Discussing a rarely researched aspect of the Cold War, this volume uses new material to examine how the United States trade embargo on the Soviet Union and communist China severed relationships with Europe, particularly focusing on Great Britain. In the late 1940s, the US government stopped nearly all exports to the entire Sino-Soviet bloc in the belief that it would hinder the expansion of Soviet and Chinese military potential. To continue receiving the US Marshall Aid, European countries had to impose similar bans, but were reluctant because their trade links with the USSR and its satellite countries had existed for centuries. The US thereafter negotiated with Europe about what to include or exclude from the list of authorised goods, severely straining diplomatic relations. Economic Statecraft during the Cold War details these negotiations, casting new light on the ambivalent US-UK relationship and providing insights into the changing emphasis between the Republican and Democrat administrations on the key question of trade embargo, by explaining how the firm consistency in the application of the US policy over the succeeding decades of the Cold War was maintained. This book will be of much interest to all students and scholars of Cold War history, intelligence studies and international history in general.

As the leaders of a revolutionary, nationalist regime, the Egyptian Free Officers who came to power following the 1952 Revolution committed themselves to the attainment of goals associated with modernization, namely rapid economic development based on State planning and industrialization and the political mobilization of society along State-decreed lines. Arising from a conference held at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, with contributions from scholars from the Arab world, Europe and the US as well as the UK, these papers raise the questions most important to students of economic and political development.

How are forbidden histories told and transmitted among young people in Israel/Palestine? What can their stories teach us about their everyday experiences of segregation and political violence? This book investigates how young people use storytelling to navigate borders, memory, and unseen spaces, and to confront questions of belonging and those they see as the 'other'. The study is unique in its inclusion of children from a broad spectrum of communities, including Palestinian refugee camps and right-wing Israeli settlement homes. The book shows that boundary spaces are fertile ground for the transmission of forbidden stories and memories. Young people are at the centre of the research and Victoria Biggs argues that storytelling reveals much more about their experiences and perceptions than either quantitative data or qualitative interviews. Through analysis of the language, metaphor, violence, and endings employed in the stories, storytelling is shown to be a political act that plays a vital role in shaping conflict-affected young people's concepts of community, exclusion, and belonging.

From her humble beginnings to her time in the spotlight as the first female Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has led an extraordinary life. "Going Rogue" recounts her political experiences, her time as Mayor of Wasilla and as the first female governor of Alaska, as well as her rapid rise on the national stage during the 2008 campaign. Additionally, she shares insights into the personal challenges she's faced including balancing her time as a working mother, recognizing the war's impact with her son serving combat in Iraq, having a child with a disability, and supporting her teenage daughter through an unplanned pregnancy. Palin has received much attention through the media, and now, her complete story is available in paperback - a personal and political chronicle of her life.

The Russian-Chechen war has been the longest, cruelest, and bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II, surpassing even the level of destruction of Bosnia and Kosovo. Told from the perspective of its former Foreign Minister, this uniquely candid account of Chechnya's struggle for independence and its two wars against Russia will revise our understanding of the conflict and explain how it continues. Ilyas Akhmadov delivers a comprehensive history of the first war against Russia, the crises within Chechen society, the splintering and radicalization of the Chechen leadership, the incursions into Dagestan, and his own efforts to bring about peace. The book shows the impossible dilemma of the moderate nationalists in post-Soviet societies, who are challenged by radical Islamic ideology, social deprivations, Russian aggression, and international neglect. By giving voice to the moderates, the book seeks to shift the balance in their favor.

Scholarly interpretations of the collapse of communism and developments thereafter have tended to be primarily concerned with people's need to rid themselves of the communist system, of their past. The expectations, dreams, and hopes that ordinary Eastern Europeans had when they took to the streets in 1989, and have had ever since, have therefore been overlooked - and our understanding of the changes in post-communist Europe has remained incomplete. Focusing primarily on five key areas, such as the heritage of 1989 revolutions, ambivalence, disillusionment, individualism, and collective identities, this book explores the expectations and goals that ordinary Eastern Europeans had during the 1989 revolutions and the decade thereafter, and also the problems and disappointments they encountered in the course of the transformation. The analysis is based on extensive interviews with university students and young intellectuals in the Czech Republic, Eastern Germany and Estonia in the 1990s, which in themselves have considerable value as historical documents.

