Search

The expectation of ongoing pressure against the Soviet Union and potential allies elsewhere in world made up the thrust of early US planning for the Cold War, and were emblematic of Containment. They led the US to assume leadership of NATO in Western Europe, and to worldwide US engagements, including in Vietnam. But the US and NATO during the 1950s could not agree on a defense strategy; Eisenhower’s plan by 1957 and 1958 was for the US to reduce its European presence in favor of national control of nuclear weapons, including by West Germany. That prospect frightened the Soviets, and more than anything else led to Khrushchev’s ultimatum on Berlin in November 1958. Kennedy, with some collaboration from Khrushchev, constructed a settlement by 1963 that would keep US forces in western Europe; keep US nuclear weapons under US control, hence prevent Germans from having them; and maintain the political status quo in central Europe. A self-enforcing European peace could be achieved only because the Soviet goal of regional hegemony had been thwarted. But Kennedy and Khrushchev both left the scene, following which the accomplishment was poorly understood, a pattern oddly continued by most Cold War observers – including Morgenthau and Kissinger. Had it been better understood, it might have changed US policy toward less intervention in the Third World. Eisenhower left office in January 1961 with the US on the brink of showdown in central Africa, Cuba, and Laos. We got a pre-vision of a different strategy in Kennedy’s policy shifts in all of these, and in withdrawal underway of forces from Vietnam. Meanwhile, DeGaulle offered a multi-dimensional case for neutrality in southeast Asia. A less ideological, more “realist” view would have led the US to stay “offshore,” to avoid confrontation where superpower interests were only marginally involved, and otherwise to encourage neutralist solutions. The Cold War might have faded away; but that was not to be. Containment, as practiced, and resumed after 1963, prolonged the Cold War. Kennedy and DeGaulle were effective realists, while Eisenhower, Kissinger, and often Acheson, were not. The 1963 European settlement should have been updated during the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it was not. A consequence, in part, was the Ukraine war of 2022.Keywords. Containment; European settlement 1963; Cold War; Realism; Hegemony in Europe; Nuclear weapons policy; MC-48; NATO history; Berlin crisis; Vietnam War; Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Domino Theory; Neutralism; Multi-lateral Force (MLF) arrangements; Dwight Eisenhower; John Kennedy; Dean Acheson; Henry Kissinger; Nikita Khrushchev; Charles DeGaulle; Konrad Adenauer; Harold Macmillan; Walter Lippmann; Hans Morgenthau; John Mearsheimer; Marc Trachtenberg; Kissinger’s Diplomacy; Skybolt missile; Polaris missile; Ukraine War; Congolese neutrality; Laotian neutrality.JEL. M14.

Thomas Merton believed nuclear war was the single greatest threat facing humanity, whereas American Catholic commentators considered that nuclear war was winnable or at least survivable. What made him a reluctant pacifist was the tensions he faced between speaking frankly without being partisan. Merton had an intellectual duty to his readers to both fairly and accurately set out his position on nuclear pacifism. In order to evaluate whether he did this with integrity as a writer it is necessary to set his declared motivations against his actions and to evaluate what the tensions between his views and his actions reveal about him as a writer. Merton’s pacifism is evaluated through archive research at the Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, and supported by a substantial secondary literature. Research for this dissertation highlights previously unacknowledged associations between Merton’s Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky and radical pacifism of the Catholic Worker movement. Merton’s pacifism is evaluated in five chapters through examination of his character, cloistered life, and correspondences within the institutional context of Merton’s tussles with his superiors and censors in reaction to the resumption of atmospheric nuclear testing by the Soviet Union in September 1961 and the U.S. in April 1962. He represented himself through correspondence as being a writer who was committed to a central American Catholic ideal that America was good for Catholicism and Catholicism could save America. He was committed to a consistent ethics of life. The few mainstream readers who engaged with Merton’s ideas were shocked and confused that he reduced political reality to symbols of moralism that rejected all war, not just nuclear war. The broader significance of Merton’s pacifist writing was as a bellwether of a broader cultural shift in American Catholic life from American Catholic triumphalism to prudential judgement in the responsible exercise of the democratic life.

