Did Star Wars Help End the Cold War? Soviet Response to the SDI Program

The Strategic Defense Initiative was a U.S. missile defense program that played a very prominent role in the U.S.–Soviet relationships in the 1980s and is often credited with helping end the Cold War, as it presented the Soviet Union with a technological challenge that it could not meet. This article introduces several official Soviet documents to examine Soviet response to SDI. The evidence suggests that although the Soviet Union expressed serious concerns about U.S. missile defense program, SDI was not a decisive factor in advancing arms control negotiations. Instead, the program seriously complicated U.S.–Soviet arms control process. SDI also failed to dissuade the Soviet Union from investing in development of ballistic missiles. The Soviet Union quickly identified ways to avoid a technological arms race with the United States and focused on development of advanced missiles and anti-satellite systems to counter missile defenses. Some of these programs have been preserved to the current day.     

The Wilson government and the demise of TSR‐2, October 1964 – April 1965

Domestic factors play an important role in the formulation and evolution of a country's foreign and security policy. This is clearly seen in the case study of a Soviet successor state, Ukraine. The article brings together in seven sections theory with the key domestic factors that influence Ukrainian security policy, such as economics, energy, national identity, elites and political parties. The article provides an insight into how these domestic factors influence the course of Ukrainian security policy which is striking a balance between the twin extremes of Soviet re‐integration, which would be tantamount to the loss of independence, and nationalist maximalism which seeks to place as much distance as possible between Ukraine and Russia.     

Israeli foreign policy and the arms race in the Middle East 1950–1960

Previous accounts of the arms race in the Middle East during the 1950s have focused on the imbalance that resulted from the ‘Czech deal’ of September 1955. While that transfer of weaponry by the Soviet Union to Egypt constituted both a historical turning point and sharp acceleration of the arms race, it was only one of several changes in the regional strategic balance of that decade. This article makes extensive use of archival material in order to identify five phases of the arms race of the 1950s and analyze the manner in which Israeli policy‐makers dealt with the exigencies of procurement during each phase. Except for a brief period following the arms deals with France in 1956 that marked the beginning of the fifth phase examined below, the Israelis never abandoned the attempt to obtain arms from the United States. Israel's success in maintaining a high degree of independence in foreign policy throughout this period was the result of arms purchases from Britain and France that marked each phase of the arms race examined here. Yet, the Israelis considered arms from both of these Western powers to be temporary substitutes for the arms relationship with the USA that came about during the 1960s.     

Re-thinking the Unthinkable: Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT

Since the end of the Cold War, arms control proponents tried to make the case for deep nuclear reductions and other forms of security cooperation as necessary for strategic stability. While different versions of strategic stability analysis did sometimes produce innovative proposals, constructive negotiations, and successful ratification campaigns in the past, this analytical framework has become more of a hindrance than a help. Treating arms control as a predominantly technical way to make deterrence more stable by changing force structure characteristics, military operations, relative numbers of weapons on either side, or total number of nuclear weapons gives short shrift to political factors, including the fundamental assumptions about world politics that inform different arms control logics, the quality of political relations among leading states, and the political processes that affect negotiation, ratification, and implementation. This article compares two logics for arms control as a means to enhance strategic stability, one developed by the Cambridge community in the 1960s and one used by the Reagan administration and its successors, with current perspectives on strategic stability in which flexibility and freedom of action are preferable to predictability and arms control. It also contrasts what the Barack Obama administration has tried to achieve through strategic stability dialogues with Russia and China with how they envision security cooperation. It then presents an approach developed during the Cold War by Hedley Bull for thinking about both the technical and the political dimensions of arms control, and suggests that the logic of Cooperative Security (which shares important features with Bull's approach) is a more appropriate and productive way to think about arms control in the twenty-first century than strategic stability analysis is.     

The Strategic Impasse in Low-Intensity Conflicts: The Gap Between Israeli Counter-Insurgency Strategy and Tactics During the Al-Aqsa Intifada

Over the past 15 years Israel has been involved in a bitter counter-insurgency campaign against the Palestinians. Palestinian insurgency, particularly during the current Al-Aqsa Intifada, has posed serious challenges to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Whilst being able to adapt successfully its tactics to Palestinian terror and urban guerrilla warfare in order to reduce the level of Palestinian violence, the IDF has not been able to achieve a battlefield decision or victory. This has been due to the nature of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which ultimately necessitates the provision of a political solution by the Israeli political leadership, which has relied too often on the IDF as a panacea for its own strategic and political indecisiveness vis-à-vis the Palestinian national question.     

