Premium Essay

Three Paradigms of Cold War

In:

Submitted By mf0707
Words 8015
Pages 33
           

BERNATH LECTURE The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms*
The Cold War is not what it once was. Not only has the conflict itself been written about in the past tense for more than a decade, but historians’ certainties about the character of the conflict have also begun to blur. The concerns brought on by trends of the past decade – such trifles as globalization, weapons proliferation, and ethnic warfare – have made even old strategy buffs question the degree to which the Cold War ought to be put at the center of the history of the late twentieth century. In this article I will try to show how some people within our field are attempting to meet such queries by reconceptualizing the Cold War as part of contemporary international history. My emphasis will be on issues connecting the Cold War – defined as a political conflict between two power blocs – and some areas of investigation that in my opinion hold much promise for reformulating our views of that conflict, blithely summed up as ideology, technology, and the Third World. I have called this lecture “Three (Possible) Paradigms” not just to avoid making too presumptuous an impression on the audience but also to indicate that my use of the term “paradigm” is slightly different from the one most people have taken over from Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions. In the history of science, a paradigm has come to mean a comprehensive explanation, a kind of scientific “level” that sustains existing theory until overtaken by a new and different paradigm. In the history of human societies, I would venture, the term paradigm must take on a slightly different meaning, closer, in fact, to how the term was generally used before Kuhn’s work in the early s. For our purpose, I want to look at paradigms as patterns of interpretation, which may possibly exist side by side,

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Iran Essay

...This study begins with the premise that Iran and Iraq were, following the end of the Cold War, seen as the two obstacles to American hegemony in the Middle East. America has always had strong strategic interest in the area. During the Cold War, the Middle East was one of the battlegrounds from which to contain the Soviet Union, and therefore all policy was generally in line with preventing Soviet domination of the area through containment and deterrence, thereby protecting American strategic interests. With the Soviet threat confined to history, America found itself without a global competitor in what has been called The Unipolar Moment (Krauthammer 1990). This dissertation seeks to understand and analyse how the administrations in power in America during the unipolar moment have adapted their thinking towards the Middle East beyond Cold War paradigms, chiefly in reference to the rise of Iran as a possible regional hegemon bolstered by its nuclear ambitions. In order to understand this question, the analysis will examine changing ideological perspectives and the effects of those perspectives on the exercise of foreign policy. The study will focus primarily on the policies of the William J. Clinton (Clinton) and George W. Bush (Bush II) administrations. The reasoning for this is one of context, as these are the two administrations that campaigned for and gained office after the end of the Cold War and therefore from the outset were faced with a need for a new approach to international...

Words: 743 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

To What Extent Is Security a Necessary Precondition for Development?

...To what extent is security a necessary precondition for development? Introduction It is put forward that security is not necessarily a precondition for development, but rather, both concepts of security and development are inextricably linked. With neither one being predominant over the other; rather the influence of both oscillate, dependent upon the individual circumstances within the State or region. In essence, what this answer will aim to illustrate, is the extent of this link, the theories which explain it, and whether or not security underpins development. Before we begin however, it would be prudent to first, define the concepts of ‘security’ and ‘development’. From the obvious, national security dimension, to the more human-centred, holistic definitions, finding a simple definition for the concept of security is a complex task, due to the variety of ways in which it can be defined. For the purposes of this essay however, the definition provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as security being “the prevention of any threat to individual or national security irrespective of that threat being political or economic in its nature, as such threats would threaten the process of development”[1] would be an appropriate fit, as it incorporates both the traditional State-centric element, and also the more holistic, human security definition.. Traditionally, the definition of development has been one that has been predicated upon a mainly economic...

Words: 3100 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Weapons of Mass Destruction

...Many significant issues and controversies have arisen post Cold War regarding Weapons proliferation. According to the United States State Department, Weapons proliferation is defined as “The spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Horizontal proliferation refers to the spread of WMD to states that have not previously possessed them. Vertical proliferation refers to an increase in the amount or devastating capacity of any currently existing WMD arsenals within a state.” (1) The United Nations Security Council declared in January 1992 that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction “…constitutes a threat to international peace and security.” (Pg 92 POWMD) Currently the United Nations (UN) has 190 member countries, but only eight of them are known to have WMD capabilities. They are: the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, India and Pakistan. The UN believes Israel and North Korea possess nuclear weapons/capabilities, but there is no solid evidence. Weapons proliferation today is on the move, more than a dozen countries had started weapons programs in the past, but all were stopped prior to full-up capabilities coming online. Today several states and sub-national groups to include Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and the Al-Queda are pursuing clandestine nuclear weapons programs. (2) These counties want prestige, the added security, domestic control and diplomatic bargaining power that comes with possessing WMD. They want a place on the “World stage” and...

