Early Cold War Research Articles

The indelicate balance of terror: Nuclear deterrence stability in a world of three nuclear superpowers

Albert Wohlstetter’s seminal essay of the early Cold War years, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” calls for revisiting in the current climate of geopolitics and military technology. The possible emergence of China as a near peer competitor with the United States and Russia in strategic nuclear forces changes the dynamics of nuclear deterrence, arms control and strategic stability in Asia and globally. In addition, future deterrence stability will also be challenged by changes in technology, including hypersonic weapons, improved missile defense capabilities, competition in the cyber and space domains, and the uncertain impacts of game changers such as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. As well, containment of nuclear weapons spread cannot be guaranteed, given the dissatisfaction of some existing and aspiring nuclear weapons states with the present international order.

75 years of Canada-US transborder water quantity hydropolitics

This paper reviews the history and evolution of Canada-United States transboundary water quantity politics (hydroelectricity, canals, irrigation, etc.) over the last 75 years: megaprojects on the St. Lawrence, Niagara, and Columbia Rivers during the early Cold War, a wide variety of transborder water issues stretching from coast to coast during the latter half of the twentieth century, and then recent hydropolitics concerning diversions from the Great Lakes basin. Utilizing an environmental history approach, and drawing from other fields such as historical geography, water policy, and political ecology, I show that Canada and the United States cooperatively manipulated border water environments on a large scale. Despite this coordination, there was often significant political and diplomatic controversy. I argue that coordinating or dealing with the United States deeply influenced the development of hydroelectricity in Canada, as well as the related hydraulic engineering expertise and technology. Moreover, transborder water politics also influenced many aspects of Canadian economic and political development, including federal-provincial relations. I explore themes such as Canada as a hydro state, the role of the Boundary Waters Treaty and the International Joint Commission, and concepts such as hydraulic nationalism and hydraulic imperialism.

“Something uniquely sinister in U.S. history”: New evidence on the Truman administration's 1951 investigation of the China Lobby

AbstractArchival evidence sheds new light on the Truman administration's 1951 investigation into the “China Lobby” and its links to McCarthyism. Truman's advisors suspected connections among illicit funding streams generated by Chiang Kai‐shek's Nationalist regime in Formosa, illegal lobbying by unregistered agents, and a barrage of anti‐Communist propaganda from activists connected to McCarthy and the “China Lobby.” The White House worried that by flooding America's public discourse with charges of treason, the alleged conspirators were destabilizing the nation's ability to engage in reasoned deliberation about foreign policy. However, the White House could not persuade any congressional committees to manage an investigation, so it instead ran an executive operation that produced tantalizing clues but no prosecutable conclusions. Rather than proving its suspicions, the investigation created confusion and sowed doubts about Truman's judgment. Analyzing the administration's investigation provides new insights into the confusions and contradictions besetting America's grappling with the early Cold War and offers lessons on how not to defend democracy in a time of crisis.

Smooth Transition? Dismantling and Accommodating Colonial Rule in Late 1940s South China

ABSTRACT This article explores connections and continuities between the Second World War and the early Cold War in three territories under European colonial rule in South China. It argues that the dismantling of French power in Guangzhouwan and the maintenance of British and Portuguese rule in Hong Kong and Macau owed as much to the specific wartime experience of these territories as to the convergence of competing post-war interests in China and Southeast Asia. Drawing on multilingual sources, this comparative study sheds new light on the challenges and opportunities posed by remnants of colonialism in South China for the Kuomintang, the CCP, and other actors in a context of Chinese Civil War, early Cold War and decolonisation.

Atoms for Peace in the 1950s: Lessons from the Spread of Nuclear Technology in the Early Cold War

Abstract The articles in this special issue shed light on the influence of the Eisenhower administration's “Atoms for Peace” proposal on the civilian nuclear programs of five European countries, including Italy and France, which were member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which were part of the USSR's Communist bloc; and Spain, which did not become a member of NATO until nearly three decades later. Based on detailed archival research, the articles analyze the commercial, scientific, practical, and cultural aspects of nascent nuclear research programs in these five countries. The authors demonstrate that all five acted early on to pursue peaceful nuclear activities for their own economic benefit.