The disconnect between arms control and DDR in peace processes

The article discusses the disconnect between arms control and disarmament practices vis-à-vis peacebuilding practices. It critically analyzes Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) practices focusing on their absence of dialogue with international arms control and disarmament (ACD) practices. It proposes that a conversation between experts involved in these distinct practices could promote a political discussion on the place of weapons held by state and non-state actors in times of peace. The argument is illustrated through an analysis of the treatment of rules on weapons in the Colombian peace process (2012–present) with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The article concludes that the disconnect between the arms control and disarmament and the peacebuilding associations, as seen in the context of DDR practices, reinstates the rule on the monopoly of violence by the state, preventing a broader discussion of the role of weapons and violence in the building of political communities.     

The partisan war in north-west Russia 1941–44: a re-examination

This article examines the extent to which the limited achievements of the Soviet partisan movement in north-west Russia during the first months of the Great Patriotic War can be attributed largely to inadequacies in the organisation, leadership, equipment and training of the movement as emphasised in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian published works. On the basis of Soviet archival sources the author concludes that while these factors were important, German occupation policies were far more effective in inhibiting partisan activity in the area concerned than existing published material would have us believe. However, these policies seem only to have been effective in the context of the German military successes or perceived successes at the front. The author goes on to examine factors contributing to the dramatic increase in Soviet partisan activity towards the end of the period of German occupation.     

Russian Reactions to Reagan's ‘Maritime Strategy’

The US Navy's audacious Maritime Strategy of the 1980s is often credited with acting as a key catalyst to the demise of the USSR. In assessing the role of strategic missile submarine “bastions” in the country's overall military strategy, the authors are skeptical of the above thesis, explaining that Moscow actually viewed deployments of Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles on to US submarines (versus direct threats against the Soviet Navy itself) as the most alarming threat. The authors concede that the arms race played a role in the collapse of the USSR, but deny a direct connection with Soviet naval development citing the relatively minor naval proportion of overall defense spending. For the difficulties facing the fleet at the end of the Cold War, they instead blame deep systemic problems internal to the Soviet Navy.     

Explaining third world security structures

Why did the Palestinian Authority established in 1994 create 12 security forces when Eritrea, which achieved independence in 1994, made do with one conventional army? This article attempts to explain the variation in the structure of national security systems in Third World states as a function of two basic factors: the state's political and social heterogeneity and the state's relative importance to US foreign policy and security concerns. Authoritarian one-party and centralizing states tend to fragment their security forces more than states that cultivate social or political pluralism. Fragmentation is a classic exercise of divide and rule. But a tradeoff exists between fragmentation and assuring internal security on the one hand, and ensuring offensive capabilities to ward off external enemies, on the other. Hence the importance of a strong foreign ally – preferably the United States. According to this model, centralized homogenous states enjoying US protection will tend to fragment or bifurcate their security systems most.     

The strategy of the organisation of Ukrainian nationalists in its quest for a sovereign state, 1939–1950

ABSTRACT

The armed resistance offered by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) to the Soviet state was the toughest internal political challenge that the Soviet regime faced from World War II to the 1980s. However, OUN’s grand strategy was based on self-delusion and was, therefore, always irrational. It resulted in misinterpretation of the sentiments of Ukrainians and the international situation, collaboration with Nazi Germany despite incompatible goals, counterproductive ethnic violence and sweeping terror against alleged Soviet collaborators. Local civilians rather than the representatives of the Soviet regime were OUN’s primary target; this alienated most residents of Western Ukraine.     

Arming China: Major powers’ arms transfers to the People’s Republic of China

The rise of China has been fuelled by a massive military modernisation programme relying, in large part, on the acquisition of foreign military equipment. The question of how the world’s major powers define their arms transfer policies towards China is therefore crucially important. This article makes two original contributions. First, drawing on neoclassical realism, it proposes an explanatory framework integrating international and domestic factors to explain variations in major powers’ arms transfers. Second, based on a large body of elite interviews and diplomatic cables, it offers the first comprehensive comparison of American, British, French and Russian arms transfer policies towards China since the end of the Cold War.     

苏共思想教育工作失策对我军的启示

苏联剧变,有其多方面的原因。就意识形态来说,苏共思想教育工作的失策,导致全社会尤其是青年一代从意识形态迷茫,滑落到理想信念崩溃,无疑是政变的思想根源。分析苏共思想教育工作的经验教训,以便创新和改进我军思想政治教育的内容、形式和手段,促进思想政治教育工作的有效开展。     

高校网络思想政治教育的影响与发展对策

由于人们对信息敏感性的增强,高校的思想政治教育面临着更加严峻的挑战。如何使高校思想政治教育的主渠道畅通、主阵地巩固,这是一个亟待研究和解决的重大课题。从网络思想政治教育的概念界定、高校网络思想政治教育的影响以及方法和途径进行论述,以期加强和改进高校的思想政治教育。     

India’s Taliban Dilemma: To Contain or to Engage?

