Download or read book Cold War Brinkmanship written by Alexander Devolpi and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-11-05 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Involved in many Cold War events, the author became a insider, a nuclear physicist looking right into the dragon's mouth, at the very weapons that made things so chilling and nearly calamitous. This isn't simply an historical narrative; it's also an investigative journalist's exposé of the institutional complex that nurtured a nuclear-arms race almost to our oblivion, while fostering inhuman consequences. Nurturing both sides of the Cold War were mindless military-industrial complexes. No one else has given an account of such intense and personal experience - as technical manager, observer, and activist - insider or outsider. This first-hand narrative chronicles the half-century nuclear crisis: nerve-wracking situations, one global instability to another - tracking the Cold War, its anxieties, controversies, and impact. All of us wittingly or unwittingly had a stake in the nuclear-arms race. My father was a soldier of fortune, a mercenary with a lifelong career serving in American and other armies. When World War II broke out, I was sent to military school, then college. After a bachelor's degree in journalism, obligatory active-duty followed in the Atlantic amphibs: three years as a commissioned officer, partly during the Korean War, in the Reserves for 16 years, eventually the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Attending graduate school under the GI Bill, I became a PhD physicist, entering the esoteric domains of nuclear reactors and weapons - and later arms control and treaty verification. It didn't take long working at a national laboratory to gain a conservative fear of atomic weapons. That gave me a seat at the table - literally lunch at cafeterias of nuclear laboratories, and at the most sensitive facilities of the former Soviet Union, as well as agencies and entities that functioned within the U.S. Gradually I gained access to most nuclear secrets, as well as decades of human inequities and governmental arrogance, unexpectedly becoming an expert in nuclear technology and weapons. In tracking Cold War history, skillful memoirs have been published by individuals who were decision makers, as well as assessments by professional historians. What distinguishes Cold War Brinkmanship is my first-hand role - knowledgeable insider, witness, participant - sometimes an activist and target of FBI investigation (documented under FOIA). Now, I've become an author and a knowledgeable source as the Trump presidency moves along. This personalized narrative tracks the Cold War, its anxieties, controversial issues, and impact. Whether you were a fellow citizen, part of the silent majority or vocal minority, or a conscientious bureaucrat - together we had a stake in the outcome of the frightful and expensive nuclear-arms race. Just a single conscientious mortal decision was (and still is) needed to activate the nuclear "football," to incinerate and radiate. Standing by in every weaponized nuclear nation is someone awaiting the authorization for the chain of command to carry out orders of immense consequence. To hasten World War II's end, such fateful decisions and consequential orders were carried out, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Something similar, or much worse, almost happened during the Cold War Cuban missile crisis. Our children, their children, people around the world: None ought to suffer such traumatic and dangerous times. With pockets of famine, civil injustice, wars of liberation, suicidal ideologies, natural disasters, other global instabilities - who needs a return to Cold War brinkmanship? Decisionmakers, be cautious! Maybe these recollections will demonstrate how difficult it was to contain the nuclear-arms race as it grew more alarming, more expensive, and more consequential. This book is written not by a high-level bureaucrat, but by someone who became a very-well-informed and concerned citizen, anti-war leader, and civil-rights activist.
Download or read book How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind written by Paul Erickson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people—Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others—and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a “Cold War rationality.” Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality—optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical—in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.
Download or read book The Cold War A Very Short Introduction written by Robert J. McMahon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The Cold War dominated international life from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But how did the conflict begin? Why did it move from its initial origins in Postwar Europe to encompass virtually every corner of the globe? And why, after lasting so long, did the war end so suddenly and unexpectedly? Robert McMahon considers these questions and more, as well as looking at the legacy of the Cold War and its impact on international relations today. The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction is a truly international history, not just of the Soviet-American struggle at its heart, but also of the waves of decolonization, revolutionary nationalism, and state formation that swept the non-Western world in the wake of World War II. McMahon places the 'Hot Wars' that cost millions of lives in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere within the larger framework of global superpower competition. He shows how the United States and the Soviet Union both became empires over the course of the Cold War, and argues that perceived security needs and fears shaped U.S. and Soviet decisions from the beginning—far more, in fact, than did their economic and territorial ambitions. He unpacks how these needs and fears were conditioned by the divergent cultures, ideologies, and historical experiences of the two principal contestants and their allies. Covering the years 1945-1990, this second edition uses recent scholarship and newly available documents to offer a fuller analysis of the Vietnam War, the changing global politics of the 1970s, and the end of the Cold War. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book High Noon in the Cold War written by Max Frankel and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis analyzes the roles, objectives, and actions of John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the October 1962 showdown between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
Download or read book Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance written by Richard K. Betts and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In numerous crises after World War II—Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the Middle East—the United States resorted to vague threats to use nuclear weapons in order to deter Soviet or Chinese military action. On a few occasions the Soviet Union also engaged in nuclear saber-ratling. Using declassified documents and other sources, this volume examines those crises and compares the decisionmaking processes of leaders who considered nuclear threats with the commonly accepted logic of nuclear deterrence and coercion. Rejecting standard explanations of our leader's logic in these cases, Betts suggests that U.S. presidents were neither consciously blufffing when they made nuclear threats, nor prepared to face the consequences if their threats failed. The author also challenges the myth that the 1950s was a golden age of low vulberability for the United Stateas and details how nuclear parity has, and has not, altered conditions that gave rise to nuclear blackmail in the past.
