US-Soviet Relations Research Articles

The Formation and Influence of American Hegemony in Cold War

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has developed into a world situation in which the United States is the only super-Power and there are many powerful States. The United States had begun to successfully develop its hegemony in various areas of the world. However, the hegemony of the United States began to be challenged along with the re-emergence of forces in Asia and Europe. The opportunity of the Cold War was an important point in the formation of American hegemony. Because of this, the study of how American hegemony was formed during the Cold War and its impact on the world situation is crucial to how the United States faces the challenges that are now before it as well as the further development of the world situation. The main objective of this paper is to analyse how American hegemony was formed during the Cold War in terms of politics, economy, science and technology, and the impact of American hegemony on the world. The formation of American hegemony had a great impact on the US-Soviet relations, European integration and the development of the third world countries during the Cold War.

“The Way to the Rubicon”: American-Soviet Contacts in Science and Technology

The interaction between the USSR and the US during the Cold War was not always of a pronounced confrontational nature. In the early 1970s, the turn from confrontation to detente seemed sensational, but its very possibility was the result of a long evolution of bilateral US-Soviet relations and the system of international relations as such. This article discusses the reasons that prompted the US leadership to expand scientific and research and technology contacts with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s – early 1970s, clarifies the place of scientific and research and technology issues in constructing the US strategy towards the USSR at the beginning of the detente. Although these issues are outlined in the works of some Russian and international authors on Cold War history, no special studies on this problem have appeared so far. The conclusion argues that détente did not mean the US leadership’s rejection of the Cold War, it only temporarily shifted its focus from the arms race and nuclear potentials to the areas where the advantages of the US were more pronounced at the time – to compare living standards, the degree of openness of societies and the quality of the consumer market. The complex of bilateral treaties of 1972–1974 determined the direction and parameters of competitive interaction of the powers in these areas but did not guarantee the convergence and interpenetration of socio-political systems.

American Primacy and US–China Relations: The Cold War Analogy Reversed

Abstract Does today’s US–China relationship resemble the bygone rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union? In this article, we suggest that there are some instructive similarities between US–China and US–Soviet relations, but the Cold War analogy works best when the contemporary United States is cast in the role of the historical Soviet Union. Specifically, the United States (1991–present) has in common with the Soviet Union (1945–91) the fact that it occupies a position of near dominance on the Eurasian continent during a prolonged era of relative peace. It was Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe that gave the bipolar international system of the Cold War era its defining characteristic—that is, a geographic distribution of power assets in Eurasia that the United States and its allies mobilized to resist and overturn. Now, it is US primacy in Eurasia that serves to define the basic contours of the present (if ailing) unipolar international system: a geopolitical configuration that denies any power other than the United States the opportunity to carve out an effective sphere of influence. In short, the legacy forward deployment of US forces shapes the context within which Sino-American relations are unfolding just as the legacy occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union structured superpower relations during the Cold War.

"The Russian-American Role in managing Crises : Syrian Crisis as a Model"

Russian-American relations in the modern era have gone through several stages, dominated by the nature of conflict and competition, more than cooperation, which has not yet risen to the level of strategic partnership between the two parties. If the US-Soviet relations had left an impact on the international balance of power during the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of the Russian Federation ended what was known at the time as the Cold War, to start a new phase in the international system called the unipolar world, expressing the uniqueness of the United States in hegemony over The world, especially after Russia came out burdened with heavy economic burdens and commitments that made it in a weak position affiliated with the United States, especially in the first half of the nineties of the last century. One of the events in the Middle East, which has come under American hegemony and influence to a large extent, resulting in wars in which the United States occupied Afghanistan and Iraq The Middle East was and still is one of the most vital regions in the world that has witnessed rounds of US-Russian competition, especially in the Syrian crisis, because of its important strategic location, and the huge natural resources it contains, the most important of which are oil and gas, which are the most important sources of energy in the world, and who controls them. It controls the fate of the world today.

