Making a Cold War in the Near East: Turkey and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1947

During the post-war negotiations in the years of 1945 and 1946, the Soviets launched a bitter war of nerves against Turkey in order to establish a military base in Istanbul and share control of the Straits. It was crucial for Britain that the USSR be prevented from gaining any influence in Turkey. However, as Britain was in no position to support Turkey financially, American authorities encouraged by London and Ankara took over the responsibility for Turkey. This articles examines the Great Powers rivalry over Turkey and Turkey’s response to it. It argues that regional factors other than US–Soviet confrontation, such as Turkey’s security search against the Soviets, also played a crucial part in starting the Cold War in the Near East.     

Anglo–American Relations and the Cold War in 1950

1950 was a crisis year in the Cold War and saw a growing rift between the United Kingdom and the United States over how best to wage it. It was in the Far East that the most dangerous crisis occurred. Britain recognised the People's Republic of China, not only because the Communist regime clearly controlled the mainland, but also because it was felt that it was not irretrievably linked to the Soviet Union. The United States, on the other hand, regarded China as a Soviet satellite and displayed a consistently hostile attitude towards it. The situation worsened with the outbreak of the Korean War in June. Although the United States and Britain agreed that the invasion of South Korea must be repelled, the British were anxious not to broaden the conflict, whilst the Americans used it as a stick to beat the Chinese. The war also prompted accelerated rearmament and the Americans favoured the rearmament of West Germany. Things came to a head in November, with the large-scale Chinese intervention in Korea, followed in early December by a visit to Washington by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. The British believed that the United States had already concluded that a global war was inevitable, whereas they wished to avoid it if possible. As this article shows, the events of 1950 amply demonstrated the subordinate position of Britain in the “special relationship.”     

Civil War Diffusion and the Emergence of Militant Groups, 1960–2001

In this research note, I argue that scholars of the international diffusion of civil conflict would benefit from directly measuring rebel mobilization prior to the onset of civil war. To better understand the way in which international processes facilitate dissidents overcoming the collective action problem inherent in rebellion, I focus on militant organizations and model the timing of their emergence. I use several data sets on militant groups and violent nonstate actors and rely on Buhaug and Gleditsch’s (2008) causal framework to examine how international conditions predict militant group emergence. While Buhaug and Gleditsch conclude that civil war diffusion is primarily a function of internal conflict in neighboring states, once militant group emergence is substituted in the dependent variable, I observe that global conditions affect rebel collective action. A final selection model links militant groups with civil conflict onset and demonstrates the variable performance of diffusion effects. The results indicate that many rebels mobilize in response to more global events and then escalate their behavior in response to local conditions.     

Exit Britain: British Withdrawal From the Palestine Mandate in the Early Cold War, 1947–1948

The British decision to withdraw from the Palestine mandate in 1947–1948 may at first glance appear contradictory to British strategic interests. The Middle East and Palestine were vital to Britain's Cold War strategy, and its government repeatedly stated the need for a continued British presence in the region to prevent Soviet expansion. Why then withdraw from Palestine just as the Cold War started? The traditional explanation is that Britain withdrew because of economic exhaustion and its inability to remain a great power. But this article shows that economic and strategic considerations both contributed to the decision to withdraw. Britain's involvement in Palestine threatened to undermine its relations with the independent Arab states, and the decision to withdraw from Palestine was therefore taken in the hope that this would secure Britain's position in the rest of the Middle East.     

“Trade with the Devil”: Rubber,Cold War Embargo,and US–Indonesian Relations, 1951–1956

This article examines the issue of rubber in US–Indonesian relations in the 1950s. Indonesia, attempting to promote its economic development, sought to sell natural rubber to the Communist People's Republic of China. In so doing, it risked alienating the United States, which for its part led anti-PRC trade embargo efforts while at that same time attempting to woo Third World neutrals such as Indonesia. The article explores the course and complexities of this issue on both sides, and concludes that, in the end, Washington decided that enforcing an increasingly questionable rubber embargo was not worth a rupture in relations with Jakarta. It also finds that President Eisenhower, although keenly aware of the issues at stake, did not provide the decisive leadership that would allow Washington to take the initiative, rather than react to circumstances, regarding the sale of rubber to the People's Republic of China.     

