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This article discusses non-conventional diplomatic tools. It does so by focussing on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) and the Multilateral Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) talks and suggests that individuals and individual creativity to make use of non-conventional tools, in combination with attention to working conditions, impact the outcome. CSCE ventured in entirely new territory and promoted such novel concepts as the indivisibility of security, and the free flow of individuals, information, and ideas. As such it appealed to negotiatiors' creativity; by contrast, MBFR was about reducing conventional forces in the given constellation of a divided Europe -- it treated this division as a fact of life; as such it may have offered far less opportunities for individual diplomats' creativity to fully blossom. Taken together a discussion of these tools also contribute to the structure -- agency debate: they provide additional evidence that individual diplomats -- though often simply seen as tools of their respective governments and merely acting within a certain constellation -- and close attention to the conditions they have to work in, do matter, even when, of course, it is governments, not diplomats, that will have to sanction the results they achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of scholarship links leaders' psychological traits to their monadic tendency to use force abroad, but virtually no work considers how the interaction of leadership psychology influences the systematic likelihood of dyadic interstate conflict. We develop and test several competing explanations of how the interactive conceptual complexity of leaders—a psychological trait that consistently predicts monadic conflict propensity—might affect the ebb and flow of conflict within rivalries. Our time-series analyses of the US–Soviet Cold War rivalry, utilizing the leadership trait analysis coding scheme, demonstrate that, in accordance with the monadic logic, increases in the interactive conceptual simplicity between US presidents and Soviet premiers predict a significantly higher incidence of militarized interstate dispute initiation and a greater volume of conflictual dyadic (COPDAB, conflict and peace data bank) behavior. At the same time, however, the least conflict-prone pairing is one in which a conceptually complex leader interacts with a conceptually simplistic counterpart. This suggests that the presence of even one complex leader can increase empathy and diminish the aggressive misperception and retaliatory "downward spirals" that haunt rivalries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on recent scholarly interest in Latin America's Cold War, this paper breaks new ground in using a broad range of original documents from previously largely overlooked voices – the foreign ministries, parties, and security services agencies of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Romania – in discussing Cuba's Cold War involvement in Central America and the Caribbean from the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party until the U.S. Grenada invasion. The candid reports provided by contemporary East European observers help us attain a more nuanced picture of Havana's complex policy dilemmas as it sought to negotiate and navigate between its vast ambitions, limited abilities, Soviet bloc restraint, and the ever-present threat of a U.S. invasion. Finally, further in line with the latest advancements in the globalized Cold War historiography, in hearing the voices of Moscow's junior partners, this article casts the events surrounding the tumultuous period in a broader Transatlantic setting beyond the shadows of the superpowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to present and explain the very complex and quite enigmatic economic relations between the Polish People's Republic and the Kingdom of Greece, which belonged to different political and military blocks during the Cold War. The relationship between the two countries developed as a matter of priority, in contrast to what was happening in Europe at the time, and was not influenced by internal political developments. Although Greece was in a civil war and Poland was supporting the Greek Communists, both countries sought to reestablish diplomatic and commercial relations. In the 1950s, relations between them began to develop, and in the 1960s, they had reached an ultimate level. Poland initially exported capital goods to Greece and then also expanded trade relations by exporting consumer goods too. Poland also imported agricultural products and minerals mainly from Greece and made significant investments in Greece by building many factories there. Even the compensation issue, which was considered intractable, came to an end after brief negotiations for the benefit of both parties. Economic relations remained stable even during the dictatorship in Greece. At the same time, athletic and cultural relations were developed, with Poland taking most of the initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy of integrated deterrence is a repackaged version of Cold War strategies. The integration of assets to deter adversaries was part of both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations' overarching strategies that forced the military services to change their operating concepts, capabilities, and doctrine simultaneously. The US Army is an example of how national strategy forces organizational changes. This