Why Cold War Again

In this book, Stephen F. Cohen traces the history of this East-West relationship in the 'Inter Cold War' period ' the years from the purported end of the preceding Cold War, in 1990-1991, to what he has long argued would be a new and even more dangerous Cold War.

Karl Marx famously wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” The Cold War waged between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 until the latter's dissolution in 1991 was a great tragedy, resulting in millions of civilian deaths in proxy wars, and a destructive arms race that diverted money from social spending and nearly led to nuclear annihilation. The New Cold War between the United States and Russia is playing out as farce – a dangerous one at that. The Russians Are Coming, Again is a red flag to restore our historical consciousness about U.S.-Russian relations, and how denying this consciousness is leading to a repetition of past follies. Kuzmarov and Marciano's book is timely and trenchant. The authors argue that the Democrats’ strategy, backed by the corporate media, of demonizing Russia and Putin in order to challenge Trump is not only dangerous, but also, based on the evidence so far, unjustified, misguided, and a major distraction. Grounding their argument in all-but-forgotten U.S.-Russian history, such as the 1918-20 Allied invasion of Soviet Russia, the book delivers a panoramic narrative of the First Cold War, showing it as an all-too-avoidable catastrophe run by the imperatives of class rule and political witch-hunts. The distortion of public memory surrounding the First Cold War has set the groundwork for the New Cold War, which the book explains is a key feature, skewing the nation’s politics yet again. This is an important, necessary book, one that, by including accounts of the wisdom and courage of the First Cold War's victims and dissidents, will inspire a fresh generation of radicals in today's new, dangerously farcical times.

In this book, Allen Lynch challenges the common wisdom that the revolutionary events in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the cold war. Instead, he argues that the cold war was actually resolved by the early 1970s, as evidenced by the tacit acceptance of a divided Germany and Europe. More recent events thus overthrew not the cold war but the post-cold war order in East-West and U.S.-Soviet relations. And–often to their surprise and consternation–leaders of the governments involved must now face formidable new forces created by German unity and nationalism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, which were contained efficiently–if at times brutally–by the post-cold war order. In its three sections, the book reviews historical, contemporary, and future-oriented themes, respectively. Lynch begins by exploring the deeper logic of the cold war and how it was resolved by the 1970s. He then presents an overview of recent Soviet domestic and foreign policy processes as they affect East-West relations. The concluding section considers the future, with special emphasis on the implications of a disintegrating USSR for U.S. foreign policy.

The Third World Beyond the Cold War presents an overview of the changes brought about in Third World countries since the end of the cold war. The book does so in two ways: by highlighting major areas of change in the Third World, and using regional case-studies as a meas of islating changes specific to certain regions. The themes chosen by the editors—economics, politics, security—are not, of course, exhaustive, but are broadly interpreted so as to encompass the major areas of change among Third World countries. The regional case-studies—Asia-Pacific, Latin America, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East—were selected to bring out both the themes and the diversity of experience. The essays, written by leading scholars in the field of International Relations, caters for a variety of constituencies: those who seek the `big picture' in understanding the Third World in International Relations, those who look for general patterns, explanations, and trends in Third World politics, and those who seek up-to-date information and analysis on the progress of different regions.

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In a gripping story of international power and deception, Jeffrey Engel reveals the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain in a new and far more competitive light. As allies, they fought communism. As rivals, they locked horns over which would lead the Cold War fight. In the quest for sovereignty and hegemony, one important key was airpower, which created jobs, forged ties with the developing world, and, perhaps most importantly in a nuclear world, ensured military superiority.Only the United States and Britain were capable of supplying the post-war world’s ravenous appetite for aircraft. The Americans hoped to use this dominance as a bludgeon not only against the Soviets and Chinese, but also against any ally that deviated from Washington’s rigid brand of anticommunism. Eager to repair an economy shattered by war and never as committed to unflinching anticommunism as their American allies, the British hoped to sell planes even beyond the Iron Curtain, reaping profits, improving East-West relations, and garnering the strength to withstand American hegemony.Engel traces the bitter fights between these intimate allies from Europe to Latin America to Asia as each sought control over the sale of aircraft and technology throughout the world. The Anglo–American competition for aviation supremacy affected the global balance of power and the fates of developing nations such as India, Pakistan, and China. But without aviation, Engel argues, Britain would never have had the strength to function as a brake upon American power, the way trusted allies should.

In After the Post–Cold War eminent Chinese cultural critic Dai Jinhua interrogates history, memory, and the future of China as a global economic power in relation to its socialist past, profoundly shaped by the Cold War. Drawing on Marxism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory, Dai examines recent Chinese films that erase the country’s socialist history to show how such erasure resignifies socialism’s past as failure and thus forecloses the imagining of a future beyond that of globalized capitalism. She outlines the tension between China’s embrace of the free market and a regime dependent on a socialist imprimatur. She also offers a genealogy of China’s transformation from a source of revolutionary power into a fountainhead of globalized modernity. This narrative, Dai contends, leaves little hope of moving from the capitalist degradation of the present into a radical future that might offer a more socially just world.

“[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.