Words: 2484 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Was There Ever An American Empire Analysis

...drastically since 1945, so much so that there are entire classes dedicated to the change brought about by the end of World War II. Between 1945 and 2018, the world has seen the rise and fall of communism governments, has witnessed countries formed and others torn apart. The world has seen empires fall and superpowers rise to take their place, only to become locked in the ideological Cold War that left all in fear of nuclear war. No country remained unaffected by the conflict of the United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Consequently, Cold War politics continue to affect modern the actions and reputations of countries globally even long after its end in 1989. The Cold War refers to the...

Words: 1675 - Pages: 7

Free Essay

Residence to Change

...important research results after completing its 16 day mission in space. NASA has faced three major crises that are well documented and accessible to the public. The first tragedy took place in 1967 involving the Apollo 1 Spacecraft. In 1986, exactly after two decades, the Challenger space shuttle tragically exploded off the Florida coast. The most worrying trend is that NASA has a well-documented history about the accidents and it was expected that they would have learned something from the previous crises. NASA has totally undermined its credibility with resistance to change. The Columbia mishap can be attributed to resistance to change the individual and structural culture of the organization. Individual and organizational sources of resistance The loss of lives and disintegration of the Columbia shuttle can be traced to the resistance of the NASA leaders to change. The cause of this accident can partly draw its roots to the policy environment that followed the turbulent post-Cold War era. In the period between 1960s and early 1980s, both the Soviet Union and USA were fighting to show their supremacy in every aspect of their lives. The space was one area where these battles took place. This means that NASA was allocated a huge chunk of money because the United States government considered it an important political underpinning in the Human Space Flight Program. However, the Cold War came to an end in the late 1980s and NASA lost its...

Words: 1474 - Pages: 6

Free Essay

Human Security

...AN ESSSY ON THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS PRESENTED BY THE NEW LIBERAL APPROACH OF HUMAN SECURITY By ANON INTRODUCTION 1. ‘Human Security’ is an emerging paradigm which is used to understand contemporary security issues that affect the individual rather than the state. The notion of ‘National Security’ where the perceived threat came from another state intending to attack other states borders is being re-viewed. “Ideally, ‘national security’ and ‘human security’ should be mutually reinforcing, for the past 100 years far more people have died as a direct or indirect consequence of the actions of their own governments or rebel forces in civil wars than have been killed by invading foreign armies. Acting in the name of national security, governments can pose profound threats to human security”. 1 The stability of states in relation to ‘human security’ is viewed as issues that directly effect the population rather than the government. The fundamental objective of ‘human security’ is the freedom from fear and want. This paradigm has a number of possibilities and limitations that make it a challenging new concept. STRATEGIES FOR SUPPORT 2. The ‘Human Security’ paradigm provides the possibility to develop complex strategies which will enable timely intervention by the international community in order to provide support to countries and states that are unable to independently resolve ‘human security’ issues. By understanding the concept of ‘human security’ it is...

Words: 1939 - Pages: 8

Free Essay

Multinational Lenses on Migration

...Multidimensional Lenses on Migration Dilara Sönmez Middle East Technical University Department of International Relations, #1541077 ABSTRACT National and international security has gained new meanings and elements in recent years, especially after Cold War. The changed concept of security has been more and more broadened with accelerated effects of globalization and shocking September 11 events. The new issues of security agenda may be listed as immigration, global terror, climate change, energy, internal violence, human security etc. This article recovers mainly how irregular migration effects national and human security in a multi dimensional framework, from theories to the cases under several sections of the paper. Firstly, the definition and types; secondly motivations of immigration are outlined with a historical and theoretical briefs. Then the general perception on migration and motivations of migration will be connected more specific sections that are, in sequence, international lenses on migration regarding state and public securities and more specifically, the lenses of the US and European Union on migration. The conclusion part put my arguments as done during article that are both agreed and disagreed with the mainstream theories and the opinions of expert that are stated in the article. Definitions and Types of Migration The term of migration has several definitions that give almost similar meanings. Generally, in social science literature, Migration...

