Withdrawal Of Troops Research Articles

Editor's Introduction: The Politics of Troop Withdrawal

Contrary to popular mythology, American politics does not stop at the water's edge, not even during wartime.1 It goes abroad, following the flag onto the battlefield, attending both the commitment and deployment of the nation's fighting forces. But it also follows those forces off the battlefield, for the withdrawal of troops from an ongoing conflict is an inherently political process, even more so when the war is an unpopular one. The current struggles in the Middle East and South Asia are cases in point. From the referendum on Iraq that was the 2006 midterm elections to the question of a withdrawal timetable during the 2008 primary and general election seasons—to say nothing about the congressional vote on the Iraq Resolution in October 2002 and the debate over Senator John Kerry's position on funding U.S. troops during the 2004 presidential race—political considerations have been central to America's handling of the Iraq War. Similar dynamics have also marked more recent debate over the war in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama's December 2009 decision to commit increasing numbers of U.S. troops to that country and then to withdraw them in 2011 has galvanized supporters and detractors on both sides of the aisle and will likely affect both the 2010 midterm elections as well as the president's policy agenda thereafter.2

The Politics, and Geopolitics, of American Troop Withdrawals from Vietnam, 1968-1972

The Politics, and Geopolitics, of American Troop Withdrawals from Vietnam, 1968-1972

The Politics of Troop Withdrawal: Salted Peanuts, the Commitment Trap, and Buying Time

The Politics of Troop Withdrawal: Salted Peanuts, the Commitment Trap, and Buying Time

It's a Date: Kennedy and the Timetable for a Vietnam Troop Withdrawal

It's a Date: Kennedy and the Timetable for a Vietnam Troop Withdrawal

Congress and the Politics of Troop Withdrawal

Congress and the Politics of Troop Withdrawal

Changing Health Behavior in Youth

Everyone who lived through the 1960s sees it through his or her own distinct prism. The conventional view is that it was a time mainly of flower children and angry protesters, of black power and militant feminism. (1) The 1960s were a time when the nerve endings of the body politic were constantly stimulated with new sensations, but it was also a time of mindless fantasy, groundless arrogance, spiritual awareness, callow youth and misguided elders. (1) The year 1969, witnessed the first men on the moon (Nell Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin via Apollo 11), initiation of U.S. troop withdrawal from Vietnam, the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in upstate New York on Max Yasgur's dairy farm and invention of the microprocessor, beginning the computer revolution. In 1969, Zager and Evans released their hit song In the Year 2525. This year was also when the U.S. government banned the use of cyclamate artificial sweeteners, the 8 was indicted in the aftermath of the Chicago Democratic Convention and Wendy's Hamburgers opened. In addition, the U.S. Army investigated Lt. William Galley for alleged massacre of civilians at the village of My Lai in South Viet Nam, the battery-powered smoke detector was invented, major league baseball player Curt Flood sued baseball challenging the reserve clause that restricted a player's choice about for whom he played, and Tommy Hilfiger began selling flowered shirts and bell bottom pants at the People's Place in Elmira, New York. For those in health education, 1969 also marked the debut of School Health Review, the forerunner to the current American Journal of Health Education. The inaugural issue of School Health Review, in September of 1969 included the article, Changing Health Behavior in Youth, by Dr. Godfrey M. Hochbaum. (2) The 1969 Hochbaum (2) article, reprinted in this issue of the Journal, is segmented in three sections. The first section is an introduction, the second is entitled A Common Denominator--The Effects on Health, and the last section is Difficulty of Application to Everyday Life. In the introduction, the author suggested that before considering the need for changing health it may be advantageous to contemplate how we learn about health behavior. This may help us understand why effecting change can be difficult and how health educators might best succeed in bringing about positive health behavior. The introduction follows a developmental theme. As infants and young children, we rely on our parents to provide for our health and safety. As we become older children and adolescents, we begin to take more personal responsibility for our own health and well being. Hochbaum uses hygiene, safety and healthy as examples of areas in which there is a shift in responsibility from parent to child. He identifies concepts of rewards and punishments for health desirable and undesirable behavior, the development of habits and and the impact of knowledge concerning the influence of behavior on future health status. The influence of parents and other adults on personal health behavior is also noted, along with personal experiences with illness, influence of medical personnel and peers. Finally, television is identified as a factor in influencing desirable/undesirable health behavior. In the next section of the introduction he discusses ideas, attitudes and beliefs about health and illness, and notes that some health behaviors/habits are well established in early childhood, before young people understand the impact of those behaviors on present or future health. When children go to school they are exposed to more systematic and reliable health information. They are also gaining the ability to judge and make decisions about some of their own health behaviors. Hochbaum also suggests that the problem in helping young people establish patterns of healthy behavior is that often they cannot distinguish between desirable/ undesirable behaviors or health promoting/health threatening habits. …

