Digital Commons Network^™

Silver Screen Reversals Of The Domino Theory: American Cold War Movies And The Re-Imagination Of British Experiences In Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how Hollywood was affected by the successful anticommunism of Britain and its local allies in Malaya and Singapore, victories that unfolded alongside Vietnam’s mounting crisis in the early 1960s. It shows that American movies of this era which portrayed the intertwining of US and British experiences in 1950s Malaya and 1940s Singapore conveyed an uneasy yet clear optimism about U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

The Atlantic Charter And The Azerbaijan Crisis: An Analysis Of Lranian-U.S. Relations, Aren Sorensen

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The Azerbaijan crisis of 1945-46 has been called the 'Bunker Hill' of the Cold War; however, despite its important role in the Cold War it is a comparatively unknown event. The crisis was a particularly complex event, whose players included superpowers, small nations and ethnic minorities. The Azerbaijan crisis simultaneously involved dimensions of local, state and international relations-a familiar scenario through the duration of the Cold War. Iran's geo-strategic position, valuable oil reserves and history of confrontation with the colonial Soviet and British powers served as the genesis of the Azerbaijan crisis; however, the emergence of the United States as …

Children Of The Grave: The Rise, Fall, And Experience Of Heavy Metal Music During The Latter Cold War From 1969-1991, Shelby Sibert

All Theses

The Cold War era saw the emergence of many different pop culture phenomena. Some were political, such as the Punk Rock and Hippie movements. Others were fashionable trends like Disco. However, Heavy Metal music is unique due to its opaque origins, skyrocketing popularity, and final disappearance after the end of the Cold War. Heavy Metal had a direct relationship with reflecting the fears and anxieties of the late Cold War period. It was a direct response to the Hippie activist counterculture rock n' roll of the 1960s, and it charters a new path of rock n' roll in the process. …

Uniform Intelligence: The United States Military Liaison Mission And The Cold War 1947-1990, Frank Christopher Ofner

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers, ending the war in Europe. As such, the Western Allies of Britain, France, and the United States came into direct contact with the Soviet forces in Germany, which they divided into four zones of occupation. With the potential of an armed conflict over Germany, the Western Allies and the Soviets agreed to use military liaison missions to help foster communication in Germany. The British and French maintained their units: British Commanders in Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS) and La Mission Militaire Francaise de Liaison (FMLM …

Secrets, Soviets, And Sverdlovsk: Critiques Of The Biological Weapons Convention And Biosecurity In The 1970s And 1980s, Morgan Kelley

Student Research Submissions

The Biological Weapons Convention, initially ratified in 1975, banned the production and stockpiling of biological weapons; however, it has faced considerable modern criticism for being unenforceable and not strong enough to ensure states' compliance. These modern critiques are based on the knowledge that the Soviet Union was in violation of the Convention, which was not confirmed until 1989. By analyzing the reactions to the Biological Weapons Convention by scholars and scientists, American intelligence officials, and American news media, it becomes clear that concerns about the Convention did exist prior to 1989, even when for many it was not certain that …

Jazz And Music Diplomacy In The Cold War, Mitch Rogers

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, everyone jammed. While High Soviet officials worked their hardest to jam the incoming Voice of America and Music U.S.A. radio broadcasts, Soviet musicians and youth jammed underground to the hot swing .and blue harmonies of American jazz. Jazz, with its rebellious syncopations, rogue tunings, and egalitarian arrangements, connected with the Soviet people. Amicable cultural exchange between the two superpowers began only in 1958, and even then it only took place in small, mitigated steps. Knowing the Soviet proclivity for American music, American statesmen saw the opportunity to replace the stodgy, pedantic propaganda …

From Compromise To Confrontation: The American Secretary Of State James F. Byrnes And His Attempts To Mitigate Disagreements With The Soviet Union As The Cold War Began, John Karl