article assesses how the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations forced institutional change while considering the significance of integrating deterrence. These examples will assist US military and policy practitioners with adapting their organizations to existing national defense strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews new books on the fraught relationships between Ukraine, Russia and North Atlatic Treaty Organization countries since 1990, and on comparative studies of quasi-colonial subjugation, the development of anti-imperial nationalism and conflict, and protracted and violent transitions to full national independence in Ireland and Ukraine. There are comparisons of the ways in which four centuries of recurrent tension, conflict and divergence between Ukraine and Russia either resembled or differed from the five centuries of fraught relationships between Ireland and Britain. Ireland's Great Famine (1846–1849) is compared with Ukraine's Holodomor (1932–1933). The essay also assesses conflicting attributions of responsibility for 'squandering' the opportunity to enhance European security and global peace during the 1990s, and for bringing about dramatic escalations of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 – initiating a 'Second Cold War' from 2014 onward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international history of Yugoslavia during the Cold War is dominated by two correct, but overly familiar images that through repetition have defined the Tito regime. The first is that of a Yugoslavia balancing between the superpowers while the second extends the image into the realm of ideology. But set within the language of International Relations, from the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 until the waning hours of the Cold War, Yugoslavia was a regional power that sought, and was to a degree successful, in cultivating a realm of strategic ambiguity between competing world hegemons. Therefore, this article seeks to show how a distinct strategy of self-determination on the part of the Yugoslav leadership broadens this history into something global. In other words, analyzing the role that Yugoslavia played specifically in Asia—or, its observations of Asian affairs—shows that smaller actors had important roles to play in the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costa Rica, often seen as a peaceful country, has a history of militarization despite abolishing its army 75 years ago. Crime rates have been rising, leading to calls for tougher laws and a militarized approach to policing. External actors and regional trends have influenced Costa Rica's security strategies, with assistance sought from countries like the United States, Brazil, Chile, and West Germany during the Cold War. In recent years, security strategies from Colombia and the United States have been imported to address drug trafficking, insurgency, and migration, but this has raised concerns about militarization and repression. The future of Costa Rica's pacifist roots is uncertain. [Extracted from the article]

The sociologist C. Wright Mills is no stranger to students of treatments of both the mid-twentieth century American Left and U.S. intellectual history. Mills's confidante, neighbor, and intellectual ally, the novelist and essayist Harvey Swados, remains an understudied figure in the history of the twentieth century intellectual and literary left. A deeper examination of the Mills-Swados relationship provides not only with a more complete portrait of Mills, but another unique and independent voice in mid-twentieth century intellectual radicalism more clearly emerges. A one-time Trotskyist and a former member of the Max Shachtman-led Workers Party, Swados not only wrote acclaimed literary fiction, but also addressed issues that were distinctly unfashionable among the intellectual left in the 1950s and 1960s: the less ideological and more business-unionist labor leadership; the realities, including the humiliations, of the lives of blue-collar workers in the "Fat Fifties"; and the problems of how to interact with a generation of restless young people were coming of age in an era of material comfort, but who also increasingly wanted a larger voice in American society. Examining the relationship also allows us to better able understand the increasing tension between the different tendencies among leftist intellectuals in the years when Cold War concerns dominated American society, and accommodation with Soviet communism or new forms of socialism was seen as unacceptable by a once-radical generation of intellectuals disillusioned by the atrocities of Stalinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will shed light on the remarkable yet overlooked influence of the Cultural Revolution on renowned Hong Kong writer Gu Cangwu during the Cold War period. Through scrutinizing his untapped works in the 1970s, the article will argue that Gu Cangwu incorporated a Communist perspective in his observations of pivotal local, national, and global events in his poems and writings. Gu's untapped works show his attempts to use Cultural Revolution ideology and Chinese nationalism as a source of resistance to British colonialism amid Hong Kong's Defending Diaoyu Island Movement in 1971, a movement in which international recognition of Communist China at the United Nation sparked Gu's nationalistic fervor and encouraged him to embrace critical realism. The article also puts Gu's sympathetic portrayals of the Cultural Revolution and Vietnam War in