The establishment process of Türk Traktör between 1948 and 1963: a critique of ‘modernization’ as development in Early Cold War Turkey

The establishment process of Türk Traktör between 1948 and 1963: a critique of ‘modernization’ as development in Early Cold War Turkey

Art diplomacy: Drawing China-Indonesia relations in the early Cold War, 1949–1956

AbstractThe mid-1950s saw the relationship between China and Indonesia evolve from one of mutual hostility to one of fraternity as a trend of détente emerged out of the Geneva (1954) and the Bandung (1955) conferences. This article explores why and how the two newly independent nations applied art diplomacy to reduce their ideological differences and facilitate their commercial and political rapprochements for the sake of Asian solidarity. Through contextualizing a series of art activities between the two nations, especially China’s reproduction of President Sukarno’s private collection of paintings and Chairman Mao Zedong’s gifts of Chinese ink paintings to President Sukarno, this article argues that interactions in the name of art exemplify how China shaped its modern profile as an independent and industrialized power. It will also show how China deviated from its diplomacy of ‘Leaning to One Side’, formulated in the late 1940s, towards the ‘Peaceful United Front’ of the mid-1950s. More broadly, art relations between China and Indonesia reflect intensive cultural exchanges between the newly independent, yet ideologically clashing, nations of the Third World in the postwar period and offer a multifaceted history of the Cold War beyond the binary paradigm of the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union.

Under the Red-and-White Flag: elective Chineseness and socialist realism in Hei Ying's Jakarta

ABSTRACT Hei Ying’s 1950 novella Under the Red-and-White Flag concerns the Chinese-speaking institutions and community in Jakarta as they respond to the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Far from the sultry exoticism of his earlier Nanyang (South Seas) texts, this work turned towards a socialist realism broadly in line with the policies of the Chinese Communist Party and prepared Hei Ying for his subsequent career as a “returned Overseas Chinese” (guiqiao) man of letters. Hei Ying's political and literary shift emblematises a larger dynamic: the subordination of some Sinophone Southeast Asian subjects, often voluntarily, to new and starker dichotomies of Chinese political identity, as the foundation of new states in the emerging Cold War foreclosed on flexible Sinophone Southeast Asian cultural and political identities. Sinophone groups like those represented by Hei Ying could and did support Indonesia's National Revolution and striving for prosperity in the name of global solidarity; however, the individual's belonging was for them ethnically defined, and ethnic and political identity were irreducibly linked in works such as this novella. Due to the hardening of political boundaries in the early Cold War, decolonising Asia rendered cultural hybridity increasingly politically suspect as new states defined themselves by autochthony. If the place of ethnic Chinese was to build New China, political duties granted no licence to cultural hybridity, much as they also restricted experimental and effusive veins of literary modernism.

Jazz as Soft Power in Turkey–US Relations During the Early Cold War Period

ABSTRACT The 1950s was an era when Turkish-US relations were developing in various arenas. In addition to hard power instruments, such as NATO membership, the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Aid, elements of soft power were also being used to promote the relationship between the two states. One element of this latter power was jazz which became tool of US public diplomacy used to export its cultural values. This paper explores how jazz was used as such in Turkey–US relations in the 1950s. The original aspect of this article lies in its dealing with the influence of jazz music, a relatively little mentioned soft power element in Turkey–US relations of this period. The main finding of the article may be conceptualized as follows: Turkey’s relationship with the US was based not only on economic and military interests, but also cultural ties between the two which were also crucial to strengthening their bilateral relations. In this context, musicians were key agents of cultural diplomacy with their music and songs legitimizing a new and different 20th century.

Perils, promises and perspectives: nuclear weapons, atomic energy and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in the early Cold War

ABSTRACT In the 1950s and 1960s, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) protested nuclear weapons testing, called for nuclear and conventional disarmament, and simultaneously embraced the promises of atomic energy. The ICFTU also, particularly through its atomic energy committee, pressed the United Nations (UN), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for stronger worker protections and union input at atomic energy sites. Such efforts revealed how a non-governmental organization (NGO) attempted to shape international narratives and standards regarding nuclear weapons and atomic energy, revealing a complex approach to the use of the atom.