An Unusual Role: Soviet Diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang in 1968

The seizure of the USS Pueblo, an American intelligence ship, on 23 January 1968 triggered one of the most acute and dangerous international crises during the Cold War. The US government comprehensively studied the situation and concluded that a forceful response to the North Korean action was futile, and any action with the use of military force was fraught with the unpredictable escalation and internationalisation of the conflict. In addition, President Lyndon Johnson’s administration had the goal of saving the lives of internees from the ship. The solution to this problem acquired particular importance in connection with the upcoming presidential elections. Negotiations were chosen as a way to overcome the crisis, during which Washington repeatedly appealed to the Soviet government with requests for support in its difficult dialogue with the DPRK leadership. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, for his part, chose the tactic of delaying negotiations. Both sides were in contact with the USSR, as a result of which Soviet diplomacy had to, on the one hand, facilitate the return of American sailors to their homeland, and, on the other, maintain their image of the leader of the world socialist system, condemning US espionage actions near the shores of a state friendly to the USSR. The purpose of this article is to show Soviet diplomacy in the unusual role of a mediator in the dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang, and to assess the significance of these efforts for resolving a conflict fraught with global consequences. It is concluded that the actions of Soviet diplomacy in the context of this crisis contributed to the relaxation of tensions in US-Soviet relations.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

Sovietization of Romania in the context of US–Soviet relations 1944–1945: domestic historiography

Sovietization of Romania in the context of US–Soviet relations 1944–1945: domestic historiography

Diplomacy beyond deterrence: Helmut Schmidt and the economic dimension of Ostpolitik

ABSTRACTThe military aspects of Helmut Schmidt’s policy have been examined in depth. This article argues that Schmidt’s diplomacy went beyond deterrence. His Ostpolitik statecraft was aimed at the establishment of sustainable structures of cooperative security in East-West relations. It facilitated the strategic energy partnership between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union. Schmidt’s economic détente outlasted the crisis of US-Soviet relations. The construction of the largest pipeline for the transport of natural gas from the Soviet Union to Western Europe in the first half of the 1980s (Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod) helped to keep détente alive in times of crisis.

The domestic resonance of geopolitical competition in American foreign policy: the rise of China and post-war US–Soviet relations compared

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the USA faces a geopolitical challenger in the shape of China. According to the National Security Strategy 2017 (NSS 2017), China—alongside Russia—poses a threat to America primacy, a view that reflects a new consensus among national security experts about the need to get tough in relations with Beijing. As of now, however, American public opinion remains ambivalent on the China challenge—opinion polls showing only a modest downturn in views of China recently, despite pronounced anti-China rhetoric in the context of the Trump administration’s trade war. The present paper asks why there is such a disparity between elite and popular opinions, and whether the disparity will last. It does so through a historical comparison between the present and the immediate post-WWII period, before a threat from the Soviet Union resonated widely among the American public. Acceptance of a Soviet threat was a product of a rhetoric of anti-communism used in partisan political debate. In turn, anti-communism drew on a conflation of “communism” meaning US-based labor groups and communism meaning the Soviet Union. By showing the immense effort needed to manufacture the resonance of geopolitical competition in the post-war years, the paper highlights the necessary domestic conditions of geopolitical competition, conditions currently absent.

Refugees from the Baltic states in the camps of Central and Western Europe in the context of the American «non-recognition policy» in the second half of the 1940’s