juxtaposition with his decadent narratives of the 1972 Hong Kong landslides, showing that his effort to build local solidarity with Chinese nationals and the people suffering in the global conflict of the Cold War was based on a stance in opposition to capitalist-imperialist-colonial aggression. More significantly, transcending the simplistic Cold War binary between communist totalitarianism versus liberal capitalism and foregrounding the specific experience of the Cold War in the Hong Kong context, the case of Gu Cangwu demonstrates that the production of Hong Kong literature in the 1970s occurred at the intersection between local ideological contestation and global Cold War tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Ronald Owen Hall, the Anglican bishop of Hong Kong, as an unlikely critic of the city's Cold War settlement in the 1950s. By examining his sermons and writings and putting them into dialogue with pronouncements of the Hong Kong government and the colonial governor Alexander Grantham, it reconstructs a moral counterpoint to a sociopolitical project that pitched the colony as an economic city and as the "Berlin of the East"—an enclave of capitalist "freedom" on the doorstep of Communist China. Grantham and his administration saw the city's Chinese population as a source of capital, labor, or security threat. Local residents, including those who recently crossed the border from mainland China, were not so much citizens as either contributors to industrial development or potential fuel for Communist menace. Hall, on the other hand, saw communism as less a threat to the colony than a sign of the society's inability to provide for the poor and the weak. He extolled his flock to embrace Chinese nationhood instead of languishing in an atomized, profit-pursuing society. Set against the social context the colonial state created for Hong Kong, Hall offered an alternative vision that transcended Cold War binaries, capitalist values, and the nation-state logic based on his locally-embedded Christian faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space is not only a concrete object but also a symbol. The symbolic meaning of space is particularly clear in a memorial landscape—a special spatial arrangement to evoke or enforce a collective memory. In this article, we will examine two memorial landscapes of Cold War Hong Kong: the Sung Wong Toi Garden in Kowloon Bay and the Benjamin Franklin Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories. Opened in 1958 and 1969, respectively, these two memorial landscapes were part of the British government's attempt to re-position Hong Kong in the bipolar global system. By highlighting Hong Kong's roots in Chinese history (as shown in the Sung Wong Toi Garden), the British government took the city out of "Red China" (which rejected Chinese tradition) and inserted it into "Cultural China" (which supported Chinese tradition). By highlighting Hong Kong's commitment to higher education (as shown in the Benjamin Franklin Centre), the British government included the city into the "Free World" of market economy and industrial modernization. Together, these two memorial landscapes signified a fundamental shift in Hong Kong's position in the world. Instead of being an entrepot serving British corporations in the China trade, Hong Kong became a strategic node in the global competition between communism and capitalism, authoritarianism and democracy, the planned economy and the market economy. In these two memorial landscapes, we see how space can be configurated to win hearts and minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial Hong Kong was a transregional hub of Cold War ideological confrontation. The United States and its Chinese ally, Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan, struggled with Beijing for the hearts of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and around the world. Pro-Communist émigré cinema in the mid-twentieth century was a prime cultural manifestation of this Cold War contest. After an initial period of radicalization and antagonism, the pro-Communist studios in Hong Kong gradually shifted to a moderate approach whose goal was not to undermine British colonial rule or espouse revolutionary ideologies. Rather, the new strategy was one of flexibility and restraint that aimed to maintain a strategic presence in the local film industry and serve as a point of contact for overseas Chinese. Later, with the emergence of two pro-Free China giant studios, Motion Pictures & General Investment Co. Ltd. and Shaw Brothers, the cinematic ecosystem in Hong Kong was significantly altered. In order to hold on to their market presence in an increasingly more competitive environment, pro-Communist film companies embraced a more entertainment-oriented ethos and experimented with various popular genres, while struggling to remain truthful to their ideal of "guiding people to do good." With in-depth analysis of two popular films by Zhu Shilin, The Dividing Wall (Yibang zhi ge) and Sweet as Honey (Tiantian mimi), this essay seeks to historicize the ways in which the Beijing-sponsored film establishment in 1950s Hong Kong negotiated and balanced a changing set of political, ideological, and commercial interests in pursuit of its strategic mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles published within the issue is presented including one about narratives of Cold War Hong Kong, another about the political tensions in Hong Kong, and another about left-wing literature and the Cultural Revolution.