The Shining Path was one of the most brutal insurgencies ever seen in the Western Hemisphere. Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru explores the devastating effects of insurgent violence and the state's brutal counterinsurgency methods on Peruvian civil society.

"American exceptionalism" is the scholarly term for the common perception that there is something different about American life, stemming from the origins of the United States and its subsequent evolution, and marking it off from the experience of other developed nations. There is a long, rich, and varied argument about this perception, its reality, and its component elements. In Is America Different?, major scholars from the realms of history, politics, economics, and sociology return to the question in the light of changes in the last thirty years and debate an answer which is appropriate to our time. Politics, economics, religion, culture, education, and public policy receive particular attention in this debate, while a major introductory essay by Seymour Martin Lipset and a final integrating chapter by Byron E. Shafer isolate common themes and recurring disputes. Providing valuable insights into the dilemma of American exceptionalism, this book will interest scholars and students of American studies, American government, American history, politics, and sociology.

*Based on new sources in Republic of South Africa. *Shows extensive relations with African states - totally opposed to apartheid - during apartheid period and how relations were based on essentially olitical, and not merely economic, factors. *Shows the development of South Africa from pariah status to acceptable African state and superpower. South Africa's contacts with the neighbouring African states during the apartheid years are well documented. But here is a unique study based on hitherto un-explored primary sources behind the apartheid screen exposing extensive contact even with the the countries further north during these years. These relations paved the way for South Africa's emergence as a middle power acceptable to its fellow African states.

From the phenomenal bestselling author of Sapiens and Homo Deus

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war or ecological catastrophe?

What do we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism?

How should we prepare our children for the future?

21 Lessons is an exploration of what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment.

'Fascinating…Harari has teed up a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the 21st century' Bill Gates, New York Times

After four decades of fighting and a multitude of failed attempts at negotiating peace, Colombia remains home to the largest conflict in the Western Hemisphere: a conflict which has killed thousands and displaced millions of people. This book analyzes the first stage of the conflict in Colombia, the twenty-year search for a negotiated settlement which concluded in 2002 with the collapse of peace negotiations, and the transition that took place in 2002 to a new approach to peacemaking under the Uribe administration. Contributors examine the local, regional and international dynamics of the conflict, focusing on the effect of US foreign policy on Colombia and neighboring countries. Included also is discussion of the Colombian drug trade and its impact on attempts for peace and the country's economy; the evolution of Pastrana's "Plan Colombia"; internal conflict; and the effects of indigenous movements on the current conflict.

An investigation of recent developments and trends within the Yugoslav successor states since the signing of the Dayton Agreements in Autumn 1995. This book offers a distinctive and desirable perspective on the seven successor states, their cultures, politics and identities by providing an internal perspective on the region and its developments.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The historic myths of a people/nation usually play an important role in the creation and consolidation of the basic concepts from which the self-image of that nation derives. These concepts include not only images of the nation itself, but also images of other peoples. Although the construction of ethnic stereotypes during the "long" nineteenth century initially had other functions than simply the homogenization of the particular culture and the exclusion of "others" from the public sphere, the evaluation of peoples according to criteria that included "level of civilization" yielded "rankings" of ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy. That provided the basis for later, more divisive ethnic characterizations of exclusive nationalism, as addressed in this volume that examines the roots and results of ethnic, nationalist, and racial conflict in the region from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives.

This book argues that postwar Britain's "imperial over-extension" has been exaggerated. Britain developed and adjusted its defense strategy based upon the perceived Communist threat and available resources. It was especially successful at adapting to meet the strategic and resource challenges from the Far East from 1947-54. There British and Gurkha forces were deployed only in contingencies that threatened vital British interests, while the US and Commonwealth allies were persuaded to accept key wartime missions, thus preserving Britain's ability to fight in Western Europe.

The World s Cities offers instructors and students in higher education an accessible introduction to the three major perspectives influencing city-regions worldwide: City-Regions in a World System; Nested City-Regions; and The City-Region as the Engine of Economic Activity/Growth.

The book provides students with helpful essays on each perspective, case studies to illustrate each major viewpoint, and discussion questions following each reading. "The World s Cities" concludes with an original essay by the editor that helps students understand how an analysis incorporating a "combination "of theoretical perspectives and factors can provide a richer appreciation of the world s city dynamics.

