Late Cold War Research Articles

Hunting the Red Bear: Satellite Reconnaissance and the ‘Second Offset Strategy’ in the Late Cold War

Cold War historians have argued that reconnaissance satellites were a stabilizing force in superpower relations because they created transparency and enabled arms control treaties. But this is an incomplete view of the role of reconnaissance satellites in U.S. national security. Newly declassified documents reveal that beginning in the late 1970s, reconnaissance satellites were a key component of the ‘Second Offset Strategy.’ With this new defense framework, the Pentagon endeavored to use advanced technologies to secure qualitative advantages over the numerically superior Red Army. A new class of reconnaissance satellites provided the means of tracking and targeting Soviet units in near-real-time to enable precision strikes deep behind enemy lines. This newfound ability to use satellites to pinpoint Soviet forces helped facilitate the U.S. shift towards a more flexible nuclear and conventional military strategy in the late 1970s. By this time, the same satellites that were policing arms control agreements were also secretly a key component of a competitive U.S. conventional and nuclear strategy to ensure that NATO would prevail in a superpower conflict. Moreover, this emerging military support role of reconnaissance satellites catalyzed the development of weapons designed to attack them, thereby precipitating space arms competition in the late Cold War.

Soldiers of Fortune, Soldiers of God: Evangelical Mercenaries and the Making of the Rhodesian-American Religious Lobby, 1965–1980

ABSTRACT This article tracks the emergence, evolution, and decline of the Rhodesian-American religious lobby, a transnational network of churches, magazines, lobbying groups, and other non-state actors that operated during the Rhodesian Bush War from 1965 to 1980. Voicing its concerns in religious, racial, and anticommunist terms, the lobby recruited US combatants into the Rhodesian Security Forces and mobilised US evangelicals to press political leaders to recognise Rhodesian sovereignty. By threading together the post-Vietnam mercenary diaspora with waning segregationist groups and the emerging Christian Right in the United States, the lobby significantly shaped US-Rhodesia relations and global far-right politics in the late Cold War.

The Reagan Doctrine or “Sandinista Chic”? Political Balance in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 1982 Mission to Central America

ABSTRACT The Committee to Protect Journalists is a world-renowned press freedom organization that advocates on behalf of journalists being persecuted for doing their work. Launched in 1981, CPJ was originally imagined as a group of US journalists who would speak out on behalf of beleaguered colleagues working under both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships. CPJ was a product of the late Cold War, and its members found it particularly challenging to navigate US foreign policy—especially when advocating for journalists in Central America. This article tells the story of CPJ’s first international mission to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, showing that the mission was riddled with internal tension. Such tension centered on the question of how to gain credibility with both conservative and liberal lawmakers in Washington. CPJ members each believed that they could and should gain this credibility by striking a political balance among the delegates themselves, as well as in the official statement that followed the mission. Yet, the political differences among the people who went on the mission ultimately led to bitter disagreements about how to represent journalists’ persecution in that region of the world.

Not-Russians on TV

Abstract This article discusses portrayals of a Ukrainian and a Polish character on the US sitcom 2 Broke Girls (2011–2017). The pilot episode reveals that the showrunners used stereotypes of Russian characters to establish different national origins for Oleg and Sophie. The show perpetuates offensive stereotypes of Slavic and postsocialist characters to elide differences from Russians but with notable distinctions—stemming from Oleg and Sophie's economic backgrounds in the struggling postsocialist economies of the 1990s. American television has produced many comedic characters from the European margins (Greek, Czech, Ukrainian, Polish, Latvian, or from invented but East European-coded lands) who were understood as chaotic but loveable. Crucially, however, they were not Russian. From the late Cold War through the 2010s, Russianness onscreen seems to consistently signal dishonesty, danger, or hopelessness for Western audiences. This suggests that while stereotypes persist, in comedy, at least, showrunners use East Europeans to support, not threaten, American characters, further othering Russianness.

Heinemüller's Conception of Political Ideas in The Hamlet Machine - Inheritance and Comparison with Brecht

Heinemüller's original intention in creating The Hamlet Machine was to use Hamlet as a vehicle for political allusion to the socialist world of the late Cold War. He tried to create a variant of the Hamlet theme in a Communist country after Stalin’s death…Combined with the creator's own political leanings, it is clear that the seemingly chaotic plot logic of the work is wrapped up in the political metaphorical imagery of the violence and darkness characteristic of a brutal play, which is a reflection of both the external pioneering nature of the work and its internal political nature. In addition, the frequent traces of interstitial effects in the staging of this work, combined with some echoes of Heiner Müller's view of Brecht's political theatre, thus confirm Heiner Müller's critical inheritance of Brecht's plays.

