October Crisis Research Articles

BIKINI ATOLL, NEVADA, MOSCOW. WASHINGTON’S LONG ROAD TO THE PARTIAL TEST BAN TREATY (1958–1963)

The conclusion of the 1963 Moscow Treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water is an important milestone in the history of the Cold War. It was preceded by long and complex negotiations between the USSR and the US. Measures to impose a moratorium on tests (August 1958 — August 1961) did not yield signifi cant results either in reducing harmful environmental consequences or in reducing the risk of nuclear conflict. In addition, the issue of at least partial test ban was closely linked to the political contradictions between the superpowers, in particular, regarding the status of Berlin. On 9 September 1961, the negotiations were stopped. In the fall, the USSR conducted a large series of explosions, and advances in weapons development required new tests. Moscow’s decision to withdraw from the moratorium was dictated by the desire to demonstrate to its opponents the readiness for any emergency. In 1962, the events around Cuba led not only to intensified testing by both powers, but also to the acute Cuban Missile Crisis in October, when the danger of using nuclear weapons became quite real. The August 1963 treaty was one of the immediate outcomes of the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, it is also important that the superpowers came to the signing of the Moscow Treaty only after their scientific and technological achievements (including, above all, the results of nuclear tests) had been able to ensure a confident strategic deterrence of each other. The tests of nuclear devices conducted by both powers in 1961 and 1962 allowed them to equip all types of carriers with warheads as part of their planned programs to renew strategic nuclear arsenals. At the same time, the Moscow Treaty created a basis for harmonizing the positions of the US and the USSR with regard to nuclear nonproliferation for many years to come.

The Autobahn Crises of 1963: The U.S. Military and the Last Major Cold War Showdowns over Berlin

Abstract By mid-1963, the immediate threat to European security from the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 had receded, but East-West tensions over the city remained high. Although some scholars such as Marc Trachtenberg have claimed that the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was followed by a lasting East-West détente in Europe, this article shows that the status of Berlin remained a Cold War flashpoint until well into 1963. The article highlights three of the military showdowns (the so-called Autobahn crises) that occurred in October and November 1963 over the transportation rules for U.S., British, and French access to West Berlin. The crises caused a good deal of friction, but their resolution ushered in a more peaceful time for Berlin and Europe as a whole.

Fiscal asymmetries and debt crises: Evidence from Lebanon using a sign restricted structural VAR model

This study identifies empirically Lebanon's fiscal asymmetries and shocks and traces their effects on GDP using a sign-restricted structural VAR approach. Following Arias et al.’s (2018) identification procedure of sign and zero restrictions, our empirical findings point to a sluggish effect of fiscal policy on economic activity, stipulating that fiscal policy is conducted with non-Keynesian features. The study also documents evidence in favor of crowding out effects given that central government's borrowings are mainly from the local financial market. Moreover, with a non-Keynesian effect of fiscal policy, policy makers should refrain from using fiscal tools to counteract business-cycle fluctuations. It is shown that in order to break through government expenditure's inefficiency, the government must curb a rising budget deficit, which is harnessing an increasing cost of capital and impinging negatively on debt and its service. A rising sovereign debt, in turn, has subsequently triggered a sovereign debt crisis in October 2019.

The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron, and: Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών [A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. by Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς)