“SUBJECT’s Wife”: The Racialized Gender Logics of Anticommunism and State Surveillance

This essay examines how gender shaped Black communist and communist-affiliated women’s experiences with political repression in early Cold War Chicago. While recent scholarship on Black women leftists in the mid-twentieth century has emphasized early Cold War anticommunism as a moment of rupture, I find that the experiences of Black women organizers in Chicago complicates such conclusions. Using police archives, personal papers, oral histories, and more, I contend that sexist-racist cultural discourses rendered Black women activists’ leadership and agency less visible to the state and that anticommunist state officials, as a result, tended to treat Chicago’s Black communist and communist-affiliated women as peripheral rather than central threats. Thus, Black communist and communist-affiliated women were more capable than their male counterparts of surviving early Cold War anticommunism and sustaining the class-conscious radical Black politics they had developed in Chicago. This essay not only identifies how raced gender discourses affected Chicago activists’ experiences with political repression, it also adds to recent scholarship by exploring the measure of opportunity Black communist and communist-affiliated women accessed in this early Cold War context, despite the straitened circumstances.

“The Angel of Sarbandan”: Ford Foundation Philanthropy, Transnational Development Rhetoric, and the Scalar Geopolitics of 1950s Iran

Abstract In 1954, the Ford Foundation, new to international grant-giving, administered a small grant to a U.S.-educated Tehran native, Najmeh Najafi, to begin a development program for “village women” in rural Iran. Development was fast becoming a central transnational discourse of the post-war decolonization period and the early Cold War, and Najafi appears as a unique contributor to this discourse, as investment in women and women's programs would not become commonplace in international philanthropy until the early 1970s. But rather than a mere footnote, Najafi's case represents an important example of Ford's surveillance and increasingly “projectized” approach to development processes in strategic areas of the world, even as Najafi evaded Ford's attempts to make her “legible” in their global philanthropic system. This essay offers a rhetorical history of Najafi's negotiations with Ford and the tensions that arose between them around the binaries of North/South, East/West, developed/developing, and masculine/feminine. Using a lens of “scalar geopolitics” to emphasizes linkages between the local, national, and global, the article mines both Najafi's memoirs and Ford's grant archives in order to reflect on the complex ways development and philanthropy were framed and constituted during a tumultuous era in Iran and beyond.

‘To defend the peace of Asia’: the Chinese Peace Committee and visions of Asian history, 1949–60

ABSTRACT In recent years, scholars have made strides in furthering our understanding of how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) engaged countries in the so-called ‘Third World’. Despite this, little has been said about the ways in which this solidarity was grounded in a shared, regional temporality. Focusing on the activities of the Chinese Peace Committee in the 1950s, this article uses the organisation’s various invocations of sharing an ‘Asian’ history with Japanese and Indian interlocutors to understand how the PRC positioned itself as a leader in the fight to preserve a decolonised Asia in the early Cold War.

Australia and Japan's Return to International Society: Negotiating Allies and the Afro‐Asian Bloc, 1952–56

In December 1956, Japan gained membership of the United Nations, marking a significant milestone in Japan's return to international society. In approximately five years since the San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect in April 1952, this had been a difficult diplomatic issue for the Australian government. This article examines how the Australian government dealt with this issue by focusing upon the intersection of Australia's policy towards Japan and Japan's status as a member of the emergent Afro‐Asian bloc. This article argues that Japan's engagement with the rest of the bloc was a rising factor in Canberra's consideration of Japan's place in the world, thereby helping revisit the orthodox historiography of Australia–Japan relations during the early Cold War era which often overemphasises rapid growth of bilateral trade.

