Browsing by Subject "Cold War"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 152

The 1980 Moscow Olympics and my Family
(2014-02-24) Straw, Andrew
50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War from a Vietnamese American Perspective
(2015-11-23) Bui, Nancy
A Journey with Pan-Americanism
(2008-02-09) Moulton, Aaron
A paradoxical friendship : Romanian-Iranian relations during the Ceausescu era
(2023-04-19) Nicolescu, Laura Beatrice; Koyagi, Mikiya; Neuburger, Mary
In a seemingly paradoxical manner, Romania and Iran, two states with staunchly different ideological systems and entrenched in opposing camps, maintained remarkably close cooperation during the height of the Cold War. The level of ties on the economic and diplomatic fronts displayed continuity throughout the era of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu, encompassing a time period from 1965-1989 that saw a changing Iranian political landscape. This thesis argues that the basis of the Romanian-Iranian relationship during the Ceausescu era encapsulated the prioritization of national interest over ideology. Chapter one engages in a comparative study of Romania and Iran’s foreign policy trajectories to outline how their relationship was part of both countries’ general approach of balancing between multiple actors as long as it served national interest. It further covers the mutual benefits Romania and Iran received from the maintenance of robust ties in the economic realm and cooperation on global issues. Chapter two is dedicated to deciphering Ceausescu’s last visit to Iran in 1989, just seven days before he was executed, in the context of Romania and Iran’s international isolation in the 1980s. Primary sources utilized in this project include Romanian national newspapers, interviews and speeches by Ceausescu, and memoirs from former members of the Ceausescu government. Secondary sources featured in this work include scholarship on late Pahlavi Iran and the early revolutionary years, communism under Ceausescu’s rule, and a global history of international relations during the Cold War.
African Catholic Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church by Elizabeth A. Foster (2019)
(2019-05-20) Whitehouse, David
After WWII: A Soviet View of U.S. Intentions
(2014-11-20) Lawrence, Mark Atwood
After WWII: George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”
(2014-11-13) Lawrence, Mark A.
America Faces the Stakes and Style of a Cold War in Asia (May 2018)
(Texas National Security Review, 2018-05) Schake, Kori
Americans Against the City, By Stephen Conn (2014)
(2016-09-26) Whalen, Emily
An Unlikely Cold Warrior: The Latin American Institute at Mississippi Southern College
(2008-02-09) Steadman, Amelia
Anti-Semitism in Poland after the Six-Day War, 1967-1969
(2020-04-22) Bala, Alexander
Archive of memories : a journey through the discursive construction and cultural silencing of Mexico’s Dirty War
(2022-08-30) Castro Villarreal, Mario Nicolás; Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, Hector, 1962-; Hartigan, John; Merabet, Sofian; Menchaca, Martha
Mexico's "Dirty War" or guerra sucia refers to the historical period covering the seventies and early eighties, when the federal governments of presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría Álvarez waged open warfare and counterintelligence assaults on urban leftist guerrillas. Once a taboo topic and a historical moment erased and silenced in Mexican historiography, the past fifteen years brought a new wave of historians and activists spearheading attempts at memorializing this bloody event under the frameworks of human rights, archival research, and the recovery of oral history. This research project analyzes three case studies focused on historical and mnemonic reconstructions of guerrilla history and the human rights violations that occurred during the Dirty War; with a particular focus on the two most famous leftist armed movements of that time: the Fuerzas de Liberación Nacional (FLN) and the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (LC23S). The first part delves into Mexico's failed attempt at building a legal framework for transitional justice after Mexico’s “democratic turn” in 2000s. The second case moves to the question of recuperating "spaces of terror" and the successes and failures at building new forms of collective memory. The final chapter focuses on the controversial and infamous murder of Monterrey businessman Eugenio Garza Sada in 1973 and the competing historical and moral interpretations surrounding guerrilla violence. Through a methodology combining discursive analysis, anthropological approaches to memory, and auto-ethnographic vignettes, this dissertation attempts to grasp the current challenges of transforming what once was a marginal countermemory into an accepted and integral part of Mexico's political history. The author expands these questions through the study of guerrilla literature, testimonios, documentaries, and his familial connections to the regional histories of urban guerrillas.