Testing the “Proximate Casualties Hypothesis”: Local Troop Loss, Attention to News, and Support for Military Intervention

In academic and policy circles, it is believed that the American public is casualties-averse when sending its troops into war and that as casualties mount the public will increasingly call for withdrawal of troops from foreign military interventions. This study tests a variant of this “casualties hypothesis” by examining whether the public conceptualizes the human costs of war in local as well as national terms. Using a massive quantity of public opinion data combined with information on deaths to U.S. soldiers in the Iraq war theater between 2003 and 2006, we show that recent deaths to soldiers from a person's home state prompt an increase in the likelihood of the person supporting withdrawal of troops, independent of cumulative national casualties and recent casualties to soldiers from elsewhere in the country. These results are explained in terms of journalism norms that make recent, local casualties salient to consumers of news, who then use this salient information when their opinions about the progress of a war are probed.

Troop Withdrawals from Europe: Cold War American Foreign Policy and Military Strategy

In 1971, U.S. Senator Mike Mansfield introduced a proposal calling for a fifty percent reduction of the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe. The proposal was ultimately voted down in the Senate but it sparked sweeping changes in the defence policies of some major NATO nations. This paper examines the pre and post “Mansfield Amendment” defence policies of Britain, France, and West Germany, and strives to answer the question of how a single failed Senate proposal could lead three major NATO countries to drastically change their defence policies.

Chester Crocker and the South African Border War, 1981–1989: A Reappraisal of Linkage**

Between 1981 and 1989, United States Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker pursued a highly controversial ‘linkage’ strategy that aimed to secure an end to the universally condemned South African occupation of Namibia by offering as a prerequisite a US demand for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. This policy was heavily influenced by the Reagan administration's Cold War objectives, and was derided by critics as granting an ineffectual and unwarranted concession to Pretoria that delayed Namibian independence. Although the peace agreement ultimately signed in 1989 largely followed Crocker's plan, most of the relatively few analyses to subsequently revisit linkage have continued to deny the importance of Crocker's diplomacy in bringing about a regional settlement, while others have supported his policies without devoting sufficient attention to the role of external factors in determining the eventual outcome. Both supporters and detractors of Crocker's policy have maintained an excessive focus on his approach towards South Africa, to the virtual exclusion of the important role that his policies towards Angola played in influencing his regional peace initiative. Using published sources, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviews, this article challenges the assumptions that have previously guided academic analysis of Crocker's regional policies.

When Are Democratic Friends Unreliable? The Unilateral Withdrawal of Troops from the `Coalition of the Willing'

Why do some democracies break their security commitments whereas others do not? This study proposes a research strategy to answer the question by analyzing the timing of unilateral exits from a coalition military operation. Coalition participants typically do not exit until a military mission has been accomplished. However, in the case of the US-led coalition occupying Iraq since May 2003, 16 states have unilaterally withdrawn their armed forces. Despite the danger such defections may cause to the relationship of these states with the USA, why and when do they exit? The author creates a dataset with a state-month unit of analysis that contains information on 37 partner states and applies a Cox proportional hazard model. The study finds that the occurrence of a national election serves as a strong driving force to accelerate an exit from the coalition. An incumbent leader who faces a challenger who opposes military contributions in Iraq would reverse the policy to support the USA and exit the coalition to win an election, even at the risk of damaging a bilateral relationship with the USA. A change in leadership after an election, on the other hand, failed to be a predictor of the timing of defection. Furthermore, results reveal that the division of power within the government and the constitutional rules that enable significant parliamentary control over executive decisions to use force neither delay nor accelerate the timing of withdrawal. To understand the conditions under which democracies break their security commitments, more attention should be paid to election cycles than to a change in leadership and to types of democratic institutional and constitutional arrangements.

Political Reform in Lebanon: Has the Cedar Revolution Failed?

The assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005 and the subsequent Cedar Revolution – resulting in the historic withdrawal of Syrian troops in April 2005 – left many foreign observers wondering if the Lebanese had finally broken the barrier between religious and political loyalties. However, it is argued in this paper, the Lebanese were asserting their independence not urging reform of the power-sharing settlement set out in the Taif Accord (1989). This paper evaluates the opportunity for reform of the electoral system, the status of the National Dialogue Process as well as the problem of an armed Hezbollah. An examination of these key issues provides the impetus for an in-depth and comprehensive look not only at the mechanics of the political process but also the motives of the players involved. A version of this paper was presented at the Seventh Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, Wroxton, UK: 29–30 July 2006.

Canada, Germany, Canada-Germany

This special edition of International Journal is presented in honour of Robert Spencer who, for a quarter of a century, was a professor at the University of Toronto. It is devoted to a wide-ranging discussion of Germany, Canada, and Canada-Germany relations, topics that were central to Spencer's scholarly work. This is also a very timely issue for two reasons: first, was president of both the EU and G 8 in 2007 and several contributors discuss what implications these responsibilities have had for transatlantic and, specifically, Canada-Germany relations; and second, it comes at a time when Canada has witnessed something of a Germany obsession (see Markus Kaim's contribution) over Afghanistan.The two countries may have arrived at a crossroads, as each seems to realize that the other is simply a good friend pursuing its own specific interests, neither more nor less. Of course, as some of the contributions argue, such reflect domestic pressures and have emerged over time. Nevertheless, in each country there appears to be some disillusionment about the other's foreign policy initiatives and general directions, whether it is Canadians looking at Germany's Afghanistan policy or Germans looking at Canada's Arctic policy. Is there a growing perception that we can no longer take as given the transatlantic solidarity and common values that characterized assumptions about each other's foreign policy agenda and that made Canada-Germany special?Or, if we look at the current situation from a more historical perspective, are we simply passing through a phase? Today's public feelings of Germany. ..letting down the side, and Canada in particular and lapses of solidarity1 are mirrored in earlier Canadian-German dissonances, for example in the late 19603, when Prime Minister Trudeau contemplated the complete withdrawal of Canada's NATO troops from and then announced their reduction in 1969. In those years, it was the Germans who felt that Canada was letting down the side, and in particular. Then, as now, the existence of shared security interests and values was questioned. In the end, a Canadian-German rapprochement symbolized by the Mannerfreundschaft (friendship between men) between the two leaders, Trudeau and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, helped weather the storm. In fact, descriptions of the transatlantic community as Schicksalsgemeinschaft (community of fate) and Wertegemeinschaft (community of values) have been challenged ever since they were espoused. Undeniably, current Canada-Germany find themselves at a critical junction but, as most authors in this issue would agree, the relationship is a very durable one.Many things have changed since the Schmidt-Trudeau friendship. Both countries have become integral parts of regional arrangements, which directly affects their room for maneuver in specific foreign policy fields. This is more so the case for Germany, which is increasingly bound by EU common policies. itself often champions European approaches over national Sonderwege (special paths), as it often considers the European path to be in its best national interest. Acknowledging the importance of such regional structures and the internationalization of formerly domestic policy fields, we conceptualize relations broadly. The articles in this issue transcend the national/ internation al dichotomy and also go beyond bilateral as traditionally defined. Canada and are often not simply linked through political bilateral relations, but also, indirectly, through a third dimension. That is, Canadian-German political consist of finding common - or at least complementary - policies on global issues and trying to avoid working at cross-purposes. It also means that both countries often deal with each other in regionally or internationally mediated ways; linkages exist via institutions such as the EU, NAFTA, NATO, UN, G8 or transatlantic forums. …