This essay examines the genre of documentary theater with a particular focus on environment issues by the theater group "Assignment Theater" (chaishi juchang). Chung Chiao, the founding leader of Assignment Theater, was inspired by Taiwanese leftist writer Chen Ying-zhen and began his collaboration with People's theater groups in many Asian countries since the 1990s post-Cold war period. Chung investigates histories, social issues and current circumstances through testimonial performances and documentary dramas with villagers, aiming to develop esthetic and critical reflections on social and cultural issues. In 2016, Chung directed and produced a work of documentary theater entitled Return to Hometown: A Story of Taixi Village by focusing on how villagers were suffering from severe air pollution, marginalization, and the complexity of their experiences since the launch of the Formosa Plastics Corp's (FPC) sixth naphtha cracker complex in 1998. The essay starts with a critical question raised by Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak" in the hope of re-locating the question in Return to Hometown. It continues to explore how Assignment Theater positions itself in the historical context of the leftist movement in post-war Taiwan by paying attention to the people. By re-examining the above, the essay discusses the ways in which environmental discourses, the village people, documentary theater, and the imagined subject of Taiwan nationality, etc. are interwoven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do the American political elites react discursively to China as a rising power? Do they depict it as an economic or military risk? What role do discursive references to China play in the US populist discourses? Relying on the thematic and critical discourse analysis of all the American presidential debates, this article explores the way US politicians portray China throughout three eras marked by distinct global power configurations. Several types of discourses have been identified. In contrast to the belligerent rhetoric of the early Cold War, when China was framed as a major military threat, after 2004, presidential candidates started referring to Beijing as an economic rival. By 2008, the emerging bipartisan consensus centered on China as mainly a trade competitor. By contrast, populist narratives in 2016 and 2020 stood out because they included emotional appeals and inflated the risks of the Sino-American rivalry to mobilize voters. In doing so, the populists sought to forge coalitions in favor of protectionist policies among those voters, who were employed in manufacturing sectors facing growing international competition. The anti-China mentions reached a peak during the 2020 debates amidst the pandemic when the populist candidate used biased language, relying on tropes resembling the 19th century racist "yellow peril" rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-1970s, no Western leader on an official visit to a Soviet Bloc country wasted any thoughts on whether or not to meet a dissident, even in countries where dissidents actually existed. By the late 1980s, such encounters had become part of an almost obligatory ritual. This remarkably swift and dramatic transformation was both preceded and accompanied by a similar change in the relationship between diplomats and dissidents. All of this happened despite considerable resistance on the part of the regimes in the host countries, which sometimes resorted to retaliatory measures, including expulsions. This article examines the role played by the United Kingdom in this normative and practical change. It identifies the different layers of relationships between the British government and Soviet Bloc dissidents, distinguishing between 'para-contacts', political contacts, and diplomatic contacts. It shows how political and diplomatic face-to-face contacts with the dissidents increased in frequency and scope during the 1980s, and how ministers' and diplomats' contacts furthered each other. Finally, it discusses possible explanations for this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal law was long considered as the sovereign domain of the state. However, after the end of the Cold War, states created new international criminal courts. These courts are part of a wider field of international criminal justice in which different elites work to develop, support, and critique legal ideas and practices that either complement or challenge the state. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's sociology and based on a multiple correspondence analysis with sixty-four modalities, this article contributes a critical analysis of 365 elite agents active in this field. The analysis shows how different types and volumes of capital structure relations between these elites as well as between the field of international criminal justice and the state. Because these relations can turn state nobility against its national origins, international criminal justice poses a potential challenge to the state's social fabric which goes beyond legal and political controversies: International criminal justice is emblematic of a competition over the value of and control over capital which plays out at the borders between the national and the international. This contest underlines that the state does necessarily control power over state capital and that, when its elites no longer reproduce its meta-capital, the state loses the semblance of being a unified actor on the world stage. Whereas the intensity of this contest over capital might be particular to the field of international criminal justice, similar battles of control are likely to affect the relations between the state and other globalized fields of law, justice, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1990, three years after Andy Warhol's death and one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) organized