The evolution of economic organization, political authority, and social values in post-Mao China is the focus of this distinguished investigation which challenges standard interpretations of contemporary China. Mao's death in 1976 made possible a shift from movement politics that produced a gradual dissolution of pre-existing factions and allowed a redefined political agenda to emerge. This post-Mao agenda, in which the notion of class struggle as the key link was explicitly repudiated, formed the foundation for China's post-1978 modernization program. Burton describes this program as post-socialist, arguing that socialism as a definitive category has become irrelevant. He contends that demands for the reform of China's system of economic organization were the direct result of the failure of the Party's post-revolutionary political agenda and that subsequent economic improvements led to calls for modernization of the nation's structure of political authority. The author also describes the dramatic transformation of prevalent social values that has occurred during the same period. The original research and extensive use of vernacular sources, as well as Burton's multi-disciplinary and integrative approach make this volume required reading for students and scholars of contemporary politics, the sociology of China, and contemporary Chinese thought. Political and Social Change in China Since 1978 will fill the background information gap for generalists intrigued by recent events in China.

Among the various secret or staged processes in court that are all to some degree the focus of public attention, the process against Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy of the 1956 Revolution is especially noteworthy. This volume contains the most important documents of this process: the indictment, the death sentence, the prosecutor's motion 31 years later concerning the repeal of the death sentence, and the acquittal. The separate research papers analyze the historical background of the process and the unlawful practices followed in the administration of justice of the communist party-state, best exemplified by the most serious infringements in the process against Imre Nagy. This book may be read with interest not only by lawyers and historians, but by all interested in the struggle of human will against political terror.

Xenakis examines the responses of Soviet experts in American academia--primarily political scientists, but also economists and defense scholars who specialized in the USSR--to the unfolding evidence of Soviet reform during the 1970s and 1980s and to its ultimate collapse. He concludes that American Sovietologists and other political scientists were more responsive to the Cold War consensus--to the needs of the State Department, Defense, and CIA policy makers and to the official Washington line of the moment--than to the changing face of the Soviet Union.

As Xenakis makes clear, many of the Cold War ideas and attitudes shared by Sovietologists--the notion that the USSR was an evil empire; the idea that Soviet society was irredeemably xenophobic and indolent; that the Soviet political and economic system could not be fixed or reformed; and the view that the best way for Washington to deal with MoscoW's influence was to contain the USSR through arms races, global, and proxy wars--were reminiscent of the policies and arguments of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, not to the facts on the ground in the 1970s and 1980s. An important work for scholars, students, and researchers involved with Soviet and Russian studies, international political and military affairs, intellectual history, and the relationship between academia and the government.

The root question this book addresses is how the new Germany will use its re-found status as a great power. Does Germany - as in the past - aim to dominate Europe? Or has it renounced its imperial ambitions following the trauma of division during the Cold War? In seeking answers to these questions, Kristina Spohr Readman scrutinises the development of Germany's new Ostpolitik (eastern policy) in the period 1989-2000. Against the background of recent European history, she analyses the re-establishment of a special relationship between Bonn/Berlin and Moscow. In particular, she assesses the peculiar geopolitical situation of the Baltic states: caught between a turbulent Russia in the east and a unified Germany in the west. The Baltic case reveals the complexities of a post-Cold War European security architecture in the making.

This major new study fills a significant gap in the academic literature on the Cold War by considering President Lyndon Johnson's policy towards the Soviet Union. The author examines the attitudes of Johnson and his leading advisers toward the Soviet leadership, taking into account the effects of Moscow's growing splits with Beijing, the impact on US-Soviet relations of nuclear issues, the Vietnam War, and clashes over Cuba, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The author's research is based on detailed scrutiny of archives in Britain and the United States, as well as recently published document collections. His study also examines the President's personal leadership qualities, his mistakes in Vietnam and his success as a peacemaker with Moscow. The book constitutes a major contribution to literature on President Johnson's foreign policy 'beyond Vietnam'. The book will be of interest to students of the Cold War, the Johnson Presidency and of US foreign relations. -- .

Covering the period following the collapse of communism, the unification of Germany, and Poland's accession to the EU, this collection focuses on the interdependencies of German, Polish, and Jewish collective memories and their dialogic, transnational character, showing the collective nature of postmemory and the pressures that shape it.