Reviewed by: The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron, and: Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών [A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. by Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς) Konstantina E. Botsiou (bio) James H. Barron, The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate. New York: Melville House. 2020. Pp. xiii + 482. 21 illustrations. Hardcover $31.67. Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς), Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών[A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. Athens: Metechmio, 2021. Pp. 630. Cloth €18.90. Due to a scarcity of archival sources and the aversion of historians, the foreign and defense policies of the seven-year Greek military dictatorship (1967–1974) have not been systematically researched. Although more widely explored than most of the dictatorship’s foreign connections, Greek-American relations during this period are no exception to the rule. Ideologically driven interpretations or “what ifs” hardly substitute for structured analyses of alliances, animosities, and political decisions. As a matter of fact, they strengthen the superficial perception of the junta as a tragic parenthesis in the history of postwar Greece. This tendency is changing, however, and two recent publications are especially noteworthy. James H. Barron and Alexis Papahelas both present detailed accounts of the dictators’ worldviews and actions. They also offer thorough overviews of the Greek political ecosystem in the 1950s and 1960s, where the future dictators thrived. Various continuities and discontinuities with the earlier period place the dictatorship in a historical context driven by anticommunism—and its local version, εθνικοφροσύνη (ethnikofrosyni)—which the colonels took up as their mission when Greek politicians loosened their grip in the era of international détente. Committed to the zeitgeist of bipolarity, the colonels baptized personal competitors as enemies of the state. Barron’s story of Elias Demetracopoulos’s multiple persecutions by Greek and American officials before and during the dictatorship captivates the reader. Demetracopoulos suffered the various types of character assassination that an [End Page 137] assertive journalist posing inconvenient questions would undergo. A prominent example of his research concerned the stationing of nuclear missiles on Greek soil as a result of the “Sputnik effect.” Demetracopoulos maintained many doubts about the Greek government’s denial of any participation in the US program of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which had involved Italy and Turkey before the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. He believed that Greek participation in the ICBM program would be vital for alleviating the West’s feeling of technological inferiority after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, which suggested that the American soil became vulnerable to a potential Soviet attack (105–110). The refusal to accept the Greek government’s denials severely damaged Demetracopoulos’s relations with the Greek premier Konstantinos Karamanlis (1955–1963). Similar difficulties awaited Demetracopoulos in the US. His close ties with top American public figures were frequently undermined by unforgiving cold warriors who saw in Demetracopoulos a threat to the dominant narrative of law and order. These contradictions underscore the difference that personality can make in any given historical situation. Barron paints a comprehensive portrait of Demetracopoulos, a devoted journalist who earned exceptional resistance credentials as a teenager during the Axis occupation. He later spent his adult life in the twilight zone between censure and shelter by Greek and American agencies and individuals who ranged from committed friends and acquaintances to various top politicians such as Konstantinos Karamanlis, George Papandreou, and Ted Kennedy. In the 1950s, Demetracopoulos had built a reputation as a trustworthy liaison between the Greek media and the American community in Greece. Shortly after the establishment of the military dictatorship he sought refuge in the US via Denmark, acting out of a justified fear that assassination attempts would no longer be limited to his character. Barron’s book stresses for American audiences the Greek dimension of the Watergate scandal. Fate reserved for Demetracopoulos a crucial part in the history of both the junta and the Nixon administration, since it was he who came to reveal the Nixon administration’s “Greek connection.” According to his reports at the...

Renal cell carcinoma management: real-world practice and challenges at a national level.

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) management has seen a revolution over the last decades. Six Lebanese oncologists discussed recent updates in RCC management and outlined the challenges and future directions in Lebanon. Sunitinib continues to be a first-line choice for metastatic RCC in Lebanon, except for intermediate- and poor-risk patients. Immunotherapy is not always accessible to patients or selected routinely as first-line therapy. More data are needed on the sequencing of immunotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatments and on the use of immunotherapy beyond progression and/or after failure of immunotherapy in the first-line setting. For second-line management, the clinical experience with axitinib for low tumor growth rate and nivolumab after progression on tyrosine kinase inhibitors make those two agents the most widely used. Several challenges affect the Lebanese practice, limiting the accessibility and availability of the medications. Reimbursement remains the most critical challenge, especially with the socioeconomic crisis of October 2019.

Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange, by Anne Searcy

Over the past two decades, one of the most vibrant subfields in the history of US foreign relations, as well as international history more broadly, has been the study of ‘cultural diplomacy’—that is, efforts by nation states to deploy cultural artefacts to serve diplomatic ends. We now have excellent studies of the way that various nations (though particularly the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War) used art, music, dance and film to advance their geopolitical objectives. Anne Searcy builds on much of this literature to offer a new history of the role that ballet played in Soviet–American relations during the critical Cold War window of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In four chapters, plus an introduction and epilogue, Searcy tells the story of four ballet tours—two Russian and two American—that took place against the backdrop of the extraordinary tensions of the late Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Prominent Cold War crises during this period included the Sputnik launch of 1957, the communist revolution in Cuba in 1958, the American U-2 plane shot down in Soviet airspace in 1960, the Bay of Pigs and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—the most dangerous moment in the roughly 45-year history of the Soviet–American stare-down. Amazingly, there were Russian dancers touring the United States and American dancers touring the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The book includes a chapter on each of these tours, as well as a chapter on the earlier tour of the United States by the Bolshoi Ballet in 1959 and the little-known tour of the Soviet Union by the American Ballet Theater in 1960, the first such visit by an American ballet company to the USSR.

The October Crisis Revisited: Some Archaeological and Anthropological Examples

This text presents findings from a contemporary archaeology project that has been exploring the October Crisis (1962) and its material and immaterial remains in Cuba since 2005. The project is a cooperation between Swedish archaeologists and Cuban archaeologists, anthropologists and historians, and its primary aim is to complement the dominant narrative of the crisis with material and immaterial remains and memories in a way that approaches and explains the event “from below”. The current text focuses on the US Marston mats that can be found at a number of locations in farmsteads and villages surrounding the former missile sites in the Los Palacios and San Cristóbal areas, as well as on a photo of a Russian girl that was a gift from a Russian soldier to a Cuban peasant during the crisis. These objects present the reader with new material and human insights concerning the crisis that until now have been more or less concealed and unknown, contributing new complementary dimensions to the understanding of the October Crisis while also challenging the stereotypes constructing the dominant narrative.

Fire in the Mainframe

The 1969 Sir George Williams computer centre occupation has always felt like a secret, or underground, history, with whose protection Black Montreal has been entrusted. It is underground because it is often buried by mainstream Quebec history. When the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec), Quebec nationalism, and the October Crisis of 1970 are discussed, little or no reference is made to the occupation. That omission is telling, because people of my generation have grown up hearing about those events as centrepieces of “recent” Canadian history, and because, at the very least, the occupation shares the timeline. The occupation, in fact, preceded the October Crisis, and there is anecdotal evidence of a kind of cultural overlap. As a Black writer in Quebec, I am attracted to minor characters and suppressed histories, and this informs part of my interest in the occupation.

Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War

Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

Culture of Insecurity and Production of Foreign Policy Crises: Turkey’s Sèvres Syndrome and Syrian Support for the PKK during the 1998 October Crisis

ABSTRACT Events in international politics are produced as crises when they pose threat to particular state identities. Having such understanding, this study complements the standard accounts that stress strategic factors as the catalyst behind Turkey’s decision to initiate the 1998 October Crisis. There is no denying that standard accounts have significant merit in revealing the material dimension of the crisis. However, the crisis does also contain a cultural dimension that reveals the conditions of possibility for Turkey’s decision, missing in the standard accounts. Hence, the study looks into developments in 1998 which allowed for representations that linked the Syrian support for the PKK with Turkey’s Sèvres Syndrome, a discursive power practice within Turkey’s unique culture of insecurity that ‘great powers are conspiring to weaken and divide Turkey’.

Clergy Participation in Elections, Political Parties and Government from the Perspective of Secular and Church Law