the first one-man show of this pop artist in Eastern Europe. The Prints of Andy Warhol, although never shown at the MoMA in New York, traveled to the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Jouy-en-Josas, France, the Národní Galerie in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Staatliche Kunstsammlung in Dresden, the GDR, the Mücsarnok in Budapest, Hungary, and the Muzeum Narodowe in Warsaw, Poland. The current paper analyzes the cultural–political context of The Prints of Andy Warhol. It first discusses the place of both American pop art and Eastern Europe in MoMA's International Program (IP) and then explores the organizational challenges, art historical contents, and public reception of the exhibition. The paper concludes by examining the broader impact of The Prints of Andy Warhol on both the growing awareness of American pop art in Eastern Europe and MoMA's cultural diplomacy in this region after the fall of the Iron Curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the challenges and complexities of civil defense and evacuation planning in Missouri during the Cold War. It discusses the shifting federal civil defense policies and the debates surrounding the best strategies for protecting citizens in the event of a nuclear war. The article also examines the social and economic realities of local communities and the impact of civil defense policies on different populations. It highlights the role of private citizens and communities in civil defense efforts, as well as the economic opportunities that arose from these initiatives. The text emphasizes the use of underground spaces, such as caves and mines, for civil defense purposes, including storage and fallout shelters. It also mentions the involvement of cave owners and unions in civil defense efforts. [Extracted from the article]

John Finnis's central role in Brexit was only the latest intervention in a long life of practical action that recommends a closer examination of the genesis of his distinctive philosophy. He always insisted that it was intended 'primarily to assist the practical reflections of those concerned to act, whether as judges or as statesmen or as citizens.' In this article, I argue that Finnis crafted his philosophy as a practical guide for conservative actors in the disenchanted Cold War world of the 1960–70s. My first aim is to excavate the theoretical foundations of his Thomist theory of natural law. While his turn to practical rather than speculative reason is well known, few if any appreciate how Finnis radically refounded Thomist natural law on an implicit theory of history. By accepting that the world was historically contingent and changing, he needed to show how we could know the timeless truth of practical reasonableness and the basic goods. In the final chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights, Finnis introduced an 'abysmal' philosophy of history that explained how a spoudaios (wise man) could reason his way out of the historical contingency of the human world to access the timeless moral truths that transcended it. My second aim is to show how Finnis used his Thomist theory of natural law as a practical guide for action in our contingent world. He followed Eric Voegelin in describing humanity as two 'hostile camps' – the 'transcendental' Christians and their secular allies versus the 'immanentist' liberals, communists, and fascists all committed to 'consequentialist' ideologies. In this eternal battle of good versus evil, Finnis saw his philosophy as a practical guide for this 'creative minority' of transcendentalists for collective action against the heretical faith of immanentist movements aiming to perfect mankind and build heavens on earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War era, translation constituted an integral part of the ideological confrontations of US cultural diplomacy. Scholarly discussions on US-associated cultural products have provided insights from the perspective of American patronage, yet have not adequately addressed the diverse role of unofficial agencies in their cultural practices with multiple intentions. This study analyzes Chinese translations in the magazine Children's Paradise (CP) operated by the Union, an entity involved in the network of American covert cultural diplomatic activities. It delves into the Union's agenda of furthering a progressive Chinese nation that continues and revitalizes Chinese civilization by analyzing three marked characteristics of the translated texts and their underlying rationales. It finds that, through deliberate omissions, substitutions, and additions, CP demonstrated a relentless commitment to the Union's China-centric agendas in its domesticated and adapted translations. Despite sharing the anti-communist conviction associated with American interests, CP leveraged localized practices to engage with the social-political issues of the British-ruled Hong Kong of the 1970s. As a result, it generated cultural outcomes exceeding the Cold War polarities, and left a lasting legacy on the younger generation of Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s, political threats drove petroleum multinational corporations in Venezuela to deploy highly sophisticated defense strategies. The American industry leader, Creole, wanted the local business community to adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) identities and practices as a buffer against state intervention and communist uprising. How would Creole instigate such field-level organisational transformation? By addressing this question through theoretically informed historical narration, I endeavour to extend institutional theory into the world of inter-firm mobilizations for institutional creation and change. Such mobilizations are organised through inter-firm convening: a mechanism through which organisations mobilise – based on the establishment