{"title":"FREEZE! The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War by Henry Richard Maar III","authors":"J. Kalicki","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01107","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47198009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) debated whether a counterforce capability of hundreds of mobile medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) under joint command in Europe was needed to reinforce U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. The conventional wisdom about this issue, echoing the official U.S. government position, has long been that deterrence was robust even without a joint missile force. According to this argument, U.S. policymakers tried to reassure NATO allies, particularly the West Germans, that sharing control of strategic nuclear weapons was unnecessary and unwise. The analysis presented here shows that the problem was not so straightforward. Many officials in NATO countries, particularly in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), viewed the MRBM debate not so much as a problem of nuclear weapons control but as a question of extended deterrence credibility and strategic stability, posing an all-or-nothing challenge to NATO.
{"title":"West Germany and NATO's Nuclear Force Posture in the Early 1960s (Part 1)","authors":"Andreas Lutsch","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01089","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) debated whether a counterforce capability of hundreds of mobile medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) under joint command in Europe was needed to reinforce U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. The conventional wisdom about this issue, echoing the official U.S. government position, has long been that deterrence was robust even without a joint missile force. According to this argument, U.S. policymakers tried to reassure NATO allies, particularly the West Germans, that sharing control of strategic nuclear weapons was unnecessary and unwise. The analysis presented here shows that the problem was not so straightforward. Many officials in NATO countries, particularly in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), viewed the MRBM debate not so much as a problem of nuclear weapons control but as a question of extended deterrence credibility and strategic stability, posing an all-or-nothing challenge to NATO.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47193735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
who had been left off the invitation list for Camp David, was not. As Moore put it, the agreement “upset the Pentagon and pleased the State Department as it geared up for negotiations.” Cooper’s book is a useful contribution to study of Reagan-Thatcher diplomacy, but one limited by his desire to downplay the reality, and often centrality, of international relations in those discussions and by his ignoring the fullest published source on Thatcher, that of her authorized biographer, in which illuminating attention is paid to the U.S.-British relationship.
{"title":"Scars of War: The Politics of Paternity and Responsibility for the Amerasians of Vietnam by Sabrina Thomas","authors":"Lukas Schretter","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01111","url":null,"abstract":"who had been left off the invitation list for Camp David, was not. As Moore put it, the agreement “upset the Pentagon and pleased the State Department as it geared up for negotiations.” Cooper’s book is a useful contribution to study of Reagan-Thatcher diplomacy, but one limited by his desire to downplay the reality, and often centrality, of international relations in those discussions and by his ignoring the fullest published source on Thatcher, that of her authorized biographer, in which illuminating attention is paid to the U.S.-British relationship.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49511676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We cheat ourselves if we dismiss Bush as a cold-blooded snob. The detached analyst had a touch of the mystic. In the penultimate selection of the volume, he asks why birds sing, and he concludes that they do so for the pleasure the singing brings. Not for survival of the self or the species, but for a transcendent joy in the experience. Elsewhere, he considers a point at the heart of the human condition: “The shepherd on the hill at night views the stars and ponders, not just that he can thus care better for his sheep, not just that he is idle and his mind roams, but because he wonders whether, beyond the stars, lies the reason why he can thus ponder” (p. 221). As we face climate change, buckling economies, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the rise of genome editing and other technological disruptions, Bush’s life and career tell us that serious, focused, and rigorous analysis can see us through, even as we bring our own blind spots and wistful romantic musings along. One final word about the editor, Zachary. Editors who gather, evaluate, select, and trim the works of others are themselves reflected in the subsequent collections, even though they may be lost in the brilliance of their subject. For Zachary to have compiled this material requires his having the talent and training to understand all the facets that engaged Bush. The result is a volume that is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of major issues facing the United States in the middle of the previous century and a source of encouragement and caution for our own times.