Early Cold War intelligence paper mills: the case of the Association of Hungarian Veterans

ABSTRACT During the early Cold War, it was difficult for American intelligence to penetrate the Iron Curtain but a potential solution soon arose: émigré intelligence groups such as the Magyar Harcosok Bajtársi Közössége (MHBK) or ‘Association of Hungarian Veterans’. This group, however, turned out to be an intelligence ‘paper mill’. Attempts at trans-Atlantic cooperation with the MHBK and similar groups failed as they lost most of their good sources and were penetrated by communist security services. By the mid-1950s, US intelligence cut these groups off, took over their good sources, and established a source registry to prevent recurrence of the problem.

A Second Cold War? Explaining Changes in the American Discourse on China: Evidence from the Presidential Debates (1960-2020).

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11366-023-09857-z.

Preparing for an alliance: China’s socialist model and Albania’s economic path in the Early Cold War

ABSTRACT Based mainly on Albanian primary sources, this article explores the implications of Albania’s economic cooperation with China during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It shows that in Albania’s shifting alliances, the role of economic calculations has been as important as that of political convenience. The article argues that China’s emphasis on industrialization, mass mobilization and the principle of self-reliance was appealing to Albanian leaders’ long-term economic plans. This was even more so after the Comecon division of labour left Albania at the margin of the economic integration of the European Soviet bloc, relegating it to an agriculture-based development. The article also argues that although there was no substantial technological transfer between China and Albania during the 1950s, those years served for Albania as a period of study of the Chinese socialist system, which ultimately suited Albanian leaders’ political and economic aims more than the Soviet one. Economic relations with China opened new trade routes for Albania, potentially linking Albania’s economy with new markets and the international flows of goods. These opportunities, however, remained fully unexploited due to Albania’s own economic shortcomings, limited industrial capacity and poor infrastructure.

“No Podía Permanecer Indiferente”: A Fragmented Mexican Revolutionary Family Intervenes in the Costa Rican Civil War (1948)

ABSTRACT This article examines the interventions of different official and non-official actors of Mexican origin in the Costa Rican civil war in 1948. The article demonstrates that during the early Cold War years, Mexico’s international relations with Central America were conducted by multiple actors, part of different transnational networks, in part due to the ruptures surrounding the pacts of what was known as the Mexican revolutionary family. This article reconstructs the different historical trajectories, interests, agendas, and actions of these actors, shedding light on a topic often neglected by Mexican foreign policy historiography. Taking up recent debates over Mexico’s stance during the Latin American Cold War, this article contributes to filling the gap in the early Cold War Mexican foreign policy towards the region, stressing nuances over the existence of a non-intervention, homogeneous foreign policy that prioritized the relationship with the United States.

An alternative decolonisation: the Republic of China in the 1947 Asian Relations Conference

ABSTRACT This article analyses the Republic of China’s (ROC) perception, participation and influences in the 1947 Asian Relations Conference that foregrounded the movement of Asian-African Internationalism, which aspired to cut a path of postcolonial solidarity between the superpower conflicts of the United States and Soviet Union. The author argues that the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD) had developed its own vision of decolonisation that emphasised ‘development’ based on collaboration with Western powers instead of ‘revolution’ to accomplish the goals of Afro-Asian national liberation and postcolonial state building. Despite the later collapse of their rule on mainland China, the ROC’s participation in the Asian Relations Conference helped shape China’s international prestige as a leading Asian anti-imperial power . It had also ideologically prepared them, after their retreat to Taiwan, for pursuing an Afro-Asian alliance of anticommunism during the early Cold War.

A hubristic windmill off Harvard Yard: Historically situating the Department of Social Relations

This essay reviews Patrick L. Schmidt’s book chronicling the rise and fall of Harvard’s Department of Social Relations (Harvard’s Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science) and contrasts Schmidt’s history with work of other scholars focusing on the impacts of the Cold War on Harvard’s social sciences during this period. While Schmidt provides important new historical details about the Department of Social Relations, with significant new information on some of Harvard’s internal politics, this review considers some of the department’s failures in relation to the chilling effects of McCarthyism and some department members covert arrangements with intelligence agencies, and limits to free inquiry during the early Cold War.