of a special-purpose meta-organisation – to address external challenges by modifying collective identities, remodelling forms of organisation, and diffusing practices in their field. (In Venezuela, this meta-organisation was called Dividendo.) By using this centrally coordinated form of mobilisation, the project's agenda setters can exert transformative influence on the identity and behaviour of potentially numerous other organisations. I discuss implications for the study of institutional work, organisational power, and global diffusion. The article promotes a corporate and management-centred perspective on CSR, Latin American, and Cold War historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the night of January 17–18, 1955, the rain-swollen Rhine and Neckar rivers crested. At their confluence, inhabitants of the German city of Mannheim scrambled to protect their homes and property. Residents of the small islands on the outskirts of the city faced imminent disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the United Nations (U.N.) is typically seen as a major humanitarian actor—that is, an organization committed to alleviating human suffering and improving human welfare, it is not often thought of as a military power. But that is one of the many functions that the U.N. has adopted since its origin in 1945. For over seventy years, the U.N. Secretariat—the international bureaucracy responsible for the U.N. organization's executive and administrative functions—has conducted long-term expeditionary military operations across the globe in the form of peacekeeping and observer missions. The military wing of U.N. operations has only continued to grow in the twenty-first century. As of July 2023, 87,544 peacekeepers were deployed on active operations. And that number is lower than in the recent past, down from a height of 107,805 in April 2015. During that time, only the United States has regularly maintained more foreign-deployed forces than the U.N. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, R. W. Stewart visited the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow for three months, including a side trip to a field station on the River Don. The visit followed on from discussions at scientific meetings on the topic of turbulence in fluid flows. Major theoretical advances had been made in the USSR, while Stewart's group in Canada had conducted a key observational programme in turbulent tidal currents off the coast of British Columbia. During his visit, Stewart was able to show how some Soviet observations were in accord with others after correction for instrument size and, most importantly, with Evgeny Novikov he pioneered a new approach to the theory of turbulence to allow for intermittency. His report contains observations of the style of science in the USSR in that era, as well as interesting comments on food and culture. The visit produced lasting dividends in scientific collaboration, particularly in international programmes related to climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The affective dimensions of labor and the ways in which gendered representations of affect can be deployed as a justification for limiting women's participation in the workforce constitute a foundational, yet often overlooked, aspect of midcentury American situational comedies. Two American sitcoms—I Love Lucy and The Donna Reed Show—exemplify the connections between women's participation in the labor force and gendered representations of affect, providing new perspectives on how the imaginary '1950s housewife' foregoes participation in the wage-earning workforce and voluntarily confines herself within the domestic sphere as a result of her actual or perceived affective obligations to her family and community. By positioning Lucy and Donna within an economy of women's affective responsibilities and the purportedly emotionless mechanization of the incipient post-industrial economy, these sitcoms align labor and affect along an axis of gender that portrays women as obligated to provide free emotional labor for their families, while thereby representing the 'housewife' as emotionally unfit for productive waged labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do forerunners in global value chains (GVCs) select supplier in knowledge collaboration in a different way from latecomers? There are many factors in the selection criteria in co-creating GVC value and enhancing a focal firm's competitiveness. However, little has been revealed on how firms select their GVC suppliers from the knowledge embeddedness perspective. Furthermore, latecomers and forerunners have gaps in knowledge that may result in different weights on the same selection elements. Based on the knowledge embeddedness theory, we compare the selection criteria of a latecomer (Huawei) with a forerunner (Apple). Specifically, we identify 129 Apple or Huawei global suppliers in 2018 and collect 144,496 patents of these suppliers. Using the data of patents and the tracking of backward citations from 2013 to 2017, we find that, as a latecomer, Huawei depends more on criteria of structural hole positions in GVC knowledge network, knowledge base, and scientific knowledge than Apple does. We further conduct scenario analysis to understand Huawei's decoupling possibility from GVCs under tech cold war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper exploits the three eastward expansions of NATO after the Cold War as a quasi‐natural experiment to investigate the relationship between military alliance and trade. To identify the impact of alliance membership on trade, we adopt the difference‐in‐differences method to estimate a gravity model with global bilateral trade data from 1995 to 2015. The results show that joining NATO has a positive effect on new member countries' exports, as well as an enhancing effect on both imports and exports between old and new