Decades before 9/11 and the 'Arab Spring', US and Arab elites contended over the future of the Middle East. Through unprecedented research in Arabic and English, Envisioning the Arab Future details ...how Americans and Arabs - nationalists, Islamists, and communists - disputed the meaning of modernization within a shared set of Cold War-era concepts. Faith in linear progress, the idea that society functioned as a 'system', and a fascination with speed united officials and intellectuals who were otherwise divided by language and politics. This book assesses the regional implications of US power while examining a range of topics that transcends the Arab-Israeli conflict, including travel, communities, gender, oil, agriculture, Iraqi nationalism, Nasser's Arab Socialism, and hijackings in both the United States and the Middle East. By uncovering a shared history of modernization between Arabs and Americans, Envisioning the Arab Future challenges assumptions about a 'clash of civilizations' and profoundly reinterprets the antecedents of today's crises.
"This book is clearly written, admirably concise, and well situated in the secondary literature on gender and conservatism and the foreign and domestic Cold War. . . . Brennan's study offers another ...valuable reminder that niether Joe McCarthy nor June Cleaver can stand as convenient shorthard for our historical narratives of the Cold War era." Journal of American History
How America used its technological leadership in the 1950s and the 1960s to foster European collaboration and curb nuclear proliferation, with varying degrees of success.
In the 1950s and the 1960s, ...U.S. administrations were determined to prevent Western European countries from developing independent national nuclear weapons programs. To do so, the United States attempted to use its technological pre-eminence as a tool of “soft power” to steer Western European technological choices toward the peaceful uses of the atom and of space, encouraging options that fostered collaboration, promoted nonproliferation, and defused challenges to U.S. technological superiority. In Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe, John Krige describes these efforts and the varying degrees of success they achieved.
Krige explains that the pursuit of scientific and technological leadership, galvanized by America's Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, was also used for techno-political collaboration with major allies. He examines a series of multinational arrangements involving shared technological platforms and aimed at curbing nuclear proliferation, and he describes the roles of the Department of State, the Atomic Energy Commission, and NASA. To their dismay, these agencies discovered that the use of technology as an instrument of soft power was seriously circumscribed, by internal divisions within successive administrations and by external opposition from European countries. It was successful, Krige argues, only when technological leadership was embedded in a web of supportive “harder” power structures.
Queer Lives across the Wall examines the everyday lives
of queer Berliners between 1945 and 1970, tracing private and
public queer life from the end of the Nazi regime through the gay
and lesbian ...liberation movements of the 1970s.
Andrea Rottmann explores how certain spaces - including homes,
bars, streets, parks, and prisons - facilitated and restricted
queer lives in the overwhelmingly conservative climate that
characterized both German postwar states. With a theoretical
toolkit informed by feminist, queer, and spatial theories, the book
goes beyond previous histories that focus on state surveillance and
the persecution of male homosexuality.
Although most Americans paid little attention to Cambodia during Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, the nation's proximity to China and the global ideological struggle with the Soviet Union ...guaranteed US vigilance throughout Southeast Asia. Cambodia's leader, Norodom Sihanouk, refused to take sides in the Cold War, a policy that disturbed US officials. From 1953 to 1961, his government avoided the political and military crises of neighboring Laos and South Vietnam. However, relations between Cambodia and the United States suffered a blow in 1959 when Sihanouk discovered CIA involvement in a plot to overthrow him. The coup, supported by South Vietnam and Thailand, was a failure that succeeded only in increasing Sihanouk's power and prestige, presenting new foreign policy challenges in the region.
InEisenhower and Cambodia,William J. Rust examines the United States' efforts to lure Cambodia from neutrality to alliance. He conclusively demonstrates that, as with Laos in 1958 and 1960, covert intervention in the internal political affairs of neutral Cambodia proved to be a counterproductive tactic for advancing the United States' anticommunist goals. Drawing on recently declassified sources, Rust skillfully traces the impact of "plausible deniability" on the formulation and execution of foreign policy. His meticulous study not only reveals a neglected chapter in Cold War history but also illuminates the intellectual and political origins of US strategy in Vietnam and the often-hidden influence of intelligence operations in foreign affairs.
