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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
This book details the development of British policy with regard to European integration during the Macmillan premiership. It is an account of how senior ministers and officials attempted, within the triple constraints of the British system of government, external pressure and domestic economic and political considerations, to strike a harmonious balance between the commercial interests and the political aspirations of the British people. The work raises fundamental questions about the role of the cabinet in the British system of government.
There are winners and losers in a capitalistic society, but capitalism does not choose who is a winner and who is a loser. The winners are those who have the right idea, sacrifice their time and money, take risks, work hard, and have a little luck and help along the way. The losers are those who rarely dream of the impossible, waste their time, spend their money foolishly, lack the courage to take risks, and fail to dedicate themselves to achieving the rewards of their efforts. Winners should receive the greatest returns for their investments and the greatest of rewards for their endeavors. While wealth may be distributed unequally, it results more from an unequal dedication to acquire this wealth. That is not only right, but it is fair. At the heart of capitalism is choice, one of success or failure, saving or spending, and work or recreation. Capitalism is a system that allows a person to choose whether he or she wants to be a winner or a loser. Today, too many have chosen the latter and display the unbecoming traits of greed, jealously, and envy toward those who have chosen the former. While insecurity and instability may pervade this country's economic, political and societal institutions, success can still be achieved by those who look forward rather than backward, who avoid the disadvantages of the past to take advantage of the future. In "The Choices and Consequences of Our Age," you'll learn that it's still possible to achieve success through hard work, sacrifice, and self-reliance.
Middle East oil and Anglo-American special relations were among the most contentious issues during the Cold War. Oil is crucial to our understanding of Britain's and the US's Cold War policies in the Middle East. This book presents an in-depth study of the issues of the period and the legacy of oil in the post-Cold war era.
Does history provide lessons for foreign policy makers today? Macdonald combines cognitive psychology theories about analogical reasoning, international relations theories about military intervention, and original archival research to analyze the role of historical information in foreign policy decision making. He looks at the role of historical analogies in Anglo-American decision making during foreign policy crises involving the possible use of force in regional contingencies during a crucial period in the 1950s when the West faced an emerging Soviet threat. This study analyzes the influence of situational and individual variables in a comparison of more than ten leaders from two nations facing four different crises. Rolling the Iron Dice describes the often significant effect of historical analogies on perceptions of the adversary and of allies, time constraints, policy options and risks, as well as the justification of policy in four crises: the 1950 Korean invasion; the 1951-53 Iranian oil nationalization incident; the 1956 Suez crisis; and the 1958 crisis in Lebanon and Jordan. Contrary to both the slippery slope and the escalation models of military intervention, Macdonald argues that leaders decide extremely early in a crisis, often on the basis of an historical analogy, but also based on perceptions of the rationality of an adversary, whether to use military force. Their decision does not change unless the adversary capitulates to every demand.
Brucan, a former Romanian ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, provides the first social history of the remarkable transition from communism to capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He begins with an examination of the old social structure in communist societies, which used to be cosmetically advertised by the party and officialdom, paying particular attention to the nomenklatura, who have miraculously transformed themselves into big businessmen and bankers. A chapter is devoted to the decline of the working class, whom Brucan shows to be the big loser in the revolution. He then examines the new social stratification, illustrating how the new classes are taking shape under the conditions created by market reform. The symbiosis between capital and power is analyzed in depth, and Ambassador Brucan concludes his study with a look at the direction the social transformations are pushing these societies, particularly the separate paths being followed by Russia and Eastern Europe. This is an important study for researchers, scholars, and policy makers involved with Russia and Eastern Europe.