The article covers one of the problematic aspects of US-Soviet relations in the first post-war years - the issue of «the controversial refugees», appeared due to non-recognition by the United States of Soviet annexation of the Baltic States and the conduct of forced repatriation by the USSR. American diplomacy during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt adhered to the «non-recognition policy», concluded in the Stimson Doctrine (January 7, 1932) and the Welles Declaration (July 23, 1940). However, declared foreign policy acts did not lead to a decrease of the level of official relations with the aggressor state. At the same time, the official Washington did not consider the Balts as citizens of the USSR and retained the diplomatic missions of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the United States. Under the administration of President Harry Truman, the course of non-recognition of the «voluntary entry of the three Baltic republics into the USSR» continued.It was researched that after the end of the Second World War, refugees and displaced persons from the Baltic-occupied Soviet Union were located in Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland. The large contingent was within the limits of the American occupation zone in Germany, the vast majority were immigrants from Lithuania. The attention was paid to the factors that led to the mass exodus of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians from 1943 to 1944. It is outlined the special place of American diaspora civic organizations in collecting of financial assistance and coordination of their activities with the US State Department. It is also defined the role of representatives of the Catholic and Protestant national churches.The researched paper contains an analysis of correspondence between the leaders of the American diplomatic missions of Lithuania (Povilas Žadeikis), Latvia (Alfrēds Bīlmanis) and Estonia (Johannes Kaiv) with the US Department of State. Baltic diplomats constantly emphasized the need to confront the Soviet propaganda machine with regard to the denial of the «voluntary Sovietization of the Baltic» and the practice of sweeping accusation of refugees in «betrayal» and «cooperation with the Germans». In turn, they pointed to the need to extend the jurisdiction and mandate of international organizations on Baltic refugees, to determine their legal status and to prevent their recognition as the Soviet citizens in some European countries.The article deals with the documental potential of the diplomatic correspondence of the US foreign policy department. Attention is drawn to the analysis of this issue in the research works of foreign historians.During the first post-war years in matter of refugees’ problem and displaced persons, it was found that American diplomacy was in search of consensus between humanitarian reasons for ensuring human rights to asylum and the fulfillment of allied obligations in course of the activities of Soviet repatriation missions. However, «Baltic refugees» were a separate category, which Americans tried not to extradite from their occupied territory to the USSR cause of their non-recognition policy of Soviet annexation of Baltic states.

Etkind , Alexander Roads Not Taken: An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt (review)

SEER, 97, 2, APRIL 2019 380 of the book, he speculates about the loose relationship between his story of the communes and the revivification of revolutionary idealism in the era of de-Stalinization. There is a specific afterlife, too, with the term ‘kummuna’ occasionally returning to public discourse. Willimott has got close to his subjects and tells their stories with enthusiasm. He acknowledges that they are only a small part of the history of the Revolution, but he is not troubled by whether their experience is representative, precisely because they offer new stories told from unusual angles that illuminate wider themes. There is much for students and scholars to enjoy and learn from in this important book. University of Cambridge Mark B. Smith Etkind, Alexander. Roads Not Taken: An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2017. xiv + 290 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95 (paperback). Deploying his talent for epigrammatic encapsulation, A. J. P. Taylor famously dismissed the roles of diplomats in history as merely what one clerk said to another. Alexander Etkind’s study seems to confirm this judgment, for it speaks of advice ignored, of roads not taken. But the book’s central theme is the wisdom and prescient of William Bullitt’s thoughts, which were not embraced by those in power who ‘preferred his company to his advice’ (p. 2). If only they had adopted his suggestions, then the world might well have been a better place. Etkind describes his book as an intellectual biography, aiming to concentrate on Bullitt’s ideas as much as on his actions. He builds his case principally on the Bullitt papers and those of his second wife, Louise Bryant (John Reed’s widow); Bullitt’s own publications, the volume containing his correspondence with Franklin Roosevelt, which is heavily mined; various secondary works on Bullitt and US politics and foreign policies; and a number of Russian-language memoirs and documentary collections. Bullitt was born into a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1891, graduated from YaleUniversityandspentayearatHarvardLawSchool.Heenteredgovernment service thanks to the sponsorship of President Woodrow Wilson’s close confidant, Colonel Edmund M. House, who helped Bullitt’s appointment as an assistant to the secretary of state. In 1918 Bullitt undertook a mission to meet Lenin and the new Bolshevik government of Russia, securing an agreement involving withdrawal of foreign forces in return for payment of Russia’s debt and independence for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and other nationalities REVIEWS 381 within the tsarist empire. Wilson did not pursue the deal, causing Etkind to wonder how international relations might have developed had Bullitt’s deal been pursued. Yet this seems a rather optimistic reading of what was probably a temporizing move by Lenin. Angry and disappointed, Bullitt resigned and publicly criticized the ‘unjust decisions’ at the Versailles Peace Conference. For the next fourteen years Bullitt was out of public office. Etkind gives extensive treatment to Bullitt’s first novel, It’s Not Done, which sold over 150,000 copies, and his second unpublished novel, Divine Wisdom. The 1920s proved to be a period of emotional turmoil for Bullitt, who met Sigmund Freud and received therapy for his suicidal thoughts. The two men then collaborated on a book about Wilson that aimed to explain him in psychological terms. Although it was eventually completed in 1938, it was not published until 1966. Etkind speculates that the delay was because its appearance would have hindered Bullitt’s revived political career. In November 1932 Franklin Roosevelt was elected US president and decided to extend diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, a move Bullitt had encouraged him to take. Bullitt arrived in Moscow as the first US ambassador in late 1933 with high expectations and a talented team of diplomats, including George Kennan. He departed in 1936 deeply disappointed by the failure to improve US-Soviet relations, disillusioned by the surveillance of the mission and its officials and shocked by the terror unleashed by Stalin. In August 1936 Bullitt became ambassador to France and immediately settled into his post, enjoying the social scene and the attention he received from prominent people. He sought to promote Franco...