Crisis bargaining literature has predominantly used formal and qualitative methods to debate the relative efficacy of actions, public words, and private words. These approaches have overlooked the reality that policymakers are bombarded with information and struggle to adduce actual signals from endless noise. Material actions are therefore more effective than any diplomatic communication in shaping elites’ perceptions. Moreover, while ostensibly “costless,” private messages provide a more precise communication channel than public and “costly” pronouncements. Over 18,000 declassified documents from the Berlin Crisis of 1958–63 reflecting private statements, public statements, and White House evaluations of Soviet resolve are digitized and processed using statistical learning techniques to assess these claims. The results indicate that material actions have greater influence on the White House than either public or private statements; that public statements are noisier than private statements; and that private statements have a larger effect on evaluations of resolve than public statements.

Iako postoji opsežna literatura koja se bavi problematikom kriznih situacija nastalih tijekom Hladnog rata, Berlin ipak ostaje zapamćen kao žarišna točka Europe i vrhunac tog dugotrajnog političkog sukoba. Bilo je jasno da poslijeratna utrka za Berlin 1945. godine, kao i podjela sfera političkog utjecaja, nisu nagovještavale miran rasplet događaja između Zapadnih saveznika i sovjeta. U konačnici, na ljeto 1948. godine višegodišnje tenzije, koje tinjaju od Konferencije u Jalti 1945. godine, dovode do prvog vrhunca Hladnog rata – berlinske blokade. Shodno tomu, dolazi do produbljivanja jaza između Istočne Njemačke koju su kontrolirali Sovjeti te Zapadne Njemačke koja se pod okriljem Saveznika vidljivo uspješnije ekonomski i društveno razvijala. U ovom će se radu detaljnije objasniti događaji koji su prethodili krizama 1948. i 1961. godine, kao i njihov tijek, te, štoviše, bit će prikazan i miran, ali neskladan period stagnacije između vrhunaca Hladnog rata. Cilj ovog rada prikazati je način na koji su prevladane krize te prisutnost realističke teorije međunarodnih odnosa koja je dominirala za vrijeme hladnoratovskih nadmetanja. Svrha ovog pregleda znanstveni je doprinos samoj temi Hladnog rata u smislu prikaza geopolitičke, vojno-ekonomske i kulturne podjele Njemačke te suživota njenih građana. Berlinske krize kao simbol blokovske podjele svijeta označuju fenomen polarizacije društva kako u ideološkom tako i u doslovnom geografskom smislu. Posljedice navedene separacije u jednom od najvećih europskih gradova vidljive su i danas., Despite the extensive literature tackling the issue of Cold War crises, it is Berlin that remains the focal point of Europe and the climax of this long-lasting political conflict. It was quite obvious that the 1945 postwar race for Berlin and its sphere of influence will not end with the amicable agreement between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1948, several years of tensions that started with the Yalta Conference in 1945, resulted in the Berlin blockade - the first climax of the Cold War. As a consequence, this created an even greater gap between East Germany controlled by the Soviets and West Germany which evidently developed more successful economically and socially under the influence od the Allies. This paper will explain in more detail the events that led to 1948 and 1961 crises, their course, as well as a peaceful, yet the incoherent period of stagnation between the climaxes of the Cold War. The aim of this paper is to display how the crises were overcome and the presence of the realistic theory of international affairs which dominated during the Cold War competitions. The purpose of this overview is a scientific contribution to the theme of the Cold War, depicting the geopolitical, military-economical and cultural partition of Germany and the coexistence of its citizens. The Berlin crises, a symbol of the world block division mark the phenomenon of ideological as well as literal - geographical polarization of society. The consequences of this separation have left an immense mark in one of the largest cities in Europe.