Courting the Rule of Law? The International Criminal Court and Global Terrorism

Many concerns have arisen regarding the war on terrorism, including the loss of US credibility and the brutal treatment by the US military of detained suspects. Winning this war is arguably the most important objective for some policymakers and politicians; yet can the United States also begin to reclaim some moral high ground in this struggle? The closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq would be critical steps to this end. In addition, however, US foreign policy needs to complement military responses with political solutions, including holding diplomatic talks with the governments of Iran and Syria. Even more importantly, success in the war on terrorism requires an ethical vision that reduces the political tensions that have fueled the terrorist movement. Such an ethical vision would undercut the terrorists' capacity to mobilize and at the same time discourage certain states from making favorable deals with these paramilitary groups. Fulfilling this vision raises several questions. What is the relationship between an ethical international society and the struggle against terrorism? How can terrorism be deterred through the global rule of law? More particularly, how can the International Criminal Court (ICC) help in this regard? This essay argues that the ICC, which the US government has opposed tout court, could play a in countering terrorism. Indeed, such a constitutes a potentially important ethical precondition for combating global terrorism. Global terrorism, as understood in this essay, refers to the global activities of terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaida, that employ global instruments (technologies) to indiscriminately target and harm civilians. In addition, constructive role refers here to the ICC's stated objective of proscribing grave harm perpetrated against civilians, which might, under certain circumstances, apply to terrorists who commit crimes against humanity. It should be stressed that any attempt to couple the ICC with the campaign against terrorism requires that ICC authorities and other policymakers develop a balanced and pragmatic set of policy guidelines. No one wishes to see the ICC lose its independence, to have it succumb to the political ambitions of certain powerful states. Indeed, like any legal institution, the ICC's legitimacy rests on the fair application of its rules of procedure and its independence from outside political influences. However, the ICC also remains dependent on the cooperation of states, which is likely to require pragmatic considerations to address the political risks or overtones of exercising its (assertive) discretionary power. (1) Thus, for instance, while the Congolese and Ugandan governments have voluntarily cooperated with the ICC regarding the surrender of targeted suspects of crimes against humanity, the Sudanese government remains, as of late 2007, unwilling to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of genocide in Darfur. Clearly, there are bound to be political consequences in high-intensity cases. But such cases should not detract from the larger issue of how the ICC's moral stature and legal effectiveness could contribute to the campaign against global terrorism. Indeed, the time has arrived to take the ICC's potential in countering terrorism more seriously. It is time to consider what ICC involvement would mean for transforming the war on terrorism into a sustained campaign against terrorism. In arguing these points, I shall first discuss the stark US opposition to the ICC, before moving on to address the potential parameters of an ICC in countering global terrorism. The United States and the ICC The establishment of the ICC in July 1998 marked a historic achievement of international criminal law. For many, the creation of this permanent standing court to target perpetrators of gross human rights violations marked the culmination of a long struggle for international criminal justice that began with the 1946 Nuremberg trials. …

Iraq's Long-Term Impact on Jihadist Terrorism

This article argues that the problems facing Iraq could have tremendous consequences for the broader “war on terror,” particularly if they return to or exceed levels seen at the height of the violence in 2006. Salafi militants, followers of an extreme interpretation of Islam who want to use violence to unite Muslims under religious rule, have been fighting in Iraq and may use the country as a base for operations and attacks elsewhere in the region. In addition, refugees from Iraq might spread terrorism, radicalize neighboring populations, and contribute to strife and instability throughout the region. While a U.S. troop withdrawal may inspire fewer young men to take up terrorism against the United States, it would also increase militants' operational freedom in Iraq itself, allowing terrorist groups to recruit, train, and plan with relative impunity. As a result, if the United States withdraws from Iraq without leaving behind a stable Iraqi government, it should still maintain a regional military presence and help bolster other regimes in the Middle East from the threat of terrorism from Iraq.

Guilt, Sympathy, and Cooperation: EU—Baltic Relations in the Early 1990s

The period between March 1990 and June 1993 represents the critical window for European Union (EU)—Baltic relations. During this time Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania laid the foundation for future EU membership. For its part, the European community made a commitment to include the three republics in the process of enlargement. This paper traces the beginnings of EU—Baltic cooperation and examines factors that led to growing political and economic convergence. Nordic membership in the EU, ex-Soviet troop withdrawal, and Russian parliamentary elections were instrumental in bringing both sides together on the road to enlargement, but collective guilt provided the underlying rationale. In this paper, the author argues that it is impossible to understand fully this process of convergence without taking into account the connotations and consequences of the “black trinity”: the Munich pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Yalta agreement.

