War Debate Research Articles

The paradox of "engineering science"-a cold war debate about education in the U.S

During the early years of the Cold War, educators in the United States vigorously debated a rather abstruse topic that, nevertheless, had lasting public policy implications. Did the field called engineering science, which the newly formed National Science Foundation (NSF) was chartered to support, indeed exist, and, if it did, how should colleges and the NSF support it? My recounting of the public aspect of this debate (which occurred in articles published in the Journal of Engineering Education and magazines of professional societies from 1945 to 1960) will focus on attempts by prominent engineers and a few scientists to come to terms with a perceived epistemological paradox. Although these groups had defined as the application of in the first half of the century, the NSF and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) promoted research and teaching in engineering science after the war on the assumption that it represented basic research in engineering. This paper raises the historlographic method suggested by O. Mayr (1976) and examines how historical actors themselves defined and used the term engineering science rather than appplying the concept of to the past as an analytic tool.

Common Meeting Places and the Brightening of Rural Life: Local Debates on Village Halls in Sussex after the First World War

In the burgeoning literature on war memorials and the commemoration of the war dead in Britain after 1918, the growth of village halls in rural areas has not been extensively analysed. K.S. Inglis has alerted us to the dichotomy of monuments to mourn the dead and amenities to serve the living. He noted that where a preference was made for utility over monumentality, local war memorial committees did not confine their attention to commemorating those who died on active service and made the Great Sacrifice, but also had in mind those who served and returned. The complex locally-determined processes of negotiating ways which would bring solace or comfort to the bereaved, through the creation of an object of mourning, has been examined with great care and detail, but analysis of urban-centred initiatives predominates.Consequently, the linkage which might be made between the experience of war and the participation of ex-servicemen in village war memorial debates, the demise of old elites and the quest for improved social and material conditions in rural areas, the diminishing support for parish churches as the focal point of community life and the emergence of undenominational social centres, all point towards the need for further examination of the proceedings of local committees, where parish records allow. As British participation in the Great War contained the powerful rhetoric of a religious crusade and was not connected to the improvement of social conditions until the publication of war aims in January 1918, many committees gave priority to the creation of sacred objects of mourning, with much use of exhortatory moral language and Christian iconography.

Mercenary intervention in Sierra Leone: Providing national security or international exploitation?

This article critically examines the privatisation of security in the West African state of Sierra Leone. The focus on Sierra Leone brings to the fore the post-Cold War debate about the strategic impact of private military or mercenary companies in intra-state conflicts in Africa. It also raises the crucial issue of the link between low-intensity conflicts and strategic minerals and how neo-liberal globalisation forces have provided market opportunity for mercenary companies to fill the security vacuum created by collapsed states in Africa.

War crimes and the Vietnamese people: American representations and silences

Survey textbook treatments of the governments and peoples of North and South Vietnam provide a barometer of the wisdom achieved by a generation of U.S. scholarship on the Vietnam War. In their discussions of the August Revolution and of the 1953–56 land reform and the Air War in the North and the Diem and Thieu regimes in the South, these books rework old controversies, thereby demonstrating the pertinence and limits of received paradigms. In particular, the war crimes debate, driven forward by the “Winter Soldiers” and others, continues to serve as a point of reference for understanding U.S. intervention and war-induced changes in Vietnam. An analysis of social consequences helps to situate the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War and the war in Vietnam's modern history.

The Marketing of Rudolf Hess: A Key to the Preventive War Debate?

The Marketing of Rudolf Hess: A Key to the Preventive War Debate?

The Marketing of Rudolf Hess: A Key to the `Preventive War Debate'?

The Marketing of Rudolf Hess: A Key to the `Preventive War Debate'?

The Gulf War Debate Redux: Why Skill and Technology Are the Right Answer

The Gulf War Debate <i>Redux</i>: Why Skill <i>and</i> Technology Are the Right Answer

Revis(it)ing nuclear history: narrative conflict at the bradbury science museum*

Nuclear criticism theorizes culture as the site of struggle between ideological narratives seeking authority over the meaning of nuclear symbols. Following the end of the cold war, various groups have conducted this struggle through public discourse about U.S. nuclear weapons organizations. This paper examines symbolic conflict over the history and future of one such organization, the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This conflict was conducted between pro-nuclear Laboratory officials and employees of its Bradbury Science Museum, and local anti-nuclear activists. The conflict centered around the activists' construction of an alternative exhibit that was placed in the Museum, and that challenged its dominant narrative of nuclear history. Analysis reveals that the identities and activities of these two groups can be distinguished by three sets of opposing constructs: nuclearism/pacifism; monologue/dialogue, and fact/narrative. These frames guided the groups' interpretive practices, and heuristically condense the heteroglossia of post-cold war debate about nuclear history. They clarify, in turn, the process by which cultural memory is constructed and transformed to serve nuclear-ideological interests.

The Gulf War Debate Redux: Why Skill and Technology are the Right Answer

October 01 1997 The Gulf War Debate Redux: Why Skill and Technology Are the Right Answer Stephen Biddle Stephen Biddle Stephen Biddle is a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Stephen Biddle Stephen Biddle is a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia. Online Issn: 1531-4804 Print Issn: 0162-2889 © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.1997 International Security (1997) 22 (2): 163–174. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.22.2.163 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Stephen Biddle; The Gulf War Debate Redux: Why Skill and Technology Are the Right Answer. International Security 1997; 22 (2): 163–174. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.22.2.163 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsInternational Security Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.1997 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Fairness and Balance of Selected Newspaper Coverage of Controversial National, State, and Local Issues

This study developed a content-based technique of assessing fairness and balance of newspaper coverage of controversial issues and applied it to 259 stories on eighteen issues appearing in eighteen newspapers during February 1991. The study found that on average one side dominated at least three of the six story qualities assessed. Only 7% of the stories were evenly balanced, while more than 50% of the stories had at least four of the six story qualities dominated by one side. Three issues involving abortion and two involving local schools were the most imbalanced. The Gulf War debate was the most imbalanced national issue.