Willy Brandt belongs to one of the most significant and popular political figures of the 20th century. His name is inextricably linked to the West Berlin, peacekeeping, defense of freedom, and the constant fight for social justice. Willy Brandt witnessed the Berlin blockade which started in June 1948. Several years later, in 1958, he had to face a difficult challenge in form of the First Berlin Crisis, and in August 1961, he had to promptly react to the construction of the Berlin Wall. This thesis analyzes reactions of Willy Brandt to these crises, and with the use of e.g. results of opinion polls and the contemporary media reports, it proves that his popularity in this period of time significantly increased. The thesis also provides evidence that Willy Brandt was not only able to ensure the viability of West Berlin, but also its economic and cultural boom and secure its international position.

This article examines the rather poor emotional relationship between the White House and the State Department during 1961, the first year of the presidency of John F. Kennedy. The article argues that both sides had expectations of the relationship that turned into disappointments and that both sides felt that their approach and work was superior to the other. During the Berlin Crisis, this clash of emotions gained political significance concerning the case of the American response to a Soviet formal diplomatic note (an aide-mémoire) following the June 1961 Vienna Summit between Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The White House and the State Department had different priorities and because of the poor emotional relationship they failed to find common ground. The end result was that the State Department won the battle by having its preferred version of the response sent to the Soviets. But the Department lost the war, because the White House used the opportunity to take control of Berlin policy at the expense of the State Department.

The diploma thesis Media picture of building the Berlin wall - Rudé právo, The New York Times, The Times addresses the events associated with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and primarily presents the analysis of newspaper articles connected to the Berlin Wall topic. The issue of the Berlin Wall is portrayed before its construction, during the construction and immediately after it. In the "Teoretická východiska" chapter, the concepts used as a basis of the subsequent analysis of selected newspapers are explained. The first part of the thesis presents the historical and political circumstances of the Berlin Wall construction, especially the development of the Cold War between the representatives of East and West. The analysis of the three selected newspaper titles is preceded by a narrative interview with a foreign correspondent from Rudé právo. His statements serve as an illustration of the former Berlin atmosphere. In the analysis of the newspapers Rudé právo, The New York Times and The Times, emphasis is placed on the article contents, presentation style, theme diversity, trends and information value of the presented news. The output of the analysis is a comparison of all three selected titles and is based on the given theoretical grounds. This thesis is meant to serve as an example...

Before the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, France and Germanyhad been at war thrice (1870,1914, 1945).The object of our study is to follow the course of the politico-strategic relationshipthese two countries shared between the failure of the European Defence Community Project in 1954 and Germany’s reunification in 1990. All through this study, we willtry to explain how the French and German pair has become – despite both successand failure and since the birth of the FRG – a fundamental axis of the European Area : so much so that it is rightly or wrongly regarded as the ‘duet of Europe’.Our study will highlight today’s international relations, since despite its economic,political and social victories, the European Union has a lots of weaknessesconcerning Defence. Which arguments are held against the establishment of aEuropean pole of Defence within the European Area. ?; Avant la création de la République fédérale d’Allemagne en 1949, la France et l’Allemagne se sont livrées la guerre à trois reprises (1870, 1914, 1945). L’objet de notre étude se propose de suivre le parcours des relations politico-stratégiques entre les deux pays depuis l’échec du projet de communauté européenne de défense en 1954 jusqu’à la réunification allemande en 1990. À travers cette étude, nous essayons de montrer comment le couple franco-allemand, malgré les réussites et les échecs, s’est imposé depuis la création de la RFA comme un axe fondamental dans l’espace européen à telle enseigne qu’il est considéré à tort ou à raison comme le « couple moteur » de l’Europe.Notre étude nous conduit à aborder les relations internationales contemporaines.Malgré ses succès sur le plan économique, politique et plus ou moins social, l’Union européenne pêche dans le secteur de la défense. Quelles sont les réticences à la mise en place d’un pôle européen de défense au sein de l’espace européen ?

The article describes Italian foreign policy during the Second Berlin crisis, with a special emphasis on PM Fanfani's mediating attempts and his 1961 Moscow trip