New York City Mastodons: Big Apple Tusks

Unlike some cities, New York is not known as a locality for fossils, and for good reason, they are few and far between, especially if you exclude the treasure trove of fossils embedded in the dimension stone of facades, lobbies, and rest rooms. It is easy to understand why New York City offers such a paucity of naturally occuring specimens when you consider that most of the city’s bedrock is composed of high-grade metamorphics—gneiss, marble, and schist—1.1 billion to 435 million years old (Baskerville 1994). Any fossils that may have existed in the original parent rock have been destroyed by ensuing high-grade metamorphism, a process by which rocks are altered by heat and/or pressure. The only exposed sedimentary rocks are Cretaceous-age clays and sands. In the past, they have yielded plant fragments including lignite and a few invertebrates (Hollick 1908) and some microfossils, but these exposures are substantially diminished with continuing urbanization. However, almost the entire city has been glaciated, and in places the veneer of glacially transported rocks yield a variety of Paleozoic invertebrate fossils delivered from north and west of the city (Hollick 1893). But it also turns out that late glacial and/or early post glacial sediments contain relatively rare fragments of mastodon skeletons—the ice-age elephant (Mammut americanum)—and finding them is a hit-or-miss undertaking. I have chosen the mastodon for this discussion, focusing on New York City as an unusual locality, because mastodon fossils are well distributed throughout North America, its fossils have been collected by the thousands (Haynes 1991), and mastodons were the rage long before dinosaurs were discovered. The fact that these animals roamed what is now Broadway is an excellent example for starting a discussion on climatic change as well as the hot topic of what caused the demise of the charismatic late Pleistocene megafauna and, as we will see, introducing some aspects of the history of paleontology. Another purpose of this paper is to show that the study of paleontology and evolution can and should be interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. Often, it is the secondary aspects of these subjects that can excite students and gain their interest. Based on the plant material associated with mastodon fossils in northeastern United States, the mastodons clearly lived in spruce forests and open spruce woodlands containing swamps and bogs. Although the stratigraphic record is not very good for New York City localities, it can be assumed that they lived in a similar vegetation zone, an environment so different than the eastern deciduous forest that exists now in New York City. Today, there are remnants of this forest still extant, not only altered by many introduced species, but also not a true virgin forest because during the occupation by British and Hessian armies during the American Revolution the forests were entirely cut down on Manhattan Island to provide firewood and construction materials. The forest of the present time reestablished itself in many places with the withdrawal of the foreign troops. As most of the glacial deposits are covered by buildings or located in the adjacent waterways that make New York City an archipelago, finding fossils requires diligence at construction sites where, in general, the focus has been on Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:204–209 DOI 10.1007/s12052-008-0042-y

“If Hope is Sin, Then We Are All Guilty”: Romanian Students’ Reactions to the Hungarian Revolution and Soviet Intervention, 1956–1958

The events of 1956 (the Twentieth CPSU Congress, Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, and the Hungarian revolution) had a strong impact on the evolution of the Romanian communist regime, paving the way for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania in 1958, the stricter policy toward the Transylvanian Hungarians, and Romania’s greater independence from the USSR in the 1960s. Students complained about their living and studying conditions long before the outbreak of the Hungarian crisis. Ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania listened closely to Budapest radio stations, and Romanian students in Budapest in the summer of 1956 were especially affected by the ferment of ideas there. For the Gheorghiu-Dej regime, the Hungarian revolution and Soviet invasion provided a useful excuse to end the destalinization process and crack the whip conclusivel —carrying out mass arrests, but also granting short-term concessions to ethnic minorities and workers. Of all segments of the Romanian population, university students were the most discontented. Drawing on archival documents, published memoirs, and recent Romanian scholarship, this paper will analyze and compare the student unrest in Bucharest, Cluj, Iaşi, and Timişoara. Due to a combination of psychological, logistical, and historical factors, students in the latter city were especially vocal and organized. On October 30 over 2,000 students from the Polytechnic Institute in Timişoara met with party offi cials, demanding changes in living and study conditions, as well as the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania. Another 800-1,000 students convened on October 31, calling for the release of students who were arrested the day before. Obvious discrepancies between the Romanian and Hungarian media sparked their curiosity about events in Hungary, while their cramped dorm rooms actually facilitated student meetings. In the Banat region itself, a tradition of anti-communist protest had prevailed since 1945. Although arrested en masse, these students set a vital precedent—especially for the Timişoarans who launched the Romanian Revolution thirty-three years later.