This article presents a comparative analysis of solving the issue of Orthodox clergy's participation in elections, political parties and public bodies previously and in modern times from the standpoint of secular and church law. At different stages of history, there were both times when the clergy took active part in the legislative bodies of our country and abstained from it. The relevance of this question is conditioned by the following fact: while the Church is unified and its establishments are inviolable, there are historically many states of many types, and the relations between them should always be adjusted specifically to each case. There is no general theoretical formula that would suit them all. The clergy participated in political parties, elections and the State Duma before the revolution, but the results of this participation were very mixed. In the post-Soviet years, after the constitutional crisis of October 1993, the Church made the only right decision. At an expanded session on October 8, 1993, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a resolution that instructed clergy to refrain from participating in the elections to the Federal Assembly as candidates for deputy, and to abstain from membership in political parties under the penalty of prosecution. As for the Church law, the canons of the Orthodox Church do not permit clergymen to hold secular positions of authority. This is confirmed by the Apostolic Rules and decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Adopted in 2000 by the Jubilee Council of Bishops, “The Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church” reflected the official position of the Moscow Patriarchate in its relations with the state and secular society . The Fundamentals formulate a concept of the state-church relations, the key concept of which is “the cooperation between state and church”. However, by prohibiting the clergy to participate in government bodies, the Church emphasizes its another resource: the participation of Orthodox laymen in the activities of government bodies and parties. The contemporary challenges include an enormous increase in the influence of the Internet, mass media, the ethical problems of modern technology, the lack of an Orthodox component in educational programs — they are only a few problems and challenges to the dialogue between church and state.

Chapter 10 – Trial by Jury and the Toronto 18

This chapter examines the trial of Fahim Ahmad, Steven Chand, and Asad Ansari, which was the only jury trial in the Toronto 18 prosecutions and the first held under post 9/11 terrorism offences. Part II examines the role of juries in past national security trials. These include those that occurred after the 1837 rebellions; after the assassination of D’Arcy McGhee; after the 1885 Métis resistance; after the Winnipeg General Strike; and after the October Crisis of 1970. The third part examines the public record of the Toronto 18 jury trial, including decisions about what questions could and could not be asked by the accused about potential jurors and the decision to require the three accused to stand in the prisoner’s dock. Part IV examines the future of jury trials in terrorism cases in light of the exploration of this topic by the Air India commission and 2019 reforms to jury selection. Although the jury is often conceived as a shield for the individual from the state, it can also be a sword that the state can wield against unpopular accused. Sometimes unpopular accused may be better off selecting, if they can, trial by judge alone.

The return on secondary market trades of open-end real estate funds in liquidation

As a result of the liquidity crisis in October 2008, 18 open-end real estate funds with a total volume of €26 billion in assets under management had to be liquidated. Many shareholders decided to sell their shares on the secondary market instead of awaiting the iterative liquidation of the fund assets. This paper estimates and explains the returns of these secondary market trades based on a unique dataset comprising secondary market prices and individual fund characteristics. The estimated returns exhibit an enormous variation across the funds and transaction dates. A subsiding panel regression demonstrates that the return variation can be attributed to the price-discount at which the shares traded on the secondary market and the composition of the remaining fund assets.

Estallido social octubre-19: ¿Es el golpe que causará el knockout a la compañía Ad Retail?

Este caso relata la crisis financiera de AD Retail, un holding que operaba en el sector del retail chileno. El holding AD Retail ha mostrado un deterioro en sus indicadores financieros desde finales del 2015, pero la situación se agudizó entre el 2017 y el 2018. Las consecuencias del estallido social que se detonó en octubre del 2019 en Chile intensificaron los problemas financieros de la compañía. El estallido social afectó los márgenes de la empresa y generó menores niveles de recaudación, lo que se tradujo en una liquidez insuficiente para cumplir con sus obligaciones de pago. Esto llevó al Directorio, el 24 de diciembre del 2019, a tomar la decisión de someterse de forma voluntaria a la ley de quiebras e iniciar una reestructuración de sus pasivos y activos, lo que permitiera la viabilidad de la compañía. Tras esta decisión, Pablo Turner, presidente del Directorio de AD Retail, percibía que acogerse a la ley de quiebras cambiaría el plan estratégico 2020-2022 que había sido aprobado en septiembre del 2019 y cuyo objetivo era volver a tener utilidades en el 2020. En particular, Turner se preguntaba, ¿por qué Dijon no había generado el valor corporativo esperado tras su adquisición en el 2013?, ¿por qué el holding no pudo hacer frente a los efectos causados por el estallido social?, ¿era el plan estratégico 2020-2022 acorde a la situación que estaba atravesando la compañía?, ¿qué alternativas tenía AD Retail para salir de la crisis financiera? Aunque su mayor preocupación era si el estallido social se extendería durante el 2020 y sus posibles consecuencias para la economía chilena, lo que llevó a preguntarse a Turner: ¿es la hora del cierre definitivo de AD Retail?.