{"title":"The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History by Austin Jersild","authors":"L. Lüthi","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01116","url":null,"abstract":"We cheat ourselves if we dismiss Bush as a cold-blooded snob. The detached analyst had a touch of the mystic. In the penultimate selection of the volume, he asks why birds sing, and he concludes that they do so for the pleasure the singing brings. Not for survival of the self or the species, but for a transcendent joy in the experience. Elsewhere, he considers a point at the heart of the human condition: “The shepherd on the hill at night views the stars and ponders, not just that he can thus care better for his sheep, not just that he is idle and his mind roams, but because he wonders whether, beyond the stars, lies the reason why he can thus ponder” (p. 221). As we face climate change, buckling economies, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the rise of genome editing and other technological disruptions, Bush’s life and career tell us that serious, focused, and rigorous analysis can see us through, even as we bring our own blind spots and wistful romantic musings along. One final word about the editor, Zachary. Editors who gather, evaluate, select, and trim the works of others are themselves reflected in the subsequent collections, even though they may be lost in the brilliance of their subject. For Zachary to have compiled this material requires his having the talent and training to understand all the facets that engaged Bush. The result is a volume that is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of major issues facing the United States in the middle of the previous century and a source of encouragement and caution for our own times.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64591718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Pascal Zachary has selected, organized, and presented a masterful collection of Vannevar Bush’s thinking about information systems, organizational dynamics, weapons of war, the future of computing, potential benefits of the Great Depression, the space race, solar energy, and the elimination of drudgery, as well as his high regard for the duck and his wonder at the mysteries of the silkworm. Zachary’s notes before each of the fifty-six selections provide context and insight. They could stand alone as a superb essay on Bush’s life and career. Several themes suggest themselves in these readings. One is that Bush’s perspective was that of a successful meritocrat, with the contributions and limits of that historically important culture. In the introduction, Zachary notes that Bush’s pronouns are invariably masculine. The habit jumps out to a modern reader, but the anachronism is more than a generational quarrel over antecedents. In considering the leadership of the organizations that engaged him, Bush thought only about men, and men of a certain type. He brings to mind the Framers when they fashioned the Senate, the Electoral College, and the federal judiciary. The authors of the Federalist Papers believed that leadership required men who had established themselves, who were older, wealthier, wiser, successful in their careers, who could be trusted to promote the national interest, and who needed to be shielded from the passions of the masses. Bush would have concurred. We have since learned that a meritocracy that limits its candidates to a small slice of the demographically fortunate is a meritocracy too restricted to warrant much confidence that we have found our most capable. Bush’s focus on elites was evident in his observation in 1937 about the utility of science for society, concluding that “the mentally defective benefit along with everyone else, breed rapidly, and may inherit the earth” (p. 36). This judgment may well have been influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision a decade earlier upholding forced eugenic sterilizations in the nefarious case of Buck v. Bell. Eugenics was one of the great tragedies in U.S. history, all the more so for being fashionable among the well-off. A second theme that emerges from these readings is Bush the classicist. Again and again, he urged balance, a middle path between hazards, the ideal of Aristotle’s Golden Mean. He thought that people from various professions should be able to
{"title":"The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush edited by G. Pascal Zachary","authors":"Neil J. Sullivan","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01115","url":null,"abstract":"G. Pascal Zachary has selected, organized, and presented a masterful collection of Vannevar Bush’s thinking about information systems, organizational dynamics, weapons of war, the future of computing, potential benefits of the Great Depression, the space race, solar energy, and the elimination of drudgery, as well as his high regard for the duck and his wonder at the mysteries of the silkworm. Zachary’s notes before each of the fifty-six selections provide context and insight. They could stand alone as a superb essay on Bush’s life and career. Several themes suggest themselves in these readings. One is that Bush’s perspective was that of a successful meritocrat, with the contributions and limits of that historically important culture. In the introduction, Zachary notes that Bush’s pronouns are invariably masculine. The habit jumps out to a modern reader, but the anachronism