Download or read book Encyclopaedia Britannica written by Hugh Chisholm and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 1090 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
Download or read book Flashpoint Trieste written by Christian Jennings and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the inside story of how Trieste found itself poised on a knife edge at the end of World War II. Situated near the boundaries of Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia, this pivotal port city was caught in May 1945 between advancing Allied, Russian, and Yugoslav armies on the strategically vital front lines of the nascent Cold War. Germany lay defeated, and now there were new enemies - Russia and Communism. Told through the stories of twelve men and women from seven different countries, Flashpoint Trieste chronicles, on a human scale, the beginning of the Cold War. A British colonel from the Special Operations Executive, a Maori officer from a New Zealand infantry battalion and a young Yugoslav partisan captain race for the city on May 1, 1945, with the Allies determined to beat Tito's forces and the Russians to the vital port. An American infantry general, decorated in combat in Italy, then holds the line as Trieste is divided between the American and British armies, and the Yugoslav Communist partisans of Marshal Josip Broz Tito. An American intelligence officer tracks wanted Nazis. An Italian woman Communist walks back to her native city from Auschwitz. An Austrian SS chief goes on the run to escape justice for the atrocities he committed in the city. Having survived the war, everyone is now desperate to make it through the liberation. American investigators hunt for priceless artifacts looted by the Germans. British intelligence will stop at nothing to hold the line against encroaching Communism, and Italian partisans hunt down fascist collaborators. Life is fast and violent, as former warring parties make common cause against the Russians. As the postwar world order unfolds, the borders of the new Europe are being hammered out.
Download or read book The Brink written by Marc Ambinder and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An informative and often enthralling book…in the appealing style of Tom Clancy” (Kirkus Reviews) about the 1983 war game that triggered a tense, brittle period of nuclear brinkmanship between the United States and the former Soviet Union. What happened in 1983 to make the Soviet Union so afraid of a potential nuclear strike from the United States that they sent mobile ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) into the field, placing them on a three-minute alert Marc Ambinder explains the anxious period between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, with the “Able Archer ’83” war game at the center of the tension. With astonishing and clarifying new details, he recounts the scary series of the close encounters that tested the limits of ordinary humans and powerful leaders alike. Ambinder provides a comprehensive and chilling account of the nuclear command and control process, from intelligence warnings to the composition of the nuclear codes themselves. And he affords glimpses into the secret world of a preemptive electronic attack that scared the Soviet Union into action. Ambinder’s account reads like a thriller, recounting the spy-versus-spy games that kept both countries—and the world—in check. From geopolitics in Moscow and Washington, to sweat-caked soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Cold War, to high-stakes war games across NATO and the Warsaw Pact, “Ambinder’s account of a serious threat of global annihilation…is spellbinding…a masterpiece of recent history” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). The Brink serves as the definitive intelligence, nuclear, and national security history of one of the most precarious times in recent memory and “shows the consequences of nuclear buildups, sometimes-careless language, and nervous leaders. Now, more than ever, those consequences matter” (USA TODAY).
Download or read book Khrushchev s Cold War The Inside Story of an American Adversary written by Aleksandr Fursenko and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-10-25 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Contains unsettling insights into some of the most dangerous geopolitical crises of the time.”—The Economist This acclaimed study from the authors of “One Hell of a Gamble” brings to life head-to-head confrontations between the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Drawing on their unrivaled access to Politburo and KGB materials, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali combine new insights into the Cuban missile crisis as well as startling narratives of the contests for Suez, Iraq, Berlin, and Southeast Asia, with vivid portraits of leaders who challenged Moscow and Washington. Khrushchev’s Cold War provides a gripping history of the crisis years of the Cold War.