What makes people act against their own national identity?How real are the concepts of nationalism and patriotism? In what ways does the media control our perception of history in the making?This ground-breaking work addresses these important questions through an examination of the Algerian war of 1954-62 and the significant French resistance to their own leaders during the bitter conflict. Through the use of extensive interviews, it provides powerful insights into the clash of values that accompanied the war. In exploring the events and experiences that led a small minority of French people to reject colonialism in the wake of the Algerian conflict, Memories of Resistance focuses on the importance of political allegiances and ideologies, and the motivations for resisting them. The complex issues of identity and shared memory are examined to provide an indispensable analysis of loyalty and self-identity in the wider political context of the world. The book also debates the changing ways in which the media influences perceptions of, and attitudes towards, world events. Third World liberation ideas, personal experiences of French colonialism, memory and the significance of anti-Nazi resistance and political allegiances are all discussed in this wide-ranging and illuminating study.Memories of Resistance represents a major contribution to the theory and practice of oral history, which is fast becoming one of the most popular and dynamic areas of historical research and will be essential reading for anyone studying French colonial history.
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 book examines how civil-military relations have been transformed in Russia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991. It shows how these countries have worked to reform their obsolete armed forces, and bring them into line with the new economic and strategic realities of the post-Cold War world, with new bureaucratic structures in which civilians play the key policy-making roles, and with strengthened democratic political institutions which have the right to oversee the armed forces.
This engaging new biography dispels many myths surrounding Nehru, and distinguishes between the icon he has become and the politician he actually was. Benjamin Zachariah places Nehru in the context of the issues of his time, including the central theme of nationalism, the impact of Cold War pressures on India and the transition from colonial control to a precarious independence. How did Jawaharlal Nehru come to lead the Indian nationalist movement, and how did he sustain his leadership as the first Prime Minister of independent India? Nehru's vision of India, its roots in Indian politics and society, as well as its viability have been central to historical and present-day views of India. Connecting the domestic and international aspects of his political life and ideology, this study provides a fascinating insight into Nehru, his times and his legacy.
When Dwight Eisenhower ran for president he was so confident that he could organize the Executive Office more effectively than his predecessor that he made it an issue in the campaign of 1952. When he entered office he found that Congress had given him just two months to reorganize the Council of Economic Advisers or see it dissolved. The changes he made in the Council still form the basis of its organization. This book, based largely on original sources, attempts to analyze what Eisenhower did and did not do, and how well the mechanisms he installed worked.
This book asks the reader to reassess the Cold War not just as superpower conflict and high diplomacy, but as social and cultural history. It makes cross-cultural comparisons of the socio cultural aspects of the Cold War across the East/West block divide, dealing with issues including broadcasting, public opinion, and the production and consumption of popular culture.
Between 1945 and 1960, Great Britain constructed a substantial nuclear-armed bomber force. The creation of this force had ramifications that extended well beyond the confines of military policy. The process played a large part in defining relations with the United States, and the belief that these bombers could replace conventional forces convinced successive British governments that Great Britain could maintain a significant global military role. Originally published in 1995 and drawing on both archives and oral testimony, this book analyses British strategic discourse and its influence on British foreign policy in the early decades of the Cold War.
The chapters in this volume examine a few facets in the drama of how the survivors of the Holocaust contended with life after the darkest night in Jewish history. They include the Earl Harrison mission and significant report, the effort to keep Europe's borders open to refugee infiltration, the murder of the first Jew in Germany after V-E Day and its aftermath, and the iconic sculptures of Nathan Rapoport and Poland's landscape of Holocaust memory up to the present day. Joining extensive archival research and a limpid prose, Professor Monty Noam Penkower again displays a definitive mastery of his craft.
The Mayor of Mogadishu tells the story of one family's epic journey through Somalia's turmoil, from the optimism of independence to its spectacular unravelling.Mohamud 'Tarzan' Nur was born a nomad, and became an orphan, then a street brawler in the cosmopolitan port city of Mogadishu - a place famous for its cafes and open-air cinemas. When Somalia collapsed into civil war, Tarzan and his young family joined the exodus from Mogadishu, eventually spending twenty years in North London. But in 2010 Tarzan returned to the unrecognisable ruins of a city largely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al-Shabaab. For some, the new Mayor was a galvanising symbol of defiance. But others branded him a thug, mired in the corruption and clan rivalries that continue to threaten Somalia's revival.The Mayor of Mogadishu is an uplifting story of survival, and a compelling examination of what it means to lose a country and then to reclaim it.