This volume presents the history and role of “Odra”, a social-cultural journal founded by journalists and writers gathered around Wilhelm Szewczyk. The journal was published in Katowice in the years ...1945–1950, first as a biweekly and since 1946, as a weekly. The legacy of the journal is of particular value. Within a few years, it became one of the most important social-cultural periodicals in post-war Poland. This volume traces its development; it consists of six parts. The first part presents the social and political background of the journal. In the years that followed World War Two, the social and cultural press was a major forum for discussion, in particular, for debates on culture. The most important debates of the time included the battle for the Polish intelligentsia, in which the “Odra” journal participated. Such disputes were, to a considerable extent, a substitute for political topics, that is, for problems which could not be explicitly addressed.Journals that were published at that time had one thing in common: they were all subject to censorship. However, it must be remembered that censorship was merely a tool in the hands of the party. Because “Odra” was regarded as an oppositional journal, censors read it very closely. As a result of their intervention, the published versions of articles were sometimes quite remote from their original forms.The second part of the volume presents the methodological assumptions of the project. The research comprises a quantitative analysis, that is, an analysis of the content, and a qualitative analysis of the material. In methodological terms, the study of the role and significance of the “Odra” journal in the years 1945–1950 is situated at the junction of literary studies and media studies.The third part outlines the main characters of the narration. Protagonists of the “Odra” journal included indigenous inhabitants and settlers. Journalists stood up for those who were part of a community of suffering: harmed by bandits and the system, often rejected and pushed to the edge of the political and cultural life. In 1946, Zbyszko Bednorz, one of the regular collaborators of the journal, wrote that in the awareness of Poles, the Western and Northern Territories still remained occupied and strange. In fact, for a long time, they continued to be explored and colonised. Moreover, they had a special place on the map of fear and terror because of the robberies by Soviet soldiers, the Citizens’ Militia, and common bandits.It was an intention of “Odra” editors to shape the journal in such a way so that it was perceived as both recording and commenting on all important events that took place in post-war Germany. The issue of Polish-German relations was analysed in particular detail, taking into consideration events of the most remote past. The most active commentator on the German problem was Wilhelm Szewczyk, the editor-in-chief, who wrote about post-war Germany and Polish-German relations in the column entitled Co robią Niemcy? What are the Germans doing?. The narration about Poland’s western neighbour in the texts published in the Co robią Niemcy? series forms a recognisable pattern: it begins with a simple juxtaposition between “us” and “them” in the first post-war years; later, however, this opposition dissolves so that the division blurs, a change influenced to a considerable extent by the events in both German states and by the political course taken by the Polish authorities.The book argues that an important asset of the journal was its programme, which is described and analysed in the fourth part of the volume. “Odra” drew from the national thought of the interwar period. However, it must be emphasised that it cannot be suspected of having supported nationalist causes.Journalists of the “Odra” journal proposed a cultural programme for – to use the terminology of the time – the Recovered Territories. They were actively involved in polemics with Kuźnica, a journal promoting Marxist thought and an important title on the national scale.A considerable part of the content of the journal was concerned with analyses of literary texts, which are discussed in the last two parts of the volume. “Odra” carried texts by widely respected writers, including those whose influence on the shape of Polish literature and culture was growing with time: Tadeusz Różewicz, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, and Stanisław Lem. Browsing through the issues of “Odra”, one will easily notice that the literary themes and texts often directly corresponded with the content of articles which discussed other issues. Poetry and prose frequently functioned as illustrations of various problems addressed by journalists. “Odra” editors used this strategy, for instance, to raise the readers’ interest in the problem of Polish-German and Polish-Czechoslovakian relations.Historians of literature and media scholars often appeal for more research being done into the periodical press in general, and into the period immediately following World War Two in particular, when the new post-Yalta order was forming. Despite the abundance of source material, studies of the subject are scarce. So far, no special monograph devoted solely to the “Odra” journal has been published. It is hoped that the present volume will fill this gap.
This book demonstrates that the origins of the US-Israeli alliance lay in the former's concern over Egyptian influence in Jordan, contrasting with the widely-held view of the significance of the Six ...Day War.
The American-Israeli Alliance will be of great interest to students of Middle East studies, history, and politics.
Abraham Ben-Zvi is Professor Emeritus at Tel-Aviv University, who is teaching in the Department of International Relations at the University of Haifa. Between 2004 and 2006, he was the Goldman Visiting Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
1. The Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance: A New Perspective 2. The Road to the July 1958 Jordanian Crisis 3. The July 1958 Jordanian Crisis and its Ramifications 4. The April 1963 Jordanian Crisis and its Ramifications 5. Epilogue
La brève histoire du Parti républicain de la liberté (PRL) demeure une histoire largement méconnue. Couvrant la période allant de l’hiver 1945-1946 à l’échéance décisive des élections législatives de ...1951, c’est-à-dire les années correspondant en gros à la reconstruction du système des forces politiques organisées au lendemain des ruptures de 1939-1945, elle n’en constitue pas moins un moment important et particulièrement révélateur de l’histoire des droites dites parlementaires. Les fondateurs du PRL étaient animés par une vaste ambition, celle de doter la France d’une organisation fortement structurée, destinée à regrouper l’ensemble des forces situées à droite et au centre droit de l’échiquier politique. Cette formation se fixe comme objectif de se hisser au niveau d’un « quatrième parti », capable de faire pièce aux trois grands du tripartisme (PCF, SFIO, MRP) dominant la scène électorale et parlementaire depuis 1945. En dépit des espoirs suscités et d’un certain nombre de succès ponctuels, la tentative a débouché sur un échec, l’absorption, en 1951, par le Centre national des indépendants et paysans (CNIP) apposant un point final à l’entreprise. Mais le retour en grâce de la droite modérée qui a caractérisé la seconde moitié de la IVe République ne peut pas être compris si l’on ne prend pas en compte cet effort d’organisation, les causes multiples de son échec et les leçons qui ont été tirées de ce dernier. C’est ce qui est proposé d’examiner dans cet ouvrage de synthèse, prenant appui sur une documentation largement inédite.
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