Words: 5218 - Pages: 21

Free Essay

A Relationship on the Rocks: the United States and Israel Since 1948

...and the question of Palestine and its people. In this piece, we will review the history of the US-Israeli relationship in six episodes of history, and how US foreign policy on Israel has shifted over the decades to what it is today, and we will then discuss the prospect for Israel, Israel-Palestine, and US-Israel relations in the coming presidential term. Professor Robert Lieber of Georgetown University, and expert on US-Israeli relations asserts that the relationship between the United States and Israel in the past six decades can be separated into two schools of thought: the “special relationship paradigm,” and “national interest orientation.” The United States chose to be the first to recognize the State of Israel because at the time in 1948, and until today, the US Government believed that it shares certain common values and political aims. Under the special relationship paradigm, which still serves today as the basis of US support of Israel, the Truman Administration felt that Israel, like the US, held a pioneering spirit, was composed of a heterogeneous social composition, and shared its democratic values. The national interest orientation emerged over time and included shared goals such as mitigating the Arab-Israeli conflict, maintaining Western access to Middle Eastern Oil, the fight against Islamic Fundamentalism, and with Israel in place, the US was guaranteed maintained...

Words: 2630 - Pages: 11

Premium Essay

Paper

...Business ethical norms reflect the norms of each historical period. As time passes norms evolve, causing accepted behaviors to become objectionable. Business ethics and the resulting behavior evolved as well. Business was involved in slavery,[4][5][6] colonialism,[7][8] and the cold war.[9] The term 'business ethics' came into common use in the United States in the early 1970s. By the mid-1980s at least 500 courses in business ethics reached 40,000 students, using some twenty textbooks and at least ten casebooks along supported by professional societies, centers and journals of business ethics. The Society for Business Ethics was started in 1980. European business schools adopted business ethics after 1987 commencing with the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN).[10][11][12] In 1982 the first single-authored books in the field appeared.[13][14] Firms started highlighting their ethical stature in the late 1980s and early 1990s, possibly trying to distance themselves from the business scandals of the day, such as the savings and loan crisis. The idea of business ethics caught the attention of academics, media and business firms by the end of the Cold War.[11][15][16] However, legitimate criticism of business practices was attacked for infringing the "freedom" of entrepreneurs and critics were accused of supporting communists.[17][18] This scuttled the discourse of business ethics both in media and academia.[19] Overview[edit] Business ethics reflects the philosophy...

Words: 1022 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Paper

...transformation in Turkish foreign policy have become common place1. Since the end of Cold war, many books and articles have been published claiming that Turkey’s external relations have undergone a profound change2. Most commentators when analysing Turkish foreign policy in the 1990s perceived a significant qualitative transformation in comparison with the foreign policy conducted during the Cold War, which is often described as passive and reactive. An assertive and multi-directional foreign policy was developed, and Turkey became much more active in its neighbourhood, establishing ties with the Caucasus and the Turkic Republics, participating in peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, promoting economic relations with Black Sea countries, increasing economic and political ties with the Middle East. However, a darker side of this activism in foreign policy was observed in the 1990s, when Ankara’s ready resort to the threat or the use of military force was particularly visible. Regular military incursions in Northern Iraq to crush PKK forces, threats against Syria, with troops amassed at the border in 1998, hard rhetoric during the Russian S-300 missiles crisis planned to be deployed in Cyprus in the same year are a few examples (Park 2005). In 1995, the Turkish Parliament announced that if Greece expanded its territorial waters from six to twelve miles, Turkey would go to war and war almost happened over islets in the Aegean Sea. In 1996, a former Turkish diplomat...

Words: 5433 - Pages: 22

Free Essay

The Myth of the End of Terrorism

...geopolitical cycles have intersected with changes in the way the tactic of terrorism is employed and in the actors employing it. The Arab terrorism that began in the 1960s resulted from the Cold War and the Soviet decision to fund, train and otherwise encourage groups in the Middle East. The Soviet Union and its Middle Eastern proxies also sponsored Marxist terrorist groups in Europe and Latin America. They even backed the Japanese Red Army terrorist group. Places like South Yemen and Libya became havens where Marxist militants of many different nationalities gathered to learn terrorist tradecraft, often instructed by personnel from the Soviet KGB or the East German Stasi and from other militants. The Cold War also spawned al Qaeda and the broader global jihadist movement as militants flocking to fight the Soviet troops who had invaded Afghanistan were trained in camps in northern Pakistan by instructors from the CIA's Office of Technical Services and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. Emboldened by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and claiming credit for the subsequent Soviet collapse, these militants decided to expand their efforts to other parts of the world. The connection between state-sponsored terrorism and the Cold War ran so deep that when the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union's collapse, many declared that terrorism had ended as well. I witnessed this phenomenon while serving in the Counterterrorism Investigations Division of the Diplomatic...