The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies (2014)
(2018-09-10) O'Donnell, Paula
The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War by Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko (2008)
(2011-05-21) Skorobogatov, Yana
Beyond “an iron fist in a velvet glove” : American people-to-people sport diplomacy during the late and post-Cold War eras (1980-2020)
(2023-04-21) Schelfhout, Sam Thomas; Hunt, Thomas M.; Ozyurtcu, Tolga; Todd, Janice S; Bowers, Matthew; Mills, Brian M; Rider, Toby C
As the debate surrounding the relationship between sport and politics remains heated in American popular discourse, the conundrum permeates the field of sport diplomacy and sport’s legitimacy as a political instrument. Nations popularly wielded the propagandistic power of sport since the beginning of the Cold War, using sporting events to achieve foreign policy objectives. States, governing bodies, and other nonstate actors use public diplomacy to understand cultures, attitudes, and behavior; build and manage relationships; and influence opinions and actions to advance interests and values. Sport is increasingly becoming an attractive option in public diplomacy, and the incorporation of uniform mechanisms for achieving cultural mediation objectives across governments has become the norm in several governments worldwide. In the United States, the mission of the Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Sport Diplomacy Division is to develop relationships between Americans and citizens from nations worldwide by sharing a common goal through sports. While sport diplomacy is primarily used to advance interstate relations and foreign policy objectives on behalf of national governments, private actors have increasingly embraced the practice in achieving a broader range of benefits. Leaders within the Department of State and an increasing number of non-state actors must continue to harness the unique power sport possesses in bridging differences, developing positive associations with foreign countries, and advancing the myriad of benefits that sport can present. Emerging trends, such as digital diplomacy and esports diplomacy, influence program leaders to continuously improve and adapt programming to reach as many global citizens as possible. This project will focus on how the United States government and non-governmental actors interpret and implement people-to-people sport diplomacy in the post-Cold War era. This research employs a mixed-methods approach, utilizing oral histories, content analyses, and official documents from physical and digital archives to illuminate how people-to-people sports exchanges are conducted in the U.S. and abroad. Reflecting on the history of people-to-people sports exchanges and insights from professionals who have previously steered such programs, governmental and non-governmental agencies should explore and encourage opportunities to engage in people-to-people sport diplomacy initiatives.
Bridging the Gap over Uncharted Waters: An Interview with Kyle Balzer
(2023-03-28) Balzer, Kyle
Burying the Lede? The Iran Hostage Crisis "October Surprise” and Me
(2023-03-30) Brands, H. W.
Capitalizing on Castro : Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States, 1959-1969
(2012-05) Keller, Renata Nicole; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-
This dissertation explores the central paradox of Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States in the decade following the Cuban Revolution--why did a government that cooperated with the CIA and practiced conservative domestic policies defend Castro's communist regime? It uses new sources to prove that historians' previous focus on the foreign and ideological influences on Mexico's relations with Cuba was misplaced, and that the most important factor was fear of the domestic Left. It argues that Mexican leaders capitalized upon their country's "special relationship" with Castro as part of their efforts to maintain control over restive leftist sectors of the Mexican population. This project uses new sources to illuminate how perceptions of threat shaped Mexico's foreign and domestic politics. In 2002, the Mexican government declassified the records of the two most important intelligence organizations--the Department of Federal Security and the Department of Political and Social Investigations. The files contain the information that Mexico's presidents received about potential dangers to their regime. They reveal that Mexican leaders overestimated the centralization, organization, and coordination of leftist groups, and in so doing gave them more influence over policy than their actual numbers or resources logically should have afforded. The dissertation uses the concept of threat perception as an analytic and organizational tool. Each chapter considers a different potential source of danger to the Mexican regime in the context of the Cold War and the country's relations with Cuba. For the sake of clarity, it breaks the threats into the categories of individual, national, and international, even though these subjective categories may blend into one another throughout the course of the analysis. The first chapter begins with an individual threat: Lázaro Cárdenas, a powerful former president who became one of Fidel Castro's most dedicated supporters. The next three chapters analyze threats on the national level by looking at the domestic groups that Mexican leaders perceived to be the greatest dangers to their regime. The final two chapters move to the international level and examine the roles of Cuba and the United States. As a whole, this study of the connections between Mexico's foreign and domestic politics makes a significant and timely contribution to the historiographies of modern Mexico, U.S.-Latin American relations, and the Cold War.