Download or read book Arms and Influence written by Thomas C. Schelling and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a brilliant and hardheaded book. It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in stereotypes and moral attitudinizing.”—Gordon A. Craig, New York Times Book Review Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s new introduction to the work shows how Schelling’s framework—conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction—still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.
Download or read book Belligerents Brinkmanship and the Big Stick written by John M. Dobson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopedia offers authoritative coverage of the concepts, traditions, events, and individuals that shaped United States' foreign relations from the American Revolution to the present. Belligerents, Brinkmanship, and the Big Stick: A Historical Encyclopedia of American Diplomatic Concepts is the first comprehensive encyclopedic work to focus specifically on America's extraordinary history of political engagement with the world. With hundreds of alphabetically organized entries and a rich collection of primary sources, it offers a unique way of understanding the centrality of diplomacy and the role of foreign relations throughout U.S. history. The encyclopedia is divided into five chronological sections, each containing a brief introduction, topical entries, biographical portraits, and representative documents. It is designed to help readers gain a deeper understanding of both general ideas as well as specific policies like the Monroe Doctrine, the Open Door Policy, and Shuttle Diplomacy. By examining seminal events, important ideas, and individual contributions in the context of U.S. history, the encyclopedia reveals the underlying traditions and motivations of American foreign policy as it has evolved over time.
Download or read book Kennedy s Wars Liberal Anti Communism 2 Beyond Massive Retaliation 3 The Third World Alternative 4 Policies and People Section 2 Berlin and Nuclear Statagy 5 The New Strategy 6 To Vienna and Back 7 The Berlin Anomaly 8 A Contest of Resolve 9 The Wall 10 Tests and Tension 11 Flexible Resp written by Lawrence Freedman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'Kennedy's Wars' noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace.
Download or read book A Hard and Bitter Peace written by Edward H. Judge and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive text provides a balanced survey of the Cold War in a genuinely global framework. Presenting not only Soviet and Western perspectives, but also the outlooks of peoples and leaders throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, Edward H. Judge and John W. Langdon offer in-depth treatment of imperialism, anti-imperialism, decolonization, national liberation struggles, and their Cold War connections. The authors explore the background and context for all major developments during the era, as well as capsule biographies and character analyses of key figures. Tracing the Cold War from its roots in East–West tensions before and during World War II through its origins in the immediate postwar era, the book concludes with the Cold War’s legacy, which continues today. Written in a clear and lively style, this compelling text will bring the era to life for readers who didn’t experience its dramas and crises directly.
Download or read book Eisenhower and the Cold War written by Robert A. Divine and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1981 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that Eisenhower was a stronger president than previously believed and was responsible for many important accomplishments in the area of foreign policy and the quest for peace.
Download or read book Between Peace and War written by Richard Ned Lebow and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an updated edition of the now-classic original of the same title. It has three new substantial chapters: a prologue, a chapter on new evidence on World War I, and an epilogue. The updated edition contains the now-famous typology of international crisis, the original critique of deterrence, the emphasis on agency, and the turn to political psychology to explain sharp departures from rational policy-making. The new chapters update and reevaluate these arguments and approach a critical hindsight assessment in light of post-Cold War developments.
Download or read book 1983 written by Taylor Downing and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting, real-life thriller about 1983--the year tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly brought the world to the point of nuclear Armageddon The year 1983 was an extremely dangerous one--more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the United States, President Reagan vastly increased defense spending, described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," and launched the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative to shield the country from incoming missiles. Seeing all this, Yuri Andropov, the paranoid Soviet leader, became convinced that the US really meant to attack the Soviet Union and he put the KGB on high alert, looking for signs of an imminent nuclear attack. When a Soviet plane shot down a Korean civilian jet, Reagan described it as "a crime against humanity." And Moscow grew increasingly concerned about America's language and behavior. Would they attack? The temperature rose fast. In November the West launched a wargame exercise, codenamed "Abel Archer," that looked to the Soviets like the real thing. With Andropov's finger inching ever closer to the nuclear button, the world was truly on the brink. This is an extraordinary and largely unknown Cold War story of spies and double agents, of missiles being readied, intelligence failures, misunderstandings, and the panic of world leaders. With access to hundreds of astonishing new documents, Taylor Downing tells for the first time the gripping but true story of how near the world came to nuclear war in 1983.
Download or read book Cold War Island written by Michael Szonyi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-17 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A discussion of the history of the island of Quemoy during the Cold War.