members. Further analysis of subdivided data reveals that formal alliance between old and new members boosts bilateral trade of security‐sensitive products, facilitates specialisation and helps mitigate trade disputes, suggesting that deepening of mutual strategic trust is a possible channel of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1951, British and U.S. counterintelligence in occupied Austria uncovered an intelligence network of Czechoslovakian informants run by a recruited Austrian, Rudolf Vala. This network had been active for nearly two years and had spied on British occupation troops in Carinthia. This network has files from the British, U.S., Czech, and Austrian sides. They provide insight into Czech human intelligence operations in Austria, their methods, and their goals. Cases are analyzed by comparing the four pieces of documentation available and putting them in the context of intelligence in early Cold War Austria. Austrians were recruited for such activities, which shows how their operations were managed (mainly from outside the country at that time), what role the Soviet occupation played in these activities, what their targets were, and what role Austria itself played in such activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War between East and West" by Calder Walton. The reviewer criticizes the book for presenting inaccurate information and perpetuating myths about Cold War espionage. Examples of inaccuracies include claims about Kim Philby sabotaging an investigation and Klaus Fuchs being warned by Philby. The reviewer also points out errors in the author's understanding of the VENONA decrypts and the British code-breaking efforts during World War II. The review concludes that the book makes it difficult for readers to distinguish between fact and myth. [Extracted from the article]

Intelligence services must routinely operate in liminal spaces, both operationally and bureaucratically. The Border Coverage (BOCOV) Program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was a Cold War example of an agency seeking to address the vulnerability inherent to a geographic liminal space. Its implementation of the program illustrated the impact of bureaucratic borders—between the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency and between Intelligence Community (IC) and non-IC agencies. Lessons learned, through the implementation of BOCOV, about interagency relations continue to be applicable as the United States contends with the cyber environment, an even more porous space than the physical U.S.–Mexican border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 1990, a U.S counterintelligence surveillance team supporting a priority counterespionage investigation in Munich, West Germany, became engaged in a hostile encounter that was unlike anything ever experienced. The event was recorded as an "aggressive, hostile countersurveillance effort," but with the U.S. victory in the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the dismantlement of the State Committee for Security, the investigative record was inconclusively filed away before the applicable lessons could be captured. After 30+ years, the declassified details of the investigation and the sequence of events leading to this fateful Munich night is examined under an inductive causal analysis to deconstruct the events using a case study methodology. After a comprehensive analysis, it becomes evident that the engagement was mischaracterized, and the hostile operation had much broader implications. While the hostile engagement was a black swan event, the sequence of events in the investigation leading to this final act was a microcosm of the larger Soviet strategic disinformation, misdirection, and manipulation apparatus. Three decades after fading into obscurity under a veil of classification restrictions, counterintelligence professionals, intelligence analysts, and intelligence historians can now benefit from the still-relevant lessons and other insights from this case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1940s and into the early 1950s, the British government sought through various means to curtain the activities of a journalist and a self-described private intelligence officer named Kenneth de Courcy. The objective of this consorted campaign was to discover de Courcy's sources and to limit his influence on current affairs. The methods employed in this pursuit were unethical, conspiratorial, and at times illegal. They represent a form of governmental malfeasance that hitherto has rarely been noted in the existing historiography covering the period. This overlooked episode calls into question the long-standing narrative that British authorities of the time considered communist spies as the primary threat to continued governmental secrecy, especially because few suspected Soviet agents were investigated and harassed to the same degree as this dedicated anticommunist and self-described committed patriot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article uses a thematic inductive analysis to identify the channels through which Soviet propaganda from Radio Vilnius (Lithuanian SSR radio) reached the press of Lithuanian Americans during the Cold War. The study covered 31, 681 issues of the newspapers Dratigas, Diron, Naujienos and Vilnis. The study results show that the circulation of radio propaganda in the press was uneven. Two peaks of citation can be distinguished: 1953-1965 and 1988-1990. Radio Vilnius produced special external radio broadcasts for Lithuanians living in the diaspora, mainly in the USA. However, the Lithuanian American press received radio content, including radio propaganda for the interior of occupied Lithuania, which was not heard abroad from eleven different sources. The content of Radio Vilnius for the interior of Lithuania was mainly received through the Radio Vilnius tracking station, established