Accredited to Africa: British diplomatic representation and African experience,c. 1960–95

This article examines the 1960 soviet attack on Dag Hammarskjold and its proposal to reform the office of the UN Secretary-General into a troika and the Soviet lines, the article seeks to show that the British had sufficiant concerns about the direction Hammarskjold was taking the office of Secretary-General to be more in line with Soviet attitudes than they would have been willing to admit publicly. British support for Hammarskjold in the Congo crisis was not unqualified and the article notes that following Hammarskjold's death, it was not Britain's interest to see Hammarskjold's successor being given the political freedom he had enjoyed.     

Power Transitions,Status Dissatisfaction,and War: The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895

Although power transition theory offers a powerful model of international conflict, scholars have not adequately operationalized the theory's key variable of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the status quo. We argue that status dissatisfaction is an important component of a rising state's overall dissatisfaction with the system. We apply our revised power transition framework to the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War. Japan's revisionist foreign policy was driven by economic and security threats posed by China's control over Korea, dissatisfaction with Japan's place in the China-dominated East Asian hierarchy, the hope for recognition as a great power by the West, status-related domestic pressures, and by belief change that was endogenous to shifting power. Despite several earlier crises, Japan made the decision for war only after it had achieved parity with China, which is consistent with power transition theory's hypothesis that under conditions of shifting power, parity is a necessary condition for war.     

Not the Third World War: The Heathrow Succession Rights Affair and Anglo–American Relations 1990–1991

Whilst the British and Americans expended blood and treasure together in the Kuwaiti desert in 1991, bureaucratic blood from both sides was also visible on carpets in London and Washington. The reason was attempts to replace the access to Heathrow airport of two failing airlines, Pan American World Airways and Trans World Airlines, with American and United Airlines. This succession rights affair was one of the most difficult diplomatic negotiations ever on civil aviation between the United States and Britain. How and why that controversy developed, its resolution, and what impact on, and feedback from, the broader Anglo–American relationship that it had are the main concerns of this analysis.     

The United States–EURATOM Agreement of 1958: The Cold War Impact

Drawing on declassified sources, this analysis examines how the Cold War influenced United States policy towards the creation of the European Atomic Energy Community [EURATOM]. In the 1950s, “the peaceful atom” became a crucial sector of the Cold War. To maintain American nuclear leadership, the Dwight Eisenhower Administration invited Western Europeans to enter into an active collaboration with the United States on peaceful uses of atomic energy. The United States encouraged the creation of EURATOM by promising that the Community would obtain more assistance in the nuclear field than any individual state. The Soviet launch of Sputnik provided additional impetus to the signing of the United States–EURATOM agreement, having strengthened American interest in a joint programme with EURATOM that would bring together American and Western European scientific and technical resources to counter the Soviet Union. The exegesis contributes to recent studies on the interaction between the Cold War and European integration.     

Civil War Settlements,Size of Governing Coalition,and Durability of Peace in Post–Civil War States

We examine the ways in which the size of the governing coalition in a post–civil war state affects the durability of the peace. Previous studies relate the durability of the peace to the outcome of the civil war, the extent and forms of power-sharing arrangements, and the role of third-party security guarantors. We argue that the way conflict terminates and the power-sharing agreements between former protagonists structure the composition of governing coalition in the post–civil war state. Any settlement to civil war that broadens the size of the governing coalition should increase actors' incentives to sustain the peace rather than renew the armed conflict. Peace is more likely to fail where the governing coalition is smaller because those excluded from the governing coalition have little to lose from resuming armed rebellion. To test these propositions, we analyze data on post–civil war peace spells from 1946–2005.