domestic opinion with respect to the other nations involved. Although the primary emphasis of the present paper is on domestic opinion, it should be added that national decision-makers need to know more about foreign public opinion as well. With nuclear weapons, the purpose of military power is less to destroy than to persuade a potential enemy to forgo major aggressions; and as it becomes less and less possible to limit thermonuclear destruction to an enemy or a victim state, national strategists must become increasingly concerned with the social-psychological effects of their policies on both enemies and allies.

The article examines the kind of role which can be reasonably be assigned to the United Nations (UN) in the military-security-field. It questions the possible use of the UN as a military instrument for dealing with great-power aggression that refers to the possibility of the organization's serving as a defensive bastion against aggressive actions launched by or supported by the Soviet Union or Communist China. It also explores whether the UN has a significant capability of dealing military conflict between states which lie outside the alignments of the Cold War and the interest of the major Cold War antagonists.

This article deals with the theoretical and political perspective from which the problems involved in the peaceful limitation of international disputes can be studied. It discusses the classification of potential dispute situations, as well as the motives or goals of conflict. It relates the character of all disputes to the system of relationships prevailing among the nation-states of the world. The article also explores the dispute situations of the Cold War and the contemporary sanctions that are effective in limiting the are summarized.

The article discusses the modal philosophy and its significance in the opposing ideologies present in the Cold War. Modal philosophy is a social philosophy held, with comparatively limited variations, by individuals in the central mode. Three characteristics of the modal philosophy includes its belief in free private enterprise, its tendency to side with the economic underdog and its appreciation of political freedom. Modal philosophy offers a balance between socialism and capitalism and tends to satisfy all the major psychological needs of individuals as well as simultaneously conform to all the major values of society.

A review of several articles on international relations published in a 1956 and 1957 issues of the "Public Opinion Quarterly," including "Public Opinion and National Security Policy," by Gabriel A. Almond, "Authoritarianism and Internationalism," by William J. MacKinnon and Richard Centers and "The Semantics of the Cold War," by William A. Glaser.