Among the unanswered—and perhaps unanswerable—questions regarding the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan is the extent to which the conflict contributed to the USSR’s dissolution less than three years after the withdrawal of Moscow’s forces. Proponents of the view that the war had precipitated the Soviet collapse included CIA analysts like Anthony Arnold, who argued…
Tag: Soviet Union
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable on Zubok Collapse
Vladislav Zubok was a witness to the end of the Soviet Union, and with this impressive book, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, he has become one of, if not the, leading historians of its downfall. His distinguished academic career began at Moscow State University and the prestigious Institute for the USA and Canada…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 14-26 on Sarotte, Not One Inch
Not One Inch, Mary E. Sarotte’s excellent study of the origins of the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) could not be timelier. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine brings to a head the debate over NATO enlargement that has been roiling since the end of the Cold War.
H-Diplo | RJISSF Article Review 159: Michel on Allcock, “Diplomacy, the Media, and a Search for Legitimacy”
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Article Review 159 Thomas Tunstall Allcock, “Diplomacy, the Media, and a Search for Legitimacy: Reassessing Gerald Ford’s Pacific Tours.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 33:4 (Dec. 2022): 741-771. DOI: 10.1080/09592296.2022.2143119. Reviewed by Eddie Michel, University of Pretoria 2 June 2023| PDF: http://issforum.org/to/JAR-159 | Website: rjissf.org Editor: Diane Labrosse |…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable Review on Lupton, Reputation for Resolve
President John F. Kennedy famously worried that foreign policy failures early in his tenure—the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his poor performance at the summit in Vienna—displayed his lack of resolve and acumen, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would seek to exploit. These concerns seemed to materialize when Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had placed nuclear…
H-Diplo Commentary by Philip Zelikow on “‘Documentary Evidence’ and Llewellyn Thompson’s Berlin/Cuba Assessment of Soviet Motives in the October 1962 Missile Crisis.”
In a favorable review of The Kremlinologist, the fine recent biography of the great American diplomat and Soviet expert Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson that was written by his daughters, David Foglesong added this curious cavil. “The Thompsons argue that the Cuban missile crisis stemmed from [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev’s seeing ‘an irresistible opportunity to use missiles…
H-Diplo Roundtable XX-14 on When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War
More time has transpired between the fall of the Berlin Wall and today than the entire duration of that iconic Cold War barrier. Meanwhile, George H.W. Bush, the main subject of Jeffrey Engel’s When the World Seemed New, became the longest-living U.S. president, while there are undergraduates this semester who were born during the presidency…
Article Review 106 on “The Other Hidden Hand: Soviet and Cuban Intelligence in Allende’s Chile.”
Kristian Gustafson and Christopher Andrew rightly state that the presence of U.S. intelligence during the Salvador Allende government is well known and well documented, whereas the role of Cuban and Soviet intelligence in Chile is understudied. Their article is a welcome publication for two reasons: an analytical one for presenting a study of Soviet and…
Review Essay 34 on Harold Brown: Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge, 1977-1981
Edward C. Keefer provides us with the “authorized, but not official” history of Harold Brown’s tenure as the 14th Secretary of Defense as part of the Department of Defense series on its secretaries. It is authorized in that Keefer had access to the official records, but not official in that Keefer’s assessment of Brown’s time…
Roundtable 9-12 on Return to Cold War
As President Donald Trump’s administration begins, relations between the United States and Russia make the headlines almost every day. No one seems able to agree on what Russian President Vladimir Putin did or did not do to try to influence the 2016 U.S. elections, much less on what his ultimate aims are. Trump’s own cabinet…