is more than a generational quarrel over antecedents. In considering the leadership of the organizations that engaged him, Bush thought only about men, and men of a certain type. He brings to mind the Framers when they fashioned the Senate, the Electoral College, and the federal judiciary. The authors of the Federalist Papers believed that leadership required men who had established themselves, who were older, wealthier, wiser, successful in their careers, who could be trusted to promote the national interest, and who needed to be shielded from the passions of the masses. Bush would have concurred. We have since learned that a meritocracy that limits its candidates to a small slice of the demographically fortunate is a meritocracy too restricted to warrant much confidence that we have found our most capable. Bush’s focus on elites was evident in his observation in 1937 about the utility of science for society, concluding that “the mentally defective benefit along with everyone else, breed rapidly, and may inherit the earth” (p. 36). This judgment may well have been influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision a decade earlier upholding forced eugenic sterilizations in the nefarious case of Buck v. Bell. Eugenics was one of the great tragedies in U.S. history, all the more so for being fashionable among the well-off. A second theme that emerges from these readings is Bush the classicist. Again and again, he urged balance, a middle path between hazards, the ideal of Aristotle’s Golden Mean. He thought that people from various professions should be able to","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46931634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The bifurcation of Germany during the Cold War induced the two German states to compete around the world over German cultural sovereignty, as they offered rival conceptions of what it meant to be German. The contest over this matter was fueled not only by the division of Germany but also by the military occupation. With restrictions imposed on both governments in their foreign policy activities during the early Cold War, foreign cultural diplomacy (auswärtige Kulturpolitik), a form of proxy diplomacy developed in the interwar period, became a crucial means of forging ties with countries outside Europe. This article traces how the two German governments sent language teachers, artists, academics, musicians, and exchange students to Asia as cultural ambassadors in a bid to reestablish a German presence. Divided countries along the Bamboo Curtain, especially the People's Republic of China, became the most important battlegrounds in the competition for hegemony in representing Germany in Asia. The need to engage in foreign cultural diplomacy also brought Asian ideological conflicts home to Germany. Exchange visitors and their governments tried to achieve their own interests by steering a middle course between the two German states. Foreign cultural diplomacy thus was an essential—and complicated—part of “soft power” for both German governments in trying to win over foreign audiences.
{"title":"Informal Cold War Envoys: West German and East German Cultural Diplomacy in East Asia","authors":"S. Gehrig","doi":"10.1162/jcws_a_01092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01092","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The bifurcation of Germany during the Cold War induced the two German states to compete around the world over German cultural sovereignty, as they offered rival conceptions of what it meant to be German. The contest over this matter was fueled not only by the division of Germany but also by the military occupation. With restrictions imposed on both governments in their foreign policy activities during the early Cold War, foreign cultural diplomacy (auswärtige Kulturpolitik), a form of proxy diplomacy developed in the interwar period, became a crucial means of forging ties with countries outside Europe. This article traces how the two German governments sent language teachers, artists, academics, musicians, and exchange students to Asia as cultural ambassadors in a bid to reestablish a German presence. Divided countries along the Bamboo Curtain, especially the People's Republic of China, became the most important battlegrounds in the competition for hegemony in representing Germany in Asia. The need to engage in foreign cultural diplomacy also brought Asian ideological conflicts home to Germany. Exchange visitors and their governments tried to achieve their own interests by steering a middle course between the two German states. Foreign cultural diplomacy thus was an essential—and complicated—part of “soft power” for both German governments in trying to win over foreign audiences.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46255509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), Elidor Mëhilli argues that Communism in Albania “engendered a shared material and mental culture across borders without ensuring political unity.” In Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader, Benjamin Young shows the extent to which policymakers and ordinary citizens in another prominent case of Communist heterodoxy— North Korea—drew from, and indeed tried to export, the “party central committees, recognizable slogans, surveillance techniques, censorship rituals, a mental map, and a new vocabulary” that were, for Mëhilli constitutive of the socialist world. Young argues that the relationships forged through the export of such techniques and ideas to Third World states fundamentally “shaped and molded North Korea’s national identity,” causing officials in Pyongyang to foreground autonomy and anti-colonialism as the “core principles” of their state (p. 11). Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader contributes to research on socialist internationalism by stressing that the Soviet Union was not always the one that laid down the ideological terms for such exchanges. Young’s work additionally reveals the occasional frictions and competition that occurred between Communist states for influence in the Third World. Fostering relations with Third World states was, Young shows, a strategic priority for Communist countries keen to enhance domestic perceptions of their global influence, their standing in international organizations, and their hard currency supplies. Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader sets out to recover the independent aspirations and impact of “small states” on the Cold War (p. 11). It should additionally be read by scholars interested in the blending of soft and hard power in Communist states’ Cold War diplomacy and the nature and limits of these same states’ autonomy from the Soviet Union. The book considers whether a special subset of Communist states existed—also including Albania—which had more in common with one another than with their nearer regional neighbors on account of what became their “renegade” status (p. 124). Young traces North Korean engagement with the Third World (defined “not [as] a geographic area but a global project . . . that prioritized anti-imperialism and anticolonialism”) from 1956 through 1989 (p. 1). The North Koreans first fostered bilateral relations with seemingly like-minded states such as Indonesia under Sukarno, Cuba under Fidel Castro, and Communist-ruled Vietnam. It then courted the NonAligned Movement (NAM)—which it joined in 1975—to promote the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula. North Korean leaders quickly grew disillusioned, however, with what they perceived to be the NAM’s crippling lack of consensus. By the 1980s, North Korea turned toward newly independent states in the South Pacific to “extend its diplomatic presence and undermine South Korea” (p. 116). North Korean leader Kim Il-Su
{"title":"Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World by Benjamin R. Young","authors":"Rosamund Johnston","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01112","url":null,"abstract":"In From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), Elidor Mëhilli argues that Communism in Albania “engendered a shared material and mental culture across borders without ensuring political unity.” In Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader, Benjamin Young shows the extent to which policymakers and ordinary citizens in another prominent case of Communist heterodoxy— North Korea—drew from, and indeed tried to export, the “party central committees, recognizable slogans, surveillance techniques, censorship rituals, a mental map, and a new vocabulary” that were, for Mëhilli constitutive of the socialist world. Young argues that the relationships forged through the export of such techniques and ideas to Third World states fundamentally “shaped and molded North Korea’s national identity,” causing officials in Pyongyang to foreground autonomy and anti-colonialism as the “core principles” of their state (p. 11). Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader contributes to research on socialist internationalism by stressing that the Soviet Union was not always the one that laid down the ideological terms for such exchanges. Young’s work additionally reveals the occasional frictions and competition that occurred between Communist states for influence in the Third World. Fostering relations with Third World states was, Young shows, a strategic priority for Communist countries keen to enhance domestic perceptions of their global influence, their standing in international organizations, and their hard currency supplies. Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader sets out to recover the independent aspirations and impact of “small states” on the Cold War (p. 11). It should additionally be read by scholars interested in the blending of soft and hard power in Communist states’ Cold War diplomacy and the nature and limits of these same states’ autonomy from the Soviet Union. The book considers whether a special subset of Communist states existed—also including Albania—which had more in common with one another than with their nearer regional neighbors on account of what became their “renegade” status (p. 124). Young traces North Korean engagement with the Third World (defined “not [as] a geographic area but a global project . . . that prioritized anti-imperialism and anticolonialism”) from 1956 through 1989 (p. 1). The North Koreans first fostered bilateral relations with seemingly like-minded states such as Indonesia under Sukarno, Cuba under Fidel Castro, and Communist-ruled Vietnam. It then courted the NonAligned Movement (NAM)—which it joined in 1975—to promote the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula. North Korean leaders quickly grew disillusioned, however, with what they perceived to be the NAM’s crippling lack of consensus. By the 1980s, North Korea turned toward newly independent states in the South Pacific to “extend its diplomatic presence and undermine South Korea” (p. 116). North Korean leader Kim Il-Su","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49255987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
