Browsing by Subject "Cold War"
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Item A NEW COLD WAR? A RESURGENT RUSSIA AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR REGIONAL AND GLOBAL SECURITYTanner, Ashley N.; Ehlers, Robert S; Dailey, Jeffrey D; Taylor, William A; Lamberson, Christine MRecent events in Eastern Europe and the Middle East have prompted world leaders to opine that the world is entering a new Cold War. These concerns are based on the recent invasions of Crimea and Ukraine, action in Syria, Russian rhetoric, and military posturing by both sides. Russian history, strategy, and strategic culture provide context for the current state of affairs. These do not, however, guarantee that the present implementation of strategy will mirror the past and that the goals are to return to a Soviet-style, Cold War-era, bipolar world order. The issue is more complex then our own cognitive biases have allowed us to comprehend. Russia is resurgent and does pose a threat to stability, but its goal is neither a Cold War nor a hot war. Rather, it seeks to be treated as an equal and to reassert a greater level of control and influence over its former lands.Item Burden of the Cold War: The George H.W. Bush Administration and El Salvador(2012-02-14) Arandia, Sebastian ReneAt the start of the George H.W. Bush administration, American involvement in El Salvador?s civil war, one of the last Cold War battlegrounds, had disappeared from the foreign policy agenda. However, two events in November 1989 shattered the bipartisan consensus on US policy toward El Salvador: the failure of the FMLN?s largest military offensive of the war and the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the Salvadoran military, the FAES. Despite more than one billion dollars in US military assistance, the war had stalemated, promoting both sides to seek a negotiated political settlement mediated by the United Nations. The Jesuit murders demonstrated the failure of the policy of promoting respect for democracy and human rights and revived the debate in Congress over US aid to El Salvador. This thesis argues that the Bush administration sought to remove the burden of El Salvador from its foreign policy agenda by actively pushing for the investigation and prosecution of the Jesuit case and fully supporting the UN-mediated peace process. Using recently declassified government documents from the George Bush Presidential Library, this thesis will examine how the Bush administration fundamentally changed US policy toward El Salvador. Administration officials carried out an unprecedented campaign to pressure the FAES to investigate the Jesuit murders and bring the killers to justice while simultaneously attempting to prevent Congress from cutting American military assistance. The Bush administration changed the objective of its El Salvador policy from military victory over the guerrillas to a negotiated political settlement. The US facilitated the peace process by pressuring the Salvadoran government and the FMLN to negotiate in good faith and accept compromises. When both sides signed a comprehensive peace agreement on January 16, 1992, the burden of El Salvador was lifted.Item Capitalizing on Castro : Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States, 1959-1969(2012-05) Keller, Renata Nicole; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-This dissertation explores the central paradox of Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States in the decade following the Cuban Revolution--why did a government that cooperated with the CIA and practiced conservative domestic policies defend Castro's communist regime? It uses new sources to prove that historians' previous focus on the foreign and ideological influences on Mexico's relations with Cuba was misplaced, and that the most important factor was fear of the domestic Left. It argues that Mexican leaders capitalized upon their country's "special relationship" with Castro as part of their efforts to maintain control over restive leftist sectors of the Mexican population. This project uses new sources to illuminate how perceptions of threat shaped Mexico's foreign and domestic politics. In 2002, the Mexican government declassified the records of the two most important intelligence organizations--the Department of Federal Security and the Department of Political and Social Investigations. The files contain the information that Mexico's presidents received about potential dangers to their regime. They reveal that Mexican leaders overestimated the centralization, organization, and coordination of leftist groups, and in so doing gave them more influence over policy than their actual numbers or resources logically should have afforded. The dissertation uses the concept of threat perception as an analytic and organizational tool. Each chapter considers a different potential source of danger to the Mexican regime in the context of the Cold War and the country's relations with Cuba. For the sake of clarity, it breaks the threats into the categories of individual, national, and international, even though these subjective categories may blend into one another throughout the course of the analysis. The first chapter begins with an individual threat: Lázaro Cárdenas, a powerful former president who became one of Fidel Castro's most dedicated supporters. The next three chapters analyze threats on the national level by looking at the domestic groups that Mexican leaders perceived to be the greatest dangers to their regime. The final two chapters move to the international level and examine the roles of Cuba and the United States. As a whole, this study of the connections between Mexico's foreign and domestic politics makes a significant and timely contribution to the historiographies of modern Mexico, U.S.