Relations within «Triangle» USA – USSR – China at the End of Détente (1977–1980)

The period of détente is usually associated with a decrease of confrontation in US-Soviet relations, the signing of agreements on the limitation of strategic weapons and anti-missile defense systems and the development of trade and economic relations, scientific and cultural exchanges. Strengthening security in Europe is considered another facet of détente. From this perspective détente is viewed as an alternative to the Cold War, and the end of détente is seen as a missed opportunity to develop international relations in the direction of a secure world with working mechanisms for harmonizing the interests of both the great powers and other countries.The article deals with the history of relations in the triangle USA – USSR – China in 1977– 1980. The evolution of Washington’s foreign policy strategy and the inclusion to it policies towards the USSR and China in these years came at the background of pronounced Soviet– Chinese antagonism. In the first months there was no clear plan in the actions of the Carter administration, there was a sharp rivalry for influence on the president between individual political figures (first of all – S. Vance and Zb. Brzezinski). They proposed different scenarios of the development of the US–Soviet and US – China relations. Throughout the Carter presidency, the US used as much as possible the tensions between Moscow and Beijing. In the framework of tripartite relations, each of the sides consistently pursued its own course aimed at achieving unilateral benefits. There were no attempts to establish a trilateral dialogue with an agreed agenda. The processes of détente practically did not affect the complex of international problems that existed within the American – Soviet – Chinese triangle. Moreover, Washington’s use of the «Chinese card» prevented the reduction of tensions in American–Soviet relations and strengthened the Cold War logic and methods in the planning and implementation of US foreign policy.