‘I would rather go on being underdeveloped.’ Rereading and recontextualising Edmundo Desnoes's 1965 novel Memorias del subdesarrollo

This article follows two lines of inquiry. First, it provides a rereading of the novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (Desnoes 1965), suggesting that the protagonist, Sergio, is affected by the threat of nuclear war throughout the novel and that this fear dominates the text from the outset, and not just the novel's ending during the Missile Crisis of October 1962. It argues that Sergio's state of anxiety and inertia derive as much from this fear as from his intellectual detachment and problematic relationship with the Cuban Revolution, where critical attention has tended to focus. This rereading gives texture to Sergio's inaction and nihilism, revealing a coherent response of an individual to the threat of catastrophe. Secondly, this article sets this rereading against a new context of catastrophe: that of climate change, ecosystem collapse and species extinction. In this context an overlooked revolutionary fervour is detected in Sergio that provides a reading of hope in the narrative that, when read analogously against the present, may reflect a sense of hope against calamity.

Debate: Mental health, social crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile.

Mental health in Chile has been significantly challenged by the beginning of a social crisis in October of 2019 and the COVID‐19 pandemic of 2020. Despite widening of shortage of services, both the burgeoning of Telepsychiatry and a Presidential Initiative to integrate mental health to policy making and services provided by all sectors of government have mitigated the effects of this crisis.

Multivariate time-varying parameter modelling for stock markets

This paper evaluates the appropriateness of a Linear Market Model (LMM) which allows for systematic covariance (beta) risk. The performance of LMM will be compared against two extensions, a comparison having yet to be undertaken in the literature. The first extension is the Time-varying Linear Market Model (Tv-LMM) which allows for time-varying systematic covariance risk in the form of a mean reverting state space model via the Kalman filter. The second extension is the multivariate Time-varying Linear Market Model (MTv-LMM) which allows for the time-varying systematic covariance risk of country stock market correlation structure via the multivariate KFMR. The comparison between LMM, Tv-LMM and MTv-LMM, is implemented utilising weekly data collected from several developed and emerging markets for the periods; before and after financial crisis in October 2008, and forecasting 2 years forwards. The empirical findings of that process overwhelmingly support the use of the Multivariate Time-varying Linear Market Model (MTv-LMM) when modelling and forecasting stock market returns, especially for developed stock markets.

Relationship between Macroeconomic Indicators and Economic Cycles in U.S.

We analyze monthly time series of 57 US macroeconomic indicators (18 leading, 30 coincident, and 9 lagging) and 5 other trade/money indexes. Using novel methods, we confirm statistically significant co-movements among these time series and identify noteworthy economic events. The methods we use are Complex Hilbert Principal Component Analysis (CHPCA) and Rotational Random Shuffling (RRS). We obtain significant complex correlations among the US economic indicators with leads/lags. We then use the Hodge decomposition to obtain the hierarchical order of each time series. The Hodge potential allows us to better understand the lead/lag relationships. Using both CHPCA and Hodge decomposition approaches, we obtain a new lead/lag order of the macroeconomic indicators and perform clustering analysis for positively serially correlated positive and negative changes of the analyzed indicators. We identify collective negative co-movements around the Dot.com bubble in 2001 as well as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in October 2008. We also identify important events such as the Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the Oil Price Crisis in July 2008. Additionally, we demonstrate that some coincident and lagging indicators actually show leading indicator characteristics. This suggests that there is a room for existing indicators to be improved.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note