Comparative Civilizations Review

James F. Byrnes as United States Secretary of State pursued a policy based on compromise with the Soviet Union during the first year following the end of the Second World War. He was determined to use his political skill for engineering compromise in order to bring about an agreement with the Soviet Union which would lead to an era of peace. While the crucial question facing American policymakers in the wake of World War II was the creation of a new world order, a most important part of this question was the future of American-Soviet relations, the two nations that …

The Torrijos-Carter Treaties: Panamanian Sovereignty And United States Neocolonialism In Cold War Panama, Emma C. Regan

UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses

This paper examines the Panama Canal treaty renegotiations in the 1970s, the complex figure of Panama’s military dictator Omar Torrijos, and how US interests in Panama were changing in the Cold War. It closely dissects the question of why the United States renegotiated the canal treaties with Panama at the height of the Cold War. It will find that Omar Torrijos was an active agent in pressuring the US by leveraging the international Cold War geopolitics. The paper also explores how Panamanians reacted to the new treaties; many left wing activists, politicians, or intellectuals objected to the new treaties. It …

Spaces Of Citizenship: Negotiating Belonging Through Cold War Literature And Culture, Daria Goncharova

Theses and Dissertations--English

At the height of Cold War containment culture, when fears of Communism and nuclear warfare overlapped with anxieties about homosexuality, gender inversion, miscegenation, and juvenile delinquency, formal citizenship—narrowly defined as one’s legal status—did not provide all American citizens with a sense of belonging, equal access to civil liberties, and a reasonable degree of safety. Instead, spatialized identity, rather than civic responsibilities and legal rights, came to define the boundaries of proper citizenship. In this context, highly exclusionary suburbs, which sprang up outside major metropolitan areas in the late 1940s-1950s, emerged as a cornerstone of the cultural narratives defining American citizenship. …

American-European Alignment: An Assessment Of Economic And Security Factors Impacting The Relationship Between The United States And Europe Since Wwii, Peter Nicholas Gianaris

CMC Senior Theses

The United States and Europe have had a relationship that has constantly augmented during the past 80 years. The extent of this change has depended on a number of factors including security and economics. This paper seeks to analyze the relationship between the United States and Europe throughout the Cold War, following the Cold War, and in the wake of Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine. It will view the partnership through a security and economic lens and seek to determine how much both factors impact the relationship and in what way each factor has impacted the relationship. It will also …

The Berlin Airlift And Its Humanitarian And The Pr Aspect, Madalyn Stead

2024 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The Berlin Airlift, or die Berliner Luftbrücke, was one of the most dramatic events of the Cold War. While the Cold War lasted forty-five years, from 1947 to 1991, the Berlin Airlift took place at the very beginning, from 1948-1949. It was a great humanitarian effort, and is respected as one of the United States’ “finest hours,” as author Andrei Cherney titled it. It was presented as such through media, the news, and even pop culture. Curating it to look good was a carefully done job, but that should not always take away from the people who are involved in …

Cold War Fears And Algerian Independence: American Public Opinion On An Independent Algeria, 1954-1962, Shayla Taylor

2024 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The Algerian War of Independence was a struggle by the Algerians for autonomy from their long-time colonizer and ally of the United States, France. While the independence movement is said to have started during the First World War, the war did not break out until late in 1954.1 The conflict came not even a decade after World War II, in the thick of the Cold War in which the Soviet Union and the United States competed on an international stage, and in an era in which many groups of people within Western powers held mixed feelings about decolonization. Maintaining order …

Günter Bischof And Peter Ruggenthaler, Österreich Und Der Kalte Krieg: Ein Balanceakt Zwischen Ost Und West (Graz/Wien: Leykam, 2022), Matthew P. Berg

2024 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Power For A Purpose, Robert L. Beisner

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The dawn of modern American strategy appeared during the early cold war a half century ago. Strategy is the use of power for a purpose. Washington's purposes after 1945 were to establish and then maintain an international order in which American values and institutions could prosper. American policymakers thought the same policies established to do this would also benefit the world at large. Their conscious fashioning of strategy to achieve purpose was virtually unprecedented in American history. The results, almost all successes, included the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the Truman Doctrine and Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the …

The Road To Armageddon: American Culture And Politics During The Late Cold War, 1970-1991, David Lee Denham Iii