in Germany on the initiative of the VLIK. Although the newspapers constantly criticized the content of Radio Vilnius, they also printed advertisements about the possibility of purchasing short-wave receivers to hear Radio Vilnius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War" by William Michael Schmidli, the author explores how Ronald Reagan repurposed Jimmy Carter's human rights rhetoric to advance US foreign policy goals during the late Cold War. Reagan used democracy promotion as a means to combat communism and promote neoliberal economics, prioritizing political and civil rights over social and economic rights. Schmidli examines Reagan's strategies in various contexts, including Nicaragua, and discusses the challenges and criticisms faced by the administration. The book offers a thought-provoking analysis of Reagan's approach to human rights and its implications for US interventionism. [Extracted from the article]

Erving Goffman, a prominent sociologist of the 20th century, is often portrayed as a reclusive intellectual focused on mundane matters. However, Gary D. Jaworski's book, "Erving Goffman and the Cold War," challenges this perception by arguing that Goffman was actually a perceptive social theorist of the Cold War. Jaworski supports this claim by examining Goffman's interests in loyalty, secrecy, strategy, spies, interrogation, provocation, and aggression, which align with the cultural atmosphere of the Cold War. While the book provides valuable insights into Goffman's work, it lacks a comprehensive exploration of the Cold War beyond the United States. Overall, the book presents a compelling argument for viewing Goffman as a social theorist of the Cold War. [Extracted from the article]

Although Czechoslovak foreign intelligence operated in dozens of countries throughout the world between 1948 and 1989, interfering significantly in their political development in some cases, it is still a neglected actor in the history of the secret services. The aim of this study is to clarify the nature of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence and to assess its activities and the types of intelligence work on which it focused. In addition to the organizational structure and its changing face during the various phases of the Cold War, this study also focuses on the most important intelligence operations run by Czechoslovak intelligence abroad, its links to the Soviet State Committee for Security, and its collaboration with other Eastern bloc intelligence services. The second part of this study focuses on the processes leading to the declassification of intelligence documents after the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and outlines how to critically interpret and evaluate these surviving archive materials in Cold War history research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Sven Felix Kellerhof and Bernd von Kosta: Capital of Spies: Intelligence Agencies in Berlin during the Cold War" is a book that explores the activities of intelligence agencies in Berlin during the Cold War. The book is divided into two parts, with the first section focusing on Western intelligence services and the second section covering the Stasi and Soviet activities. However, the book lacks an overall analytic framework and fails to provide a comprehensive understanding of the events and changes that occurred during this period. The authors also overlook important topics and make errors in their analysis. Overall, the book offers some interesting stories but falls short in providing a thorough examination of the subject matter. [Extracted from the article]

Serhii Plokhy's book, "Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis," challenges the dominant narrative of the crisis and explores the mistakes made by both the United States and the Soviet Union. Plokhy argues that President Kennedy and his advisers misunderstood Khrushchev's motives for placing missiles in Cuba. The book also highlights the Ukrainian connection to the crisis, as many of the missiles sent to Cuba were built in Ukraine. Plokhy emphasizes the importance of avoiding nuclear threats and calls for a return to arms control negotiations. The article discusses Khrushchev's motives for sending missiles to Cuba, including defending Cuba, bridging the missile gap, asserting Soviet leadership, and extending the Soviet frontier. The crisis led to a tense standoff between the US and the Soviet Union, but through diplomatic correspondence, a resolution was reached, highlighting the fear of nuclear weapons and the importance of avoiding war. [Extracted from the article]

This article seeks to answer the question of how some European countries prepare their societies for possible wars and crises in the wake of increasing security threats. In the modern era, civilians have also become a part of the war, since the wars have started to affect those behind the frontlines. In response to this, states developed various practices to prepare their people for the devastating effects of war. The activities carried out under the name of Total Defence in many countries during the Cold War years were a product of this understanding and preparations. The applications that were shelved in many countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union have been brought back to the agenda after 2014 especially with the Russian-Ukrainian War and with the preparations of European societies against war and crisis. Based on the claim that these preparations do not carry revolutionary innovations, this study concludes that the threat perception, historical memory, and past collective defence experiences of the countries shape the current practices. The last part of the article evaluates a brief history of the social preparedness of Turkish society in war and crises in terms of the concept of total defence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]