Book Review: Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War by William Michael Schmidli

Book Review: <i>Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War</i> by William Michael Schmidli

Splitting Atomic Minds: Hanna Segal and the Fear of Nuclear War in 1980s Britain

In 1985, British psychoanalyst Hanna Segal delivered the paper ‘Silence is the Real Crime’ to the first meeting of the group International Psychoanalysts Against Nuclear Weapons in Hamburg, appealing to her fellow analysts to counteract the denial of the geopolitical realities that characterized the late Cold War by intervening in public debates regarding the threat of nuclear war. A year later she gave a paper in London discussing clinical cases of patients who brought their nuclear anxieties to the couch. This article considers Segal's political and clinical writings on the psychological consequences of the atomic age, situating them in the context in which she was living, writing and practising as an analyst: 1980s Britain in a moment of ‘nuclear anxiety’. I argue that Segal's anti-nuclear writings shed light on what she called the ‘very very tricky’ relationship between psychoanalysis and politics. Segal confronted the tension between maintaining clinical neutrality in the consulting room while publicly expressing her political commitments, wrestling with the complex relationships between individuals and the societies in which they live.

U.S. Democracy Promotion and Interventionism - Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Intervention in the Late Cold War. By William Michael Schmidli. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 324. $46.95 cloth; $30.99 e-book.

U.S. Democracy Promotion and Interventionism - Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Intervention in the Late Cold War. By William Michael Schmidli. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 324. $46.95 cloth; $30.99 e-book.

Changing the guard: Organizational science and social psychology in the US army.

The US Army employed organizational and behavioral sciences in the context of the emerging Postindustrial political economy to shape its new strategic thought in the 1980s. This article examines how a group of military intellectuals in the Army applied ideas from these sciences to promote officer decision-making and decentralization while maintaining the Army's culture and ethics. They had significant reservations about bringing new ideas from the social sciences into the Army because Robert McNamara's modern cybernetic strategy had scarred the Army's morale and sense of self during the Vietnam War. Instead, the intellectuals carefully adapted ideas into the Army with an unsentimental attitude as it emerged from its post-Vietnam decline so it could fight complex maneuver warfare. Their strategic thought in the late Cold War made the Army a flexible global-spanning force for the unipolar moment in the 1990s and early 2000s.

South Korean Labor and Infrastructure in Saudi Arabia during the Late Cold War

This article focuses on the geopolitical backdrop and the dynamics of state-private partnerships that shaped the migrations of hundreds of thousands of Korean workers who sojourned for two to three years in infrastructural construction sites across Saudi Arabia between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. It argues that the mobility channels between the two countries took shape not through oil and state governance alone, but also through US military complexes formed through a series of wars across East, Southeast, and West Asia following the Second World War; acute interest from the Saudi elite in finding alternative non-Western partners and in leveraging oil to promote the Palestinian cause in East Asia; and the preexisting ties between Korean business actors and their Saudi counterparts. Such migration infrastructure included direct transplantation of militarized organizational structures and residential camps from Korea to Saudi Arabia, lives behind which remained hidden from public view.

„Rote“ Städtepartnerschaften als die besseren kommunistischen Beziehungen im geteilten Europa?

Abstract This article uses the example of a trilateral network of relationships to offer a critical and much-needed contribution to the history of town twinning across the Iron Curtain through the late 1970s and 1980s. The chosen case studies are Italy and France on the one hand, the two countries with the most influential communist parties in Western Europe – the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) and the PCF (Parti Communiste Français) –, and the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, Socialist Unity Party of Germany) on the other, the state party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Exploration of such transnational relationships is essential for a better understanding of the Cold War on a regional and local level, as ideological disputes arose regularly despite the supposedly neutral character of municipal ties. What characterized the networking between the French and Italian cities, mostly governed by the PCF and the PCI respectively, and the „real socialist“ Eastern German municipalities, and why or to what extent did they constitute an exception within relations among the three communist parties? The essay critically examines this issue and shows that the translocal scope of the connections potentially enabled the relevant actors to maintain and secure the transsocietal and sociocultural focus of exchange even amidst the most serious tensions of the late Cold War. Nevertheless, countering the assumption that such connections thrived almost automatically thanks to the allegedly shared ideological roots of the participants, it shows that communal ties were virtually always torn between utopian visions of the future and the interests of „Realpolitik“.

Expression of Dissidence: NOW-a Publishing House as a Social Movement Campaign under an Authoritarian Regime

This research article analyses Polish underground publishing during the late Cold War using the NOW-a publishing house as an example. The innovation of my approach lies in an attempt to bring closer Western and Eastern studies on various aspects of resistance. The subject of Polish resistance has already been studied, but more can be done with reference to the concept of everyday resistance. Protest sites are examined in this article in relation to the question of how urban and rural geography can play a role in bringing a movement together. The contribution revives Charles Tilly’s concepts to study Polish resistance and to see historical developments from a social movement perspective.