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Bible prophecy has long engaged the American mind. By the late Cold War, Biblical prophecy increasingly shaped the political beliefs of millions of Americans within the evangelical community. The group most impacted were dispensationalist Christians who interpreted the Atomic Age through the lens of end-time prophecies. Dating as far back as the seventeenth-century, American colonists living on the frontier of the British empire in North America embraced millennialism and, at times, interpreted current events through the lens of Bible prophecy while anticipating the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Battle of Armageddon. Through the centuries, Bible prophecy became a …

Review Of Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Review of Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Front Lines, by Dina Fainberg.

Integrating Army Capabilities Into Deterrence: The Early Cold War, Robert F. Williams

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The strategy of integrated deterrence is a repackaged version of Cold War strategies. The integration of assets to deter adversaries was part of both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations' overarching strategies that forced the military services to change their operating concepts, capabilities, and doctrine simultaneously. The US Army is an example of how national strategy forces organizational changes. This article assesses how the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations forced institutional change while considering the significance of integrating deterrence. These examples will assist US military and policy practitioners with adapting their organizations to existing national defense strategies.

Bidding For The 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport’S Cold War Battle With Nato, Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Heather L. Dichter

Naval War College Review

No abstract provided.

The Provenances And Postscripts Of 1989, Jokubas Salyga

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The books under review exemplify some of the finest recent work on the historically informed political economy of Central and Eastern Europe. While different in their conceptual frameworks and geographical foci, the titles converge in the advancement of nuanced and convincing arguments, displaying both theoretical acuity and empirical depth to great effect. Bartel, Fabry, and Pula all share a resolute dedication to illuminating the under-explored provenances of neoliberalism and/or globalization in the region, that predate the annus mirabilis of 1989. Their contributions situate the ‘Eastern bloc’ states within the contours of evolving global political economy and the existential crises engulfing …

Book Review: The Good Captain: A Personal Memoir Of America At War, Joseph J. Collins

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: R. D. Hooker Jr.

Reviewed by Joseph J. Collins, PhD, retired US Army colonel

Retired Army colonel Rich Hooker’s The Good Captain is a memoir spanning the Cold War through the Global War on Terror. Hooker’s deployments take up the bulk of the book and include Grenada with the 82nd Airborne Division, Somalia to work with legendary Ambassador Bob Oakley, Zaire to coordinate humanitarian operations in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo as a parachute infantry battalion commander, the Sinai Peninsula for peacekeeping operations, command of the Dragon Brigade in Iraq and, in his last year of service, Afghanistan with the …

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling Of Transnational Insurgencies In 1960-70s Us And Mexico, Tania Libertad Balderas

English Language and Literature ETDs

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in 1960-70s US and Mexico emphasizes how the narratives from the Mexican Insurgency, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the leftist faction of the Chicana/o Movement in the 1960s and 1970s articulate intersecting notions of resistance, liberation, and transnational solidarity. The comparative analysis of the testimonial novel Las mujeres del alba (2019) by Chihuahuan novelist Carlos Montemayor, the autobiographies Lakota Woman (1991) and Ohitika Woman (1993) by Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta writer and AIM militant Mary Brave Bird (formerly Crow Dog), and the memoirs and plays by the San Diego-based group Teatro de las Chicanas, collected …

Attempted Book Bans: The Censorship Of Queer Themes In The 1950s, María J. Quintana-Rodriguez

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This article aims to explore queer book banning during the 1950s in response to Cold War national defense tactics. The decade witnessed the formation of the first public LGBTQ+ rights organizations in the United States as well as a rise in queer literature and publications. This publicization of queerness in society was seen as a rejection of traditional societal norms and threatened the Cold War-imposed gender ideology. In addition, the fear of Communist expansion led to the conflation of homosexuals and Communists, categorizing queerness and queer-related themes as immoral and as an interference in the United States' fight for democracy. …

Book Review: Switzerland And Sub-Saharan Africa In The Cold War, 1967-1979: Neutrality Meets Decolonisation, Thomas Quinn Marabello