India’s Afghanistan policy in the 1990s is termed a zero-sum game of influence with Pakistan. New Delhi’s aversion to the pro-Pakistan Taliban regime is considered a marker of this rivalry. This paper revisits India’s approach towards Afghanistan and examines if New Delhi was necessarily averse to engaging with pro-Pakistan political factions during 1990s. Based on fresh primary interviews with former Indian policymakers, media archives, and official reports, the paper shows that India engaged with and accommodated pro-Pakistan factions after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 until 1996. The Taliban’s rise to power in Kabul in September 1996 challenged India’s engage-with-all approach. Nonetheless, the decision to sever ties with the Taliban and to bolster anti-Taliban factions was highly debated in New Delhi. Many in India saw the Taliban as a militant Islamist force sponsored by Pakistan. For others, however, it was an ethno-nationalist movement representing Pashtun interests, and not necessarily under Islamabad’s control.     

Managing Withdrawal: Afghanistan as the Forgotten Example in Attempting Conflict Resolution and State Reconstruction

Perhaps surprisingly, given the availability of new Russian memoir material, some excellent individual monographs, and a large variety of declassified documents, a full operational–political account of the Soviet Union's withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan has yet to be written. This article, utilising openly published yet neglected sources, attempts to fill that gap. The final fate of the Najibullah regime, and the contradictory effect of the National Reconciliation Policy in Afghanistan itself, suggests four key lessons for international forces today as disengagement from both Iraq and Afghanistan again becomes a pressing issue, and as questions around re-creating stability within a failed state scenario again occupy the international community.     

The Randomization of Terrorist Attacks

The purpose of this article is to explore the economic theoretical foundations of the idea that rational terrorist organizations deliberately randomize their attacks (by type, timing, location, and targets) to generate uncertainty and intimidation. A choice theoretic framework is applied to the analysis of the terrorist organization's behavior to determine whether welfare (utility) gains from the randomization of terrorist attacks are plausible and feasible. The randomization of attacks can appear to promise higher amounts of political influence for each resource input but it turns out that randomization cannot manufacture a situation where higher amounts of political influence are obtained for each resource input.The results imply that, rather than randomization and instability, the rational terrorist organization is more likely to prefer stability. The findings and implications provide a theoretical explanation for the non-randomness of terrorist attacks.Thismay be one small step towards explaining the patterns – non-randomness – in the time-series of terrorist incidents.     

The impact of superpower arms transfers on conflict in the Middle East

I explore the relationship between superpower arms transfers and the Arab‐Israeli rivalry. My empirical analysis suggests that Soviet arms transfers to the Middle East, more than American transfers, have exacerbated interstate rivalry in the region. It also suggests that Soviet arms transfers, again more than American transfers, have encouraged compensatory arming by the other superpower. These conclusions derive from the results of cross‐correlation analysis, Granger‐causality tests, and variance decompositions, and are quite robust. While my findings paint a rather unflattering portrait of the effects of superpower involvement in the region, they do constitute grounds for optimism in light of current developments.     

Z and other cinematic tales from the 30-year Greek civil war

Greek cinema has documented and debated the civil war and its repercussions under different angles, largely defined by censorship, the general political climate, and cinematic trends. This article, first, offers a retrospective that traces the evolution of Greek cinema's ‘takes’ on the civil war vis-à-vis the political changes. Second, it provides an in-depth analysis of Costas Gavras’s film Z, examining its relevance to Greece and how political conflict, in general, is cinematically depicted. The article argues that Z and Gavras’s cinema have been affected and have affected the Greek political situation. However, while Z has spearheaded an international cinematic genre (political thriller), it had minimal effect on the Greek cinema.     

Prologue to Suez: Anglo-American planning for military intervention in a Middle East war, 1955–1956

This article contributes yet another perspective to the Suez War – the strategic and military planning carried out since the end of the Second World War by the Western Allies for the contingency of a new world conflict against the Soviet bloc. The Middle East was of vital strategic significance. Colonel Nasser's announcement of the Czech arms deal in September 1955 triggered the countdown to a new war in the region. London and Washington urgently drew up contingency plans for intervention, both with economic sanctions and armed force. Joint staff talks were held in Washington from March to August 1956. They were halted just two months before the United Kingdom decided to collude with France and Israel to attack Egypt.