also captures well the irony, even the hypocrisy, of congressional support for the freeze while simultaneously voting in favor of new weapons systems such as the B-1 bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative. Maar acknowledges the tactical compromises the freeze movement found itself having to make with its political supporters, but he underestimates the contribution of the latter to elite support for the freeze. He gives little attention, for example, to how widely Senators Kennedy and Hatfield were able to garner academic, labor, professional, religious, think tank, and business support, which played a large role in transforming U.S. arms control policies in the 1980s. Maar also overstates his argument that the freeze movement played a major role in ending the Cold War. Although the movement did affect U.S. policies, far more decisive were such factors as the Soviet war in Afghanistan, anti-Communism in Eastern Europe, and the bankruptcy of the Communist system in the Soviet Union itself, not to mention the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev. In one of the book’s best chapters, Maar examines the impact of nuclear weapons fears on political and popular culture in the 1980s. From Jonathan Schell’s book The Fate of the Earth (1982) to the seminal made-for-TV film The Day After (1983), with references to comics, cartoon strips, Hollywood films, rock performances, and television shows, Maar vividly re-creates the spirit of the age and the freeze’s place in it. The book is most effective, and moving, in its description of the rise and fall of the nuclear freeze movement itself. Maar achieves his goal of “decentering the narrative away from a top-down focus on the personalities of statesmen.” In the great tradition of U.S. popular movements, the freeze was perhaps most impressive as an expression of the grassroots, and Maar tells that story exceedingly well.
{"title":"Fighting for Time: Rhodesia’s Military and Zimbabwe’s Independence by Charles D. Melson","authors":"M. Howard","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01108","url":null,"abstract":"also captures well the irony, even the hypocrisy, of congressional support for the freeze while simultaneously voting in favor of new weapons systems such as the B-1 bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative. Maar acknowledges the tactical compromises the freeze movement found itself having to make with its political supporters, but he underestimates the contribution of the latter to elite support for the freeze. He gives little attention, for example, to how widely Senators Kennedy and Hatfield were able to garner academic, labor, professional, religious, think tank, and business support, which played a large role in transforming U.S. arms control policies in the 1980s. Maar also overstates his argument that the freeze movement played a major role in ending the Cold War. Although the movement did affect U.S. policies, far more decisive were such factors as the Soviet war in Afghanistan, anti-Communism in Eastern Europe, and the bankruptcy of the Communist system in the Soviet Union itself, not to mention the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev. In one of the book’s best chapters, Maar examines the impact of nuclear weapons fears on political and popular culture in the 1980s. From Jonathan Schell’s book The Fate of the Earth (1982) to the seminal made-for-TV film The Day After (1983), with references to comics, cartoon strips, Hollywood films, rock performances, and television shows, Maar vividly re-creates the spirit of the age and the freeze’s place in it. The book is most effective, and moving, in its description of the rise and fall of the nuclear freeze movement itself. Maar achieves his goal of “decentering the narrative away from a top-down focus on the personalities of statesmen.” In the great tradition of U.S. popular movements, the freeze was perhaps most impressive as an expression of the grassroots, and Maar tells that story exceedingly well.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47180513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
wars in Angola and Ethiopia. Castro won Soviet support for his foreign interventions, but he was the one who spearheaded them. His mix of “non-alignment” and close links to Moscow offered a proven way for a small country to punch well above its weight internationally. Under these circumstances, it would have been astonishing if FSLN leaders, flush with success and having momentum on their side, had decided to sacrifice their Marxist-Leninist program and seek a “new sort of revolutionary government.” Even for readers who are not persuaded by Lee’s view of the possibilities of the Sandinista revolution, this is an impressive book. Lee treats Nicaragua and Nicaraguans sympathetically and on their own merits, yet he is also mindful of larger international political, economic, social, and cultural forces. The Ends of Modernization deserves the attention of anyone interested in Central America and Caribbean, North-South, and East-West issues during the Cold War, U.S.-Latin American relations, and politics and international relations in Nicaragua.