In September 2009 Dmitrii Medvedev unveiled the term that was to become the defining objective of his presidency: 'modernization.' The contributors to this book, drawn from the leading scholars in Russian affairs, focus on the contested nature of the concept of modernization and the obstacles that arose in attempting to carry it out.
On May 14, 1948 the State of Israel was declared, announced by David Ben-Gurion at a small gathering that assembled in the main hall of the Tel Aviv Art Museum. Within a time frame of only nineteen years, culminating in the Six-Day War, Israel fought three separate wars. But within its first four years, thanks to mass immigration, its population doubled. Furthermore, Israel had been confronted with acute economic difficulties, intra Jewish ethnic tensions, a problematic Arab minority and a secular-religious divide. Apart from defence issues, Israel faced a generally hostile or, at best, indifferent international community rendering it hard pressed in securing great power patronage or even official sympathy and understanding. Based on a wide range of sources, both in Hebrew and English, this book contains a judicious synthesis of the received literature to yield the general reader and student alike a reliable, balanced, and novel account of Israel's fateful and turbulent infancy.
Cycling Book of the Year - Cross British Sports Book Awards When the 'Iron Curtain' descended across Europe, Dieter Wiedemann was a hero of East German sport. A podium finisher in The Peace Race, the Eastern Bloc equivalent of the Tour de France, he was a pin-up for the supremacy of socialism over the 'fascist' West. Unbeknownst to the authorities, however, he had fallen in love with Sylvia Hermann, a girl from the other side of the wall. Socialist doctrine had it that the two of them were 'class enemies', and as a famous athlete Dieter's every move was pored over by the Stasi. Only he abhorred their ideology, and in Sylvia saw his only chance of freedom. Now, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse, he plotted his escape. In 1964 he was delegated, once and once only, to West Germany. Here he was to ride a qualification race for the Tokyo Olympics, but instead committed the most treacherous of all the crimes against socialism. Dieter Wiedemann, sporting icon and Soviet pawn, defected to the other side. Whilst Wiedemann fulfilled his lifetime ambition of racing in the Tour de France, his defection caused a huge scandal. The Stasi sought to 'repatriate' him, with horrific consequences both for him and the family he left behind. Fifty years on, and twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dieter Wiedemann decided it was time to tell his story. Through his testimony and that of others involved, and through the Stasi file, which has stalked him for half a century, Herbie Sykes uncovers an astonishing tale. It is one of love and betrayal, of the madness at the heart of the cold war, and of the greatest bike race in history.
Historians often refer to the Korean War as the forgotten war, but Edwards argues that in many respects it is a conflict that has been deliberately ignored for the past fifty years. This broad look at the war examines how Americans have attempted to remember and commemorate the confrontation which played such a major role in America's Cold War experience. As a United Nations effort or Police Action, the hazy identification of the war has in part contributed to a lack of public understanding of what happened in Korea. This book considers the American response to the loss in Korea, and how this response played out as a failure to remember. After discussing the phenomenon of historical absence, the essays turn to the still considerable disagreement about who started the war and why. They provide the latest information concerning the relationship between Chairman Mao, Premier Kim Il Sung, and Chairman Joseph Stalin at the outbreak of the conflict. Edwards identifies lesser known figures and comments on operations that are not generally known or discussed. He discusses the impact that revisionist historians have had on our views of the war and why it produced a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty. The study also places this still unresolved conflict in the context of multi-national forces and peacekeeping actions as we understand them today.
Histories of Portugal's transition to democracy have long focused on the 1974 military coup that toppled the authoritarian Estado Novo regime and set in motion the divestment of the nation's colonial holdings. However, the events of this "Carnation Revolution" were in many ways the culmination of a much longer process of resistance and protest originating in universities and other sectors of society. Combining careful research in police, government, and student archives with insights from social movement theory, The Revolution before the Revolution broadens our understanding of Portuguese democratization by tracing the societal convulsions that preceded it over the course of the "long 1960s."
One of the most crucial issues to affect national policy in the
state of Israel is that of relations between its Jewish and Arab
citizens. The confrontation of October 2000 demonstrated the
explosive potential of the unresolved dilemmas posed by these
relations.
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