Capitalizing on the Cold War : Hong Kong elites and America’s Pacific empire
(2015-08-11) Hamilton, Peter E.; Hsu, Madeline Yuan-yin; Abzug, Robert H.; Lawrence, Mark A.; Suri, Jeremi; Metzler, Mark; Carroll, John
This study argues that it is impossible to understand either the Cold War Pacific or post-1945 globalization without Hong Kong. Rather than just a small British colony, Hong Kong was at the center of both the Cold War’s transfer of international power from Britain to the United States and the post-1978 reintegration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with global capitalism. In particular, this study argues that Hong Kong demonstrates a previously unstudied mode of expanding US imperial power that later structured contemporary US-PRC relations and the rapid growth of US-PRC trade. Scholars have documented the United States’ Cold War pursuit of global “hearts and minds” through overt anticommunist cultural diplomacy. This study reframes this research by arguing that the United States steered Hong Kong’s future through the subtlest manner of extending influence: the provision of curated opportunities. Due to British restraints on overt propaganda, the United States oriented this refugee-inundated territory toward US leadership by constraining local business opportunities, sponsoring the expansion of local higher education, and by facilitating enormous numbers of the colony’s youth to attend American colleges and universities. By the early 1970s Hong Kong was routinely the largest sender of foreign students to the United States and by 1990 likely the world’s most US-educated international society. In turn, the 1950 US embargo on the PRC fostered Hong Kong’s dependence on the US market and opened the colony to waves of US capital. The United States transformed into Hong Kong’s largest export market and largest outside investor. This reorientation of educational and business cultures was expansion by the sophisticated imperial technology of coopting capitalist elites, not by the US military. These US opportunities empowered the colony’s capitalists into powerful global agents. It was US-educated returnees who led in brokering outside trade and investment into the PRC through Hong Kong during the 1980s. This same class was critical in stabilizing the colony before its 1997 return to the PRC. Particularly after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, they repurposed America’s Cold War neo-imperialist systems and paved the way for the United States to rebuild economic relations with the PRC during the 1990s
Cartographies of engagement : the parallels and intersections of Latin American and South Asian literature in the twentieth century
(2015-05-20) Kantor, Roanne L.; Salgado, César Augusto; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Snell, Rupert; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Héctor
“Cartographies of Engagement: The Parallels and Intersections of Latin American and South Asian Authors,” establishes comparisons between Latin American authors who lived in South Asia and their South Asian contemporaries from 1906 to the present. Working in South Asian literatures in English, Hindi and Urdu, and Latin American literature in Spanish, this project recovers a century-long literary exchange between two previously unassociated regions and suggests a shared trajectory of professionalization for authors in the Global South. In the first half of the twentieth century, authors from both regions traveled abroad as a means of supporting themselves – whether through cultural exchanges, diplomatic postings, or in visiting positions with foreign universities. I suggest that their growing commitment to transnational solidarity was not a precondition for these travels, but the product of them. In the second half of the century, authors from both regions experienced a radical shift as their writing gained cache in the global north. I therefore conclude by demonstrating the connections between the emergence of Latin American Boom literature and its translation into English in the 1960s, its influence on the subsequent generation of South Asian Anglophone writers, and their own emergence as a global phenomenon beginning in the 1980s with Midnight’s Children. In bringing together two world areas that are rarely associated, it reveals a paradox in contemporary methods of comparative literary scholarship: even as disciplines expand to accommodate an ever greater diversity of language traditions, the frameworks for comparing those traditions remain remarkably narrow. In mapping the circulation of authors and texts around the globe, literary scholars have typically relied on just two different types of what I call “literary cartographies.” First, “cartographies of domination,” describe historical relations of power, as elaborated in postcolonial and decolonial theories. Second, “cartographies of contiguity,” describe relations based on physical proximity and historical routes of exchange, such as area studies designations or the more recent “oceanic turn.” By contrast, this project carves out methodological space for “cartographies of engagement,” which highlight the routes of authors and texts that contravene larger patterns of political domination and economic exchange.