-Latin American relations, and the Cold War.Item Clipping the Eagle's Wings: The Limiting of the Korean Air War, 1950-1953(2013-03-21) Horky, Roger KarlPurpose: This work examines the transition in aerial warfare that took place during the Korean War (1950-1953). Before the conflict, air power was conceived of primarily an instrument of unlimited, or total, warfare. Yet Korea, and all subsequent air wars, have been limited. The transitional nature of the Korean air war has not yet been adequately explored by historians. Methods: The story of this shift is presented in two parts, the first examining the doctrines of the United States Air Force (USAF) immediately before the Korean War, the second comparing them to the USAF?s actual campaigns in Korea. This focus on the USAF reflects both its status as the principal air service in Korea and its influence on the theories and doctrines of all air arms in the post-World War Two era. The USAF?s planning immediately before the Korean War focused on its role in a possible total war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was thus unprepared and ill-equipped for the limited war in Korea and had to improvise its operations there. Findings: The inability of the USAF to conduct an unlimited war in Korea frustrated many Americans, who could not understand the political considerations that limited the conflict, seeing only that the USAF, the world?s most powerful air arm, was prevented from using all of its resources. While the resulting controversy contributed to a change of administration in the United States, it had less of an effect on the USAF. After the Korean War ended, its leadership continued to focus on unlimited war, dismissing the conflict as an aberration from which little about the operation of aircraft in war could be learned. Conclusions: The failure to recognize the lessons of the Korean War has had serious consequences. There have been no total wars since 1945; every air war of the past sixty years has been limited. Limited warfare is defined by restrictions on air power. The USAF and other air arms were slow to adapt to the changing conditions. The Korean War was a more significant event in the history of aerial warfare than is generally appreciated.Item Early Cold War Summits: Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, and Khrushchev, 1959 and 1960(2007-08) Whitefield, Jay Parker; Reckner, James R.; Milam, RonIn 1959 and 1960, three historic summits occurred during the Cold War. In 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon traveled to the Soviet Union and met with Nikita Khrushchev. Later that same year, Khrushchev visited the United States and met with President Dwight Eisenhower. Less than two years later, President John Kennedy met Khrushchev in Vienna. This thesis argues that, although no accords were reached, all three of these summits eased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and helped avoid nuclear war between the two superpowers.Item From Forgotten Man to Elder Statesman: Richard Nixon and Masculine Ideologies in American Political Culture in the Cold War(2011-05) Robertson, Brian R; Hart, Justin; Willett, Julie; McBee, Randy D.; Cunningham, Sean; Baake, KenWithin the growing field of new cultural history and Cold War studies, Richard Nixon is an ideal approach to understanding the masculine ideologies, in their prescriptive and proscriptive state, that shaped American perceptions of manhood in the twentieth century. The prescriptive state examines the cultural roots of Cold War masculinity at the end of the nineteenth century and the means by which the future President, through work, leisure, sports, and war hoped to evolve from boyhood to manhood. Nixon, like many men from the period, believed boys achieved manhood through physical assertion, violent punishments, physical and emotional struggle, and, of course, through his favorite pastime, sports. At first glance, Nixon may seem to be an odd choice. After all, he’s largely remembered for his profuse sweating, his five o’clock shadow, the Watergate scandal, his Vietnam policies, the opening of China, and his general awkwardness in social settings. Throughout the twentieth century, the masculine ideal alternated between mythic figures such as the cowboy, the rugged outdoorsman, the athlete, the selfless soldier, and the economically independent man. At various times during his lifetime, Nixon conformed to various constructs, which included the forgotten man, the anticommunist, the square, the hardhat, and conceptions of hardheaded détente. In the end, Nixon’s struggle to conform to these paradigms contributed to the destruction of his presidency and his rebirth as elder statesman during the final years of the Cold War.Item Funding footprints : U.S. State Department sponsorship of international dance tours, 1962-2009(2010-05) Croft, Clare Holloway; Canning, Charlotte, 1964-; Dolan, Jill, 1957-; Paredez, Deborah; Kackman, Michael; Foster, SusanSince the middle of the twentieth century, American dance artists have presented complicated images of American identity to world audiences, as dance companies traveled abroad under the auspices of the US State Department. This dissertation uses oral history interviews, archival research, and performance analysis to investigate how dancers navigated their status as official American ambassadors in the Cold War and the years following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. Dance companies worked and performed in international sites, enacting messages of American democratic superiority, while individual dancers re-interpreted the contours of American identity through personal encounters with local artists and arts practices. The dancers’ memories of government-sponsored tours re-insert the American artist into American diplomatic history, prompting a reconsideration of dancers not just as diplomatic tools working to persuade global audiences, but as creative thinkers re-imagining what it means to be American. This dissertation begins in the late 1950s, as the State Department began discussing appropriate dance companies to send to the Soviet Union, as part of the performing arts initiatives that began in 1954 under the direction of President Dwight Eisenhower. The dissertation concludes by examining more recent dance in diplomacy programs initiated in 2003, coinciding with the US invasion of Iraq. My analysis considers New York City Ballet’s 1962 tour of the Soviet Union, where the company performed programs that included George Balanchine’s Serenade (1934), Agon (1957), and Western Symphony (1954), and Jerome Robbins’ Interplay (1945) during the heightened global anxieties of the Cuban Missile Crisis. My analysis of Ailey’s 1967 tour of nine African countries focuses primarily on Revelations (1960), which closed every program on the tour. Moving into the twenty-first century, I analyze A Slipping Glimpse (2007), a collaboration between Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and Tansuree Shankar Dance Company, which began as a US State Department-sponsored 2003 residency in Kolkata. To explore each tour, I consider government goals documented in archived minutes from artist selection panels; dancers’ memories of the tours, which I collected in personal interviews conducted between 2007 and 2009; and performance analysis of the pieces that traveled on each tour.Item The good guys win : Ronald Reagan, Tom Clancy, and the transformation of national