Search results
Introduction In the post-Cold War decades, Russian–American tension has alternated with more tranquil periods of open discussion. There were two clearly defined periods of mutual understanding between America and Russia in the late Cold War. The first was the era of détente, admittedly hard to define in terms of years but probably at its high-water mark in 1972–79. The second accompanied the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and his reformist period from 1985 to 1991. In each period the two powers and their leaders seriously sought mutual
Britain to start a Cold War offensive involving subversion and special operations in the Eastern Bloc, believing such action, if enacted, would ‘endanger the position’ of allies and unnecessarily provoke the Soviets for little gain. 3 Although this opposition was gradually eroded, largely because of Soviet actions and attempts by officials to force a rethink, the moratorium on anti-Soviet activities
Beyond Bevin, any wider ministerial reluctance to engage in covert activities started to erode as the Cold War began, particularly following the Berlin Crisis of 1948–49. 4 Other than Valuable, Bevin also approved subversive activities inside the Soviet zone of Germany aimed at undermining relations between East German officials and Soviet forces, leading to recommendations that such
This book analyses the MH17 catastrophe as a prism that refracts the broader historical context in which it occurred, arraying its distinct strands and their interrelations in a rare moment of clarity. It argues that in the new Cold War with Putin's Russia, the West operates from a perspective inspired by the mentality of extreme risk-taking that stems from the dominant role of finance in contemporary capitalism. The book also argues that the dividing lines established by the enlargement of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1922 and the addition of Crimea to it in 1954, remained operational after independence. The armed seizure of power on 22 February 2014 occurred on the back of the demonstrations and put state power in the hands of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and actual fascists. Based on the unpublished government and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) documents, the book offers an analysis of global political economy and contemporary debates about Russia and East-West relations. It reviews the results of the official investigations into the MH17 disaster, which Ukraine delegated to the Netherlands. Both were profoundly compromised by granting the coup government in Kiev a veto over any outcomes, a novelty in the history of aviation disaster investigation that was considered shameful even in Ukraine. The book investigates how the coup regime, encouraged by its backers in Washington and Brussels, responded to the anti-Maidan movement among Russian-Ukrainians with extreme violence.
In a volume intended to have a contemporary bearing, it may seem idiosyncratic to devote an entire chapter to the Cold War. There are, after all, other more recent episodes which could be said to have shaped international politics and to which connections can be drawn with the book’s central concerns of inclusion/exclusion and security. Yet security relations in Europe
116 5 Tracy B. Strong The social and political construction of the Cold War It may be difficult for us to believe but it still may be true that Stalin and Molotov considered at Yalta that by our willingness to accept a general wording of the declaration on Poland and liberated Europe, by our own recognition of the need for the Red Army for security behind its lines and of the predominant interest of Russia and Poland as a friendly neighbor and as a corridor to Germany, we understood and were ready to accept Soviet policies already known to us. (Averell
8 1 The global gamble of a new Cold War Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was brought down amid a new Cold War between the Atlantic bloc and Russia, and greatly exacerbated it. So understanding the tragedy also requires us to contextualise it in this wider confrontation pitting the liberal West against a loose contender bloc composed of several relatively disjointed parts. These include the Russian-inspired Eurasian Union and at a further remove, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, together comprising half the world’s population) and the
to the AU was driven by forces within Africa and international pressure was not a determinant factor. This chapter discusses international peace and security developments in the 1990s to show that Africa was often developing new peace and security norms in tandem or ahead of international institutions. The purpose of this is to disprove arguments around the role of international pressure as well as arguments that place the transition as taking place predominantly during the post-Cold War period. In the case of the evolution of norms at the regional level in
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been significantly reoriented and retooled across the board. This process of change has been captured under two main labels. Internal adaptation is NATO-speak for looking at how the institution works, and whether it can be made to work better and more effectively. The process has embraced the possibility of creating procedures and structures whereby European member
positions on the National Executive Committee whilst the annual party conference expressed its influence by committing the party to unilateral nuclear disarmament and industrial conversion. International relations between the superpowers had entered a dangerous phase, sometimes referred to as the ‘second Cold War’, and there was reason to suggest that the public was fearful of nuclear war as cruise missiles were placed on either side of the Iron Curtain. 6 This vision for peaceful production also chimed with the