Race And Politics In Peruvian And Argentine Porn Under The Transition To Democracy, 1975–1985

This paper examines the articulation of race, class, gender, and politics in erotic magazines during the Argentine and Peruvian destapes in the transition from dictatorial to democratic rule at the turn to the 1980s. We argue that porn, as a genre, was not limited to a niche of readers seeking to use the magazines only for erotic purposes. In Peru, porn was one of the main agents in the opposition to military rule, and it only became a separate, autonomous genre devoid of politics with the coming of democracy. The emergence of magazines focused mostly on eroticism developed as editors attempted to lure readers among recent migrants from the Sierra who lived in the pueblos jóvenes (squatter settlements) in Lima. In this context, the audience demanded pictures of local women to replace foreign white female nudes. In Argentina porn became a crucial aspect of democratic politics, understood as a tool to overcome inhibitions, develop a self-exploration, and undermine traditional mores while fostering democracy. Driven by an impulse to emulate the alleged open-mindedness of Europe and the US, Argentine porn cemented white middle-class identity at a time of economic decline. In this context, Argentine erotic magazines praised sexual experimentation as courageous and gave voice to women, gays, and lesbians. Our approach combines social, political, and cultural history focusing on how the readership shaped magazines and at times achieved significant editorial changes. Through the study of porn we offer new insights regarding the transition to democracy in late Cold War Latin America.

Between ‘Ich will Spaß’ and ‘99 Jahre Krieg’: Receptions of the ‘New German Wave’ in the United States

In the late 1970s a new music movement, rooted in British punk and New Wave music, emerged in West Germany. It distinctly was not only sung in German, but the lyrics played with the German language by adding Dadaistic elements or youth slang, and reflected on the political, cultural and social zeitgeist of late Cold War West Germany. Over the years this formerly underground music genre was labelled ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ (NDW) and became a commercial success, both domestically and abroad: Artists like Peter Schilling became known in the United States, the biggest hit ‘99 Luftballons’ by the band Nena reached number 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983 in its original German version. Like many other New Wave music, NDW songs found their way to mainstream success in the United States through the club scene, radio shows and the then new music television. At the same time, coming from the then still divided Germany catapulted the bands right in the middle of the Anti-war and Anti-nuclear movements at the end of the cold war, even when NDW bands themselves oftentimes labelled their music as non-political.

Jimmy Carter, Vietnam, and the Rhetoric of Gratitude: Antecedents to the Noble Cause

Abstract The study of the Vietnam War and American presidential discourse has followed a somewhat meandering path. The Vietnam discourse of Jimmy Carter remains the most poorly understood of the late Cold War presidents. Throughout the 1970s, Carter participated in, and at times led, the national debate over the federal government's responsibility to Vietnam veterans. He spoke of a debt of gratitude that the American people owed to the war's veterans. As president, parts of his domestic agenda prioritized Vietnam veterans, leading him to preside over commemorative events for the war's veterans on several occasions. During his time in elective office, he alternatingly defined the purpose of the war in Southeast Asia as preserving the American way of life, promoting democracy, or defending liberty and freedom. Carter practiced an ethics of remembering that sought to redeem the American soldier, to erase the divisiveness of the past, and to “delegitimize and marginalize anti-war opinions.”1 Despite the obvious importance of both his discourse and his actions, Carter's Vietnam War rhetoric has received very little attention.

“A Similar Detente”: Mexico’s Central American Policy, 1978–1982

Abstract This article explores Mexico’s overlooked importance in the Central American armed conflict, the limits of its influence, and its connection to the late Cold War. Mexico’s policy toward Central America attempted to prevent an American and Cuban military intervention in the area and avoid a Cold War confrontation along its southern border. Mexico attempted to build detente in the region and prevent a global escalation of tension between the great powers. Meanwhile, it sought to propose a “third way” for the revolutionary actors shaped after Mexico’s political system and history. Studying Mexico’s efforts to create detente-like arrangements can shed light on the efforts of peripheral actors and their projects to influence the international system despite the actions of hegemonic powers.

Freedom on the offensive: human rights, democracy promotion, and US interventionism in the late Cold War

Freedom on the offensive: human rights, democracy promotion, and US interventionism in the late Cold War

Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War by William Michael Schmidli

<i>Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War</i> by William Michael Schmidli

Cultural diplomacy, artistic network, and the politics of decolonization between Taiwan and the Philippines in the Cold War era

ABSTRACT During the Cold War, cultural engagements frequently occurred between Taiwan and the Philippines due to their military and geopolitical alliance in East Asia. This essay explores this cultural linkage at both the diplomatic and individual levels by examining the politics and aesthetics of the art exhibitions both countries participated in as well as the intellectual encounters among individual artists. The First Southeast Asia Art Conference and Competition, a postwar art event held in the Philippines, demonstrated Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy in the Free World; it also highlighted the different figurations of colonial modernities and the emerging national identities developed in East and Southeast Asia in the postcolonial era. While the cultural linkage between Taiwan and the Philippines was a product of the geo-military strategy in the Cold War era, the translocal friendships and the artistic networks were actively maintained by the individual artists in the late Cold War years, after the Taiwan–Philippines diplomatic relation ended. This intra-regional network created an alternative trajectory of knowledge circulation that allowed Philippine leftist nationalist writings to be published in Taiwan in the latter’s martial law era. Furthermore, it provides a comparative perspective on the political discourses and artistic practices of decolonial initiatives in Taiwan and the Philippines.

William Michael Schmidli, Freedom on the Offensive. Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2022

William Michael Schmidli, Freedom on the Offensive. Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and US Interventionism in the Late Cold War. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2022