The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America's Vietnam War (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America’s Vietnam War Jeffrey J. Clarke The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America’s Vietnam War. By John M. Shaw . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. ISBN 0-7006-1405-2. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 222. $34.95. John Shaw's The Cambodian Campaign details the US Army's cross-border operations in Cambodia north of Saigon during May and June of 1970. The author's investigation into the primary sources of this campaign—including many documents prepared by this reviewer at the time—has been exhaustive and is supplemented by an impressive array of interviews with key participants. The results encompass the actions of both George Casey's (his father is the Army's current Chief of Staff) 1st Cavalry Division and Edward Bautz's 25th Infantry Division along and across South Vietnam's long border with neutral Cambodia. Based on his presentation and analyses, Shaw contends that the incursion was the pivotal American ground operation of the war, one that allowed the subsequent US troop withdrawals and the parallel Vietnamization effort to take place with little enemy threat to the Saigon capital area, the heart of the southern republic. The work is short, with only 170 pages of text (and another 30 of endnotes), and pays scant attention to other incursions north and south of the main effort. Nor does it address the long South Vietnamese occupation that followed the American pull-out on 30 June because of domestic political considerations. [End Page 296] But those efforts are not central to his thesis that the supply caches captured or destroyed in these sanctuaries crippled Communist military operations in the region for the next two years. The author's case might have been stronger had he been able to estimate the percentage of enemy supplies and equipment lost rather than just presenting their admittedly impressive totals. Unfortunately, too little is still known about the opposition's capabilities and intentions here and elsewhere during the war—and there is also relatively little on the Cambodian side of the ledger (were Americans complicit in the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk, an event that precipitated the crisis and indeed Cambodia's long nightmare?). Shaw can be criticized for a somewhat raw organization that has much duplication (e.g., similar background materials on the MENU bombings, on key American commanders, on troop tactical movements, and on the complex Allied headquarters organizations are presented several times). In sum, the presentation throws a great deal of material at the reader without arranging it to support a cohesive narrative. On the other hand, the author is one of the few historians who has attempted, fairly successfully, to paint a comprehensive picture of the Vietnam battleground, including the interplay of logistics, fire support, intelligence, communications, engineers, medical evacuation, and the like. The result is somewhat unique. Rather than just another grunt potboiler or one more general officer apologia, we have a genuine effort to examine a slice of the Vietnam War in all its myriad complexity from a staff officer's point of view. And for this we are in Shaw's debt. Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History

The Treaty of the Pyrenees, 350 Years Later

An overall review of the 1659 Treaty between the Hispanic and French monarchies is undertaken. The European scope of the document is established in the light of the territorial clauses and the articles on civil rights, commercial relations and troop withdrawals. While the Rhineland and Alpine front also comes in for attention, the main focus is on the Franco-Catalan Pyrenean front. The author notes that the Pyrenean range was the cradle of Catalonia, not a frontier, and gives an account of how the new delimitation was traced. She also discusses Catalan resistance along the border (in Rossello). Reference is made to the on-going wars between France and Spain after 1659, to the ill-defined nature of the new border, and to France's offer to exchange Rossello for the lands lying along its eastern frontier, in which it was primarily interested. This offer was never accepted. The dynastic, patrimonial and military origin and nature of European frontiers, which were established regardless of, and often in opposition to, the existence of peoples, is stressed.

Temporary Triumph in Timişoara: Unrest among Romanian Students in 1956

AbstractBetween 1952 and 1965, the one‐party regime under Gheorghe Gheorghiu‐Dej ranked as one of the most totalitarian of all communist bloc countries. Aware of the revolutionary ferment in neighbouring Hungary in 1956, the Romanian leaders took strict measures to prevent similar unrest occurring in their own country, including a ban on all meetings numbering more than three individuals. And yet, on 30 October over 2,000 students from the Polytechnic Institute in Timişoara met with party officials and demanded changes in living and study conditions, as well as the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania. Another 800 to 1,000 students convened on 31 October, calling for the release of students who had been arrested the day before. If the Dej regime's measures prevented mass demonstrations in cities such as Bucharest, Cluj and Iaşi, how did they initially fail in the case of Timişoara? How were the students in this city able to speak out so freely? Drawing on memoirs, archival documents and recent scholarship, this article will answer these questions, referring to psychological, logistical and historical factors. These include discrepancies between the Romanian and Hungarian media that sparked curiosity about events in Hungary; cramped dormitory rooms that actually facilitated student meetings; and a tradition of anti‐communist protest prevalent since 1945 in the Banat region. While the students did not prevail in 1956, they set a vital precedent for the Timişoarans who launched the Romanian Revolution thirty‐three years later in 1989.