The Global 1989
Last night at IDEAS, a roundtable of leading academics debated a new edited volume: The Global 1989. One of the editors, Dr George Lawson, explores the ways in which the central dynamics of contemporary world politics have been shaped, for better or worse, by the social forces unleashed in Central and Eastern Europe some twenty years ago.
Afghanistan: more echoes of the Soviet experience
Artemy Kalinovsky on the changing strategy in Afghanistan
Neo-Cons, having Declared History's End, Try to Reclaim the Past
Inderjeet Parmar assesses the recent trend among neoconservatives for claiming historical successes as their own. Was the Marshall Plan a neocon policy?
The Wall: On the Supposedly Sensational Documents from the Gorbachev Archive
Artemy Kalinovsky discusses Pavel Stroilov, who claims to be sitting on a treasure trove of archival documents from the Gorbachev federation, which he stole by manipulating the computer system there. He claims, further, that these documents have been unavailable to other researchers, and that they reveal a dark side to Gorbachev.
Turmoil in Poland
On the morning of 10 April a Polish plane carrying the Polish President and a high ranking team of politicians and military men, due to land in Smolensk, crashed killing all those on board. The event marks the end of an estrangement between Poland and Russia which can be traced to the outbreak of the Second World War. It also might become the beginning of what most hope will be a period of constructive co-existence which will be marked by realpolitik rather than nationalist posturing.
Transatlantia: "Living in the Real World: The Nuclear Posture Review"
by James Cameron
“We live in a real world, not a virtual world” was Nicolas Sarkozy's veiled riposte to Barack Obama's vision of a globe free from nuclear weapons, articulated in his Prague speech of April 2009. Some commentators on the right are echoing this criticism in response to the administration's declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), “that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”
The Global 1989?
George Lawson: As we approach the twentieth anniversary of ‘1989 and all that’, it might be worth ducking for cover. Lest we forget, the year ‘1989’ has become something of a cliché, caught in a sense of its own triumphalism, considered by all and sundry (or at least by most) to be the ur-contemporary demarcation point in world historical time, a normative, analytical and empirical referent point par excellence.
Resource Article - The End of the Cold War
Nick Kitchen: The end of the Cold War is arguably the most important event to hit the discipline of international relations since the first chair in the subject was created at Aberystwyth in 1919. Academics in the field almost universally failed to predict it and our theories didn't appear to explain it, and this spawned both heated debate and new thinking within the field. What follows is a brief sketch with pointers to resources on the topic - some well known, others less so.
US-Russian Relations and Disarmament|
Sergey Radchenko: Conclusion of a nuclear arms deal has infused US-Russian relations with a new sense of optimism reminiscent of the late 1980s amid indications that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's bid to "reset" relations with Moscow has borne fruit, and the phantom of a new "Cold War," perceived by gloomy pundits in recent times, has faded at last.
North Korean Nuclear Test|
Situational Analysis, Sergey Radchenko: North Korea's nuclear test serves several purposes. Its first purpose is to bolster the flagging legitimacy of the regime and, by drumming up war hysteria, achieve domestic mobilization in the face of mounting internal difficulties. Throughout North Korea's turbulent history, the regime has periodically resorted to war hysteria, attimes on even grander scale than what we have recently seen.