This issue begins with an article by Geraint Hughes, who examines the steps taken by British policymakers in the 1980s to respond to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Working with the United States and other Western allies, the British government supplied covert assistance to Afghan mujahadin guerrillas who were fighting against the Soviet Army. A few decades later, some analysts looked back at the covert assistance program and argued that it had been a mistake because it facilitated the rise of Islamic terrorist groups who were able to use Afghanistan as a base against the West. Hughes convincingly debunks these arguments and points out that British officials at the time were correct in their understanding of the reasons for the Soviet invasion. They were also correct in sensing that covert supplies of weapons and training would be crucial in enabling the guerrillas to withstand the Soviet onslaught. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her senior advisers concluded that a covert aid program would deny outright victory to the Soviet Union and was therefore well worth the risks.The next article, by Yu Yao, explains why the Communist regime in the People's Republic of China (PRC) began secretly gearing up for war with the United States and the Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang, or KMT) government on Taiwan in the summer of 1962. The sudden, large-scale buildup of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) in Fujian Province (across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan) and the mobilization of troops elsewhere in the PRC stemmed from Beijing's mistaken perception at the time that the U.S. government was giving a green light to the KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek for an invasion of the mainland. As it became clear that U.S. officials were restraining, rather than inciting, the KMT, the PLA scaled back its war mobilization. Coming amid the catastrophic starvation engendered by Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward policy, the episode deepened the splits at the upper levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao used the situation to consolidate his leadership of the CCP, to radicalize his policies both at home and abroad, and to pursue more aggressive policies vis-à-vis India, the USSR, and the U.S. presence in Vietnam.The next article, by Alex Spelling, discusses the way the Cold War both obstructed and facilitated the belated U.S. ratification of the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical and biological weapons in military conflicts. He shows that U.S. military operations in Vietnam proved to be the main obstacle because U.S. commanders wanted leeway to use certain tear gases and herbicides against the Vietnamese Communists that potentially could have been outlawed under the Geneva Protocol. By contrast, the Nixon administration's desire to achieve an agreement that would ban biological weapons was conducive to a new push for U.S. ratification of the Geneva Protocol. These conflicting pressures gave rise to proposed compromises (e.g., ratification with conditions attached allowing tear gases for riot control), but obstacles continued to arise within the executive branch and in executive-congressional relations. Not until January 1975, under the new administration of Gerald R. Ford, did the United States take necessary steps to ratify the Geneva Protocol. By then, key figures who wanted continued leeway to use tear gases and herbicides had been eclipsed by influential members of the U.S. Senate and non-governmental organizations who stressed the political benefits of ratification.The next article, by Joseph Oldham, recounts the many abortive efforts from the mid-1970s to 1980 to develop a biopic film on the notorious Soviet spy H. A. R. (Kim) Philby, who rose to crucial high-level posts in the UK's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6) even as he betrayed his country and knowingly consigned many people to torture and execution. The article draws on numerous film industry collections, especially the personal papers of Arthur Hopcraft, the gifted British scriptwriter who had been commissioned to draft a script for the film. Hopcraft completed many versions of the script, altering them to respond to criticism and suggestions he received concerning Philby's motives and psychological make-up. Hopcraft achieved great success in adapting John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a novel loosely inspired by the Philby case, for a BBC television series in 1979, but the Philby biopic ultimately was abandoned when agreement among the various parties proved unattainable. The basic problem was that Philby revealed almost nothing truthful about himself and falsified a great deal, and it was therefore almost impossible to generate a non-fiction biopic that would both appeal to wide audiences and satisfy experts on the case.The next article, by John Bernell White, Jr., traces the relationship between Zbigniew Brzezinski and William E. Griffith. Brzezinski started out as an academic expert on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after emigrating to Canada and then the United States from his native Poland and completing his degrees in his mid-20s at McGill University and Harvard University. Griffith, who was eight years older and served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, worked after the war in senior positions at Radio Free Europe and then began a long academic career, mostly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Brzezinski and Griffith first met in the 1950s and, in addition to becoming friends, developed similar outlooks about Communist countries and the best direction for U.S. policy toward the Soviet bloc. In a widely read article in Foreign Affairs in 1961, the two men outlined a strategy of “peaceful engagement” for U.S. relations with East European countries. They remained (in Brzezinski's words) “pioneers” and “allies” in subsequent years, and after Brzezinski was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be U.S. national security adviser, he enlisted Griffith as an influential senior consultant. The fruitful partnership and friendship between the two lasted until Griffith's death in 1998.The final main article, by Thamyris Almeida, analyzes the various coalitions and factors that gave rise to educational television in Brazil against the backdrop of the Cold War. Various groups and experts inside and outside Brazil were able to cite benefits for hemispheric Cold War concerns as they overcame opposition to the development of mass television programming (opposition stemming from the medium's alleged impact on children). Ironically, the advent of military rule in Brazil in 1964 facilitated, rather than hindered, the rise of mass educational television. But with or without changes in Brazilian politics, the Cold War ultimately took precedence in giving impetus to this crucial new medium.The issue then turns to a forum examining a book published by Sophie Quinn-Judge, a long-time expert on Southeast Asia. Her book considers whether there were viable options to forge a “third force” (or “third way” or “third segment”) that would have allowed for the peaceful reunification of Vietnam and an end to the destructive conflict. She believes that such options could have borne fruit, but the two commentators in the forum—James G. Hershberg and Ang Cheng Guan—are more skeptical, not least because the Vietnamese Communists (with strong encouragement from the PRC) were determined to defeat U.S. and South Vietnamese forces on the battlefield, bringing the whole of Vietnam under Communist rule through force. The tragic outcome was a Communist dictatorship whose brutal policies sparked the exodus of many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians.In a review essay, Oleg Beyda of Melbourne University explores a recently published book by Michael David-Fox, Crucibles of Power. Focusing on the Soviet city of Smolensk, the book recounts the often terrible choices facing people who had to live under Stalinism and then Nazi occupation. Beyda's analysis of the dynamics of power in these circumstances provides important context for understanding why people's choices differed so starkly. The book, and Beyda's close examination of it, touch on many of the same issues covered by László Borhi in his landmark book Survival Under Dictatorships: Life and Death in Nazi and Communist Regimes, published in 2024. Anyone who wants to understand the behavior of individuals under extreme conditions should read both books.The issue closes with our usual section of shorter book reviews.
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