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979: Neutrality Meets Decolonisation was written as part of the series “New Perspectives on the Cold War,” which looks at different issues, events and regions impacted by the Cold War. While Switzerland was not a major power, nor did it have colonies in Africa or elsewhere, it had economic interests in the continent and a foreign policy that guided its decision making and values, centered around its historical tradition of neutrality. This well researched work of historiography gives readers new insights into Switzerland’s relations, especially with Portuguese colonies during and after decolonization. …

The Success Of Project Mercury Through The Persona Of The Mercury Seven, Cameron D. Reagan

Lux et Fides: A Journal for Undergraduate Christian Scholars

There has been no shortage of literature written on the Mercury Space Program, focusing on many different aspects ranging from the personnel, technology, politics, and achievements of the program. The prevailing discussion of the space program focuses on the astronauts themselves as they gained celebrity status long before they had done anything to merit it. The vast body of scholarship on the topic takes the popularity of the Mercury Seven astronauts as matter-of-fact rather than viewing it as manufactured by NASA in order to bolster support for a largely unproven space program. By emphasizing the “everyman” aspect of the astronauts, …

Book Review: The Strategic Use Of Force In Counterinsurgency: Find, Fix, Fight, José De Arimatéia Da Cruz

Parameters Bookshelf – Online Book Reviews

Author: Miles Kitts

Reviewed by Dr. José de Arimatéia da Cruz, professor of international relations and comparative politics, Georgia Southern University, and visiting professor, Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College

Focusing on the use of force and insurgency, the reviewer assesses the author’s question, “Does either neoclassicism or revisionism adequately address how to evaluate the utility of force in counterinsurgency and the prescriptions which should come from it?”

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

La Revolución Es Una Fiesta: The Democratization Of Colombia At The Hands Of The M-19, John Talman

History Theses

In 1985, Colombia faced national tragedy as the Palace of Justice began to burn deep into the night of November 6^th. With numerous people dead and a nation in the midst of crisis, the Siege of the Palace of Justice showcased the challenges faced by a nation wrapped in conflict. Colombia is an example of one nation that was not focused on the international dynamics of the Cold War. Colombia faced its own perils domestically following the events of World War II. Due to political infighting, guerilla movements became the primary vehicle for political expression from the 1960s …

Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America, Laura Anderson

English Language and Literature ETDs

This thesis conducts a literary analysis on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) with a primary investigation on the protagonists and their convergence of identity in Cold War America. One of the critical discourses evaluated throughout the project’s literary analysis includes the protagonists’ complications of doubleness. This essay argues that since these two texts sit between W.E.B DuBois’s “Double Consciousness” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1988 theory on intersectionality, these protagonists are forced to contend with an identity crossroads. Secondary to the context of this analysis is the use of “post-war” and “Cold War,”; neither are …

The Ngo Coalition Against Impunity: A Forgotten Chapter In The Struggle Against Impunity, J. Patrice Mcsherry

International Journal of Human Rights Education

As Latin American countries moved from military dictatorship to civilian government in the 1980s, a burning issue was how to deal with the massive repression and grave human rights violations of the recent past. Should there be an effort to hold perpetrators accountable, or simply “turn the page?” This article documents and analyzes the history of the NGO Coalition Against Impunity and its role in advocating for the United Nations (U.N.) to recognize impunity—or, the negation of accountability—as a serious human rights issue. The combined efforts of dedicated human rights leaders and organizations in Latin America, other NGOs such as …

Bigger Is Better? Re-Evaluating Nato Enlargement In The Post-Cold War Period, Matthew Mccracken

Senior Honors Theses

Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has grown substantially from its pre-1990 boundary between the two Germanys to encompass 15 new members with its border pressing eastward toward the former Soviet states and up to Russia proper. At the same time, East-West relations have sunk from a high point in the 1990s to a new low unseen since the Cold War culminating in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Top-ranking officials on both sides of the Atlantic cautioned successive U.S. administrations against heedlessly seeking to admit new members into NATO for fear that it …