From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy Sarah B. Snyder

Reviewed by: From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy Sarah B. Snyder Debbie Sharnak (bio) Sarah B. Snyder From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), ISBN, 978-0-231-16947-9, 320 pages. The history of human rights, perhaps surprisingly, emerged relatively recently as a field of scholarly inquiry.1 Historians began publishing widely on the topic only in the past decade and, as historian Barbara Keys noted, scholars of US foreign relations have been "among the most avid" contributors to fill the void in this burgeoning field.2 Sarah Snyder became one such pioneer in 2011 when she published her first book, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network.3 In that volume, Snyder examines how non-state actors used the passage of the Helsinki Act of 1975 to promote a human rights agenda as a central element in East-West diplomacy, which helped lead to the end of the Cold War. In her latest book, From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy, Snyder looks again to nonstate actors to examine how human rights emerged—this time as a central part of the US foreign policymaking apparatus. Eschewing claims from Samuel Moyn in The Last Utopia that human rights' true rise can be traced to the 1970s, Snyder is part of a group of historians, which includes Steven L.B Jensen and Roland Burke, who are looking to the 1960s to locate the origins of [End Page 527] modern human rights.4 While Jensen and Burke are more concerned with global events in their analyses of the earlier decade, the former examining the impact of decolonization and the latter looking to the terminal years of liberal postcolonialism, Snyder focuses on how US nonstate actors and low level diplomats played a pivotal role in bringing human rights to the forefront of US policymaking, and how their actions continues to have lasting relevance. With this project, Snyder contests the prevailing emphasis on Jimmy Carter's presidential anointment that "our commitment to human rights must be absolute" to locate when human rights had finally arrived on the US foreign policy scene. Instead, Snyder shows how a diverse set of activists, missionaries, academics, and bureaucrats laid the groundwork for Carter's inaugural claims in the "long 1960s"—a period she defines as John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961 through the end of Gerald Ford's presidency in January 1977. By investigating various actors' personal connections, racial identity, and transnational ties in a diverse set of ideological and geographical case studies, she argues that the long 1960s set the stage for the "institutionalization of human rights in US foreign policy and the expansion of human rights activism" in subsequent decades.5 In reexamining the temporal origins of human rights in US foreign policy, Snyder also points to an important geographic shift that occurred, which re-centered human rights activism in the US from New York to Washington DC in the 1960s. As Snyder explains, this change is significant because it shows how activists who cared about global rights stopped appealing to the United Nations and foreign governments to advocate for moral claims abroad. Instead, their frustration and disillusionment with a UN-centered approach led them to see the US as an important arbiter that could marshal its power in support of human rights to effect change. These two important historiographical contributions are illustrated through diverse emblematic case studies. Chapter one examines how human rights became an issue in US-Soviet relations. According to Snyder, pressure on the US foreign policy establishment arose from personal ties—particularly Soviet-Jewish connections—that led to the formation of NGOs, student groups, and mass demonstrations around the issue. This mobilization ended in Senator Henry Jackson's push to pass the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which limited trade with communist countries that restricted freedom of emigration and other human rights abuses. In Chapter Two, Snyder focuses on Africa, studying American activism against Southern Rhodesia's minority-ruled, racially discriminatory government. In this context, US citizens...

US-NATO at the final stage of the detente, 1977–1980

The article is devoted to identifying the place and role of the NATO military bloc in the US foreign policy during the presidency of J. Carter. The correlation of confrontation and cooperation trends in the US-Soviet relations at the final stage of the detente is examined. The issue of the arms race, which took place against the backdrop of the discussion of disarmament agreements, is touched upon. The reasons for the occurrence and the process of overcoming the crisis of confidence that arose in the US-NATO relations in the second half of the 1970s are considered. The Carter administration’s position on the prospects for detente, development trends of the US-Soviet relations and cooperation between the United States and European allies in the NATO bloc is examined. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the unity and divergence of interests of Washington and European NATO members on the problem of the relations with the USSR. The reaction of leaders of states and ordinary citizens to the proposal to deploy new types of weapons in Western Europe is analyzed. The article identifies the basic principles and priority areas of the United States policy towards European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, identifies the factors that have most influenced the formation of the American foreign policy. The author concludes that by the end of the 1970s, there was a deep crisis in the policy of detente of international tension and a real return to an open bipolar confrontation.

From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR, written by Louis Sell

From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR, written by Louis Sell

From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR by Louis Sell

<i>From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR</i> by Louis Sell

From Washington to Moscow: US–Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR. By Louis Sell. Duke University Press. 2016. 408pp. $27.95.

From Washington to Moscow: US–Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR. By Louis Sell. Duke University Press. 2016. 408pp. $27.95.

From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR

<i>From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR</i>

The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship and Art in the Shadow of the Cold War

From its launch in World War II, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship (NCASF) championed the use of American art as cultural diplomacy. Although the deterioration of US-Soviet relations would obscure the council’s wartime success and precipitate its designation as a subversive organization, the NCASF continued to operate throughout the Cold War. Using unpublished archival sources from the US and Russia, this essay reveals how marginalized social realist artists rejected postwar developments in the US in favor of cultivating closer ties with the USSR, presenting an alternative history of Soviet-American artistic exchange that calls into question many of the popular narratives of the cultural Cold War.

From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet relations and the collapse of the USSR. By Louis Sell

From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet relations and the collapse of the USSR. By Louis Sell