Construing "Technology" as "Applied Science": Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers in the United States, 1880-1945

Une taxinomie de la connaissance technologique est developpee, en essayant de montrer l'interaction entre les scientifiques et les ingenieurs, a travers la recherche industrielle et en laboratoire

Deciphering media independence: The gulf war debate in television and newspaper news

This article explores the relationship between media form and content in the context of media autonomy in the United States. A functioning democracy relies on the media to provide information independent from government sources. We argue that some news formats may lend themselves to such independence better than others. This study examines how the public debate about U.S. reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was covered by television and newspaper news. Specifically, we analyze the relative levels of support and criticism of President Bush's policy, the diversity of sources evaluating that policy, and the substantive policy aspects emphasized by the two media. The data show that television and newspaper news coverage differed. Television news was more supportive of the official government line, suggesting that format characteristics were related to the level of independence the two media were able to exhibit In light of the continuing decline in newspaper readership and the growing power of television, the study calls for refining the examination of media autonomy to distinguish between different forms of media.

Taken by storm: the media, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy in the Gulf War

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction to the Media and Foreign Policy A View from the Press Marvin Kalb A View from the Military Thomas W. Kelly A View from the Academy Bernard C. Cohen 1: The News About Foreign Policy W. Lance Bennett 2: The Press as Prologue: Media Coverage of Saddam's Iraq, 1979-1990 Gladys Engel Lang, Kurt Lang 3: News and Historical Content: The Establishment Phase of the Persian Gulf Policy Debate William A. Dorman, Steven Livingston. 4: The News before the Storm: The Iraq War Debate and the Limits to Media Independence Robert M. Entman, Benjamin I. Page. 5: Domesticating a Crisis: Washington Newsbeats and Network News after the Iraq Invasion of Kuwait Timothy E. Cook 6: Strategic Public Diplomacy: Managing Kuwait's Image During the Gulf Conflict Jarol B. Manheim 7: The Gulf War as Popular Culture and Television Drama Daniel C. Hallin, Todd Gitlin. 8: News Coverage of the Gulf Crisis and Public Opinion: A Study of Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing Shanto Iyengar, Adam Simon. 9: Elite Leadership of Mass Opinion: New Evidence from the Gulf War John Zaller 10: Crisis, War, and Public Opinion: The Media and Public Support for the President Richard A. Brody 11: A Mutual Exploitation Model of Media Influence in U.S. Foreign Policy Patrick O'Heffernan 12: Strategic Politicians, Public Opinion, and the Gulf Crisis John Zaller 13: Just Deserts? David L. Paletz Appendix: Gulf Conflict Event Guide Contributors Index

Introduction: The post‐cold war NATO debate

(1994). Introduction: The post‐cold war NATO debate. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 17, The Future of NATO, pp. 1-6.

Might and Right after the Cold War: Can Foreign Policy Be Moral?

The post-Cold War debate over America's role in world affairs has raised old questions about 'morality in foreign policy' in a new form. Should 'the national interest' be our only value in world politics or is the concept itself an exercise in moral reasoning? How do we avoid cynicism and utopianism in thinking about the relationship between traditional American moral values and U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s? Alberto Coll, James Finn, Richard Land, Luis Lugo, George Weigel, and Nicholas Wolterstorff grapple with this new debate from the common ground of biblical morality and provide fresh and provocative insights.

Unemployment Insurance in Interwar Belgium

SUMMARYIn 1900, a special type of unemployment insurance was set up in Belgium: the so-called “Ghent system”, which had some influence on the development of unemployment insurance in many European countries. This particular system was characterized by the important role played by the trade-union unemployment societies. The public authorities (in Belgium, from 1920 onwards, the central government next to the towns and provinces) encouraged the affiliation of the labourers to these societies by granting different sorts of financial support to the unemployed society members and to the societies themselves. During the crisis of the 1930s, this led to an important growth of Belgian trade-union membership. On the other hand, the quantitative growth of the labour movement due to this particular organization of unemployment insurance, led to many negative sideeffects for the trade unions (administrative chaos, financial problems, loss of combativity). Moreover, the employers' organizations strongly opposed this system of unemployment insurance, because they thought it reinforced the labour movement's power in society (strengthening of union membership, influence on wage formation, obstruction of deflation policy). This article examines the heated debates waged in the labour movement itself and between this actor, the employers' organizations and the government, to solve the many important problems posed by this type of social insurance. The Belgian pre-Second World War debate concerning unemployment insurance was of great importance for the shaping of the Welfare State in Belgium, which took its present-day form in 1944.

War as Genetic Disaster? The First World War Debate over the Eugenics of Warfare

War as Genetic Disaster? The First World War Debate over the Eugenics of Warfare

Bringing Order to the Causes of War Debates

Bringing Order to the Causes of War Debates

Ex‐Communists In Crossfire: A Cold War Debate

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsHarold JosephsonThe author is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He wishes to acknowledge a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities which partially supported the research for this article.

Some Analytical Approaches to the Cold War Debate

DURING the 1950's, it was a comparatively simple matter to teach about the Cold War. While there were differing interpretations of its origins, virtually everyone agreed that the deterioration of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union was caused by the Russians.