Words: 1855 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Classical Realism

...takes into account ... and incorporates ... into his political conceptions and his political acts "(Ibid, 1-2). In the field of international relations, realism became the dominant analytical paradigm mostly after the start of the Second World War, when it displaced idealist doctrines, promising "to provide more accurate information, more powerful, and more relevant answers" to the roots or causes of peace and war (Brecher& Harvey, 54). At the same time, many features of the current realist paradigm can be traced back to the time of Thucydides, Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Among contemporary thinkers recognized as major writers and contributors to the realist tradition are Hans Morgenthau, Edward Carr and Kenneth Waltz (Freyberg-Inan, 8). What are then the basic tenets or common features of a realist thinker? Machiavelli would acknowledge that to be a realist one has to look at history as "a sequence of cause and effect whose course can be analysed and understood by intellectual effort, but not directed by imagination" (Carr, 64). Hobbes would persist in the same train of thought and insist that to be a realist thinker one must look at things as they are and not as they should be (Warner, 37). Thus, both of these thinkers direct us to the idea that the creation of the realist paradigm and theories are in fact an inductive process whereby "theory does not create practice, but practice theory" (Carr, 64). Suggestive and provocative declarations such as those of Machiavelli...

Words: 17639 - Pages: 71

Premium Essay

A Philosophical Perspective of World Wars

...to dissect creation and find some sort of semblance of meaning that might justify our existence. The list of our accomplishments is immeasurably vast. However, man might have proved that he can reach for ideals, but he has not proved that he can maintain them. We may have climbed mountains, but we have not been able to live for long in such high places. Despite our accomplishments, humanity’s failings have been just as extensive. Our history is also scarred with a long list of wars, injustices, unnecessary deaths, prejudices, hatreds, and disappointments. The pinnacle of our shortcomings, the end-point to our intellectual development as a species, can best be understood in the context of our World Wars. Although humanity has always lived side-by-side with war, never before in our history has so much widespread violence destroyed so many idyllic hopes and dreams. Never before was there such an example of our ignorance as a species, and blatant disregard for our intellectual successes. Both World Wars demonstrate...

Words: 2315 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Skaz

...beginning a mere by-product of Europe – initially created by a rising European power in the form of Great Britain, then born out of a long war between Britain and France, and finally transformed into a world power in large part because of large-scale European migration between 1814 and 1914. Europe’s long twentieth century crisis, however, had a massive impact on the balance within this relationship, and by 1945 not only had Europe lost its place at the head of the international table but had become highly dependent on the United States itself. Still, in uncertain times, the US continued to need as many friends as it could muster, and whether one prefers to view the nature of the postwar relationship in the more liberal sense of being a ‘community’, or in more realist terms as being one in which an American hegemon dictated terms to weak dependencies, matters less than in recognising how important the relationship was to become to both countries during the Cold War. Thus, Europe needed the US to survive in a bipolar world: the United States, however, required Europe in order to protect that world from the threat posed by its many anti-western enemies around the world. This short article says nothing about how the Cold War was fought, or how Europe and the United States then managed to navigate their way from one era of more or less Cold War unity (sometimes more and sometimes less) to another, where the relationship had to be sustained without a clear and present danger...

Words: 4783 - Pages: 20

Free Essay

Leadership

...Leadership Analysis The Bridge on The River Kwai August 5, 2012 Shekhar Gahlot (ICS Hitotsubashi, Tokyo, Japan) Leadership Analysis: The Bridge on the River Kwai The year: 1943. The place: Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma. In the setting of World War II, a defeated unit British Soldiers is marched into a Japanese prison camp in western Thailand, with the purpose of constructing a bridge over the River Kwai to carry a new railway line to invade Burma. The camp is run by a dutiful commandant Colonel Saito and his men. The British troop is led by a stiff-lipped Colonel Nicholson. Nicholson is highly revered by his men, he is their friend and confidant; he can do them no wrong. So begins the classic World War II movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. In the August of 2009 during a humid Sunday afternoon I happened to stumble upon this English classic. I presumed it to be just another vintage war movie. However, on careful inspection, it became an excellent treatise for understanding various forms of "leadership" paradigms, which are not only useful in the Army but can be easily observed in contemporary corporate world. It is one of those few war movies which focus more on building its characters rather than the war itself. It portrays two very different leadership styles, which are intensely portrayed by its characters Colonel Nicholson and Colonel Saito. The movie starts with difference of opinion and clashes of ego between the two leads. Saito is persistent...

Words: 1281 - Pages: 6