{"title":"A Diplomatic Meeting: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Art of Summitry by James Cooper","authors":"Archie Brown","doi":"10.1162/jcws_r_01110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_r_01110","url":null,"abstract":"wars in Angola and Ethiopia. Castro won Soviet support for his foreign interventions, but he was the one who spearheaded them. His mix of “non-alignment” and close links to Moscow offered a proven way for a small country to punch well above its weight internationally. Under these circumstances, it would have been astonishing if FSLN leaders, flush with success and having momentum on their side, had decided to sacrifice their Marxist-Leninist program and seek a “new sort of revolutionary government.” Even for readers who are not persuaded by Lee’s view of the possibilities of the Sandinista revolution, this is an impressive book. Lee treats Nicaragua and Nicaraguans sympathetically and on their own merits, yet he is also mindful of larger international political, economic, social, and cultural forces. The Ends of Modernization deserves the attention of anyone interested in Central America and Caribbean, North-South, and East-West issues during the Cold War, U.S.-Latin American relations, and politics and international relations in Nicaragua.","PeriodicalId":45551,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cold War Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46793141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David Johnson Lee’s The Ends of Modernization is a tale of disappointment. Lee examines a variety of domestic and international actors seeking economic and political progress for Nicaragua, starting with the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s and continuing into the 21st century. These hopes were invariably dashed. The Kennedy administration intended for the Alliance to generate technocratic progress and promote democracy to undercut the appeal of Cuban-style revolution in Latin America. Nicaragua achieved economic gains that made it “a star of the Alliance,” but these gains occurred under Anastasio Somoza’s dictatorship, revealing that the Alliance had abandoned its “pretensions of democratization” (p. 10). After Managua’s devastating 1972 earthquake, efforts to rebuild the capital as a modern, planned city only heightened tensions that “helped bring about the last major social revolution of the Cold War” (p. 42). Lee writes that, after the Sandinista-led revolution in 1979, Nicaragua’s leaders “would try to convince the world that a new sort of revolutionary government might be possible, one that combined the models of liberal and social revolution and thus might transcend the Cold War divides” (p. 70). But what Lee finds instead is that the Reagan administration supported the overthrow of the new regime in Nicaragua and “took networks, individuals and ideas that Nicaraguans and their allies had used to make the revolution acceptable to international audiences and turned them to very different ends” (p. 122). After a decade of U.S.-backed guerrilla warfare against the Sandinistas, the ruling party’s electoral defeat in 1990 led to further disappointment during “neoliberal” attempts at economic modernization. Even the restoration of onetime Sandinista Commandante Daniel Ortega in the 2006 presidential election could not alter this tide. Lee’s story ends in 2018 with the collapse of attempts to promote modernization via a new transoceanic canal (funded by China) and with a surge of discontent among Nicaraguans over Ortega’s rule. Even though Lee recounts a long string of disappointments and failures, his book is not disappointing at all. It is thoroughly researched, draws on an impressive range of source material, and is clearly written and forcefully argued. Its compact size (188 pages of text) makes it perfect for classroom use. Its black-and-white illustrations are often startling and dramatic, helping to bring the subject to life. Lee’s emphasis on the intersection of internal Nicaraguan dynamics with the influence of outside actors underscores the challenge facing the people of a small country seeking to find their own path to progress and development and to overcome the obstacles posed by foreign powers, especially the United States and Cuba, both of which have tried to turn Nicaragua to their own purposes. This book recognizes Nicaragua and Nicaraguans as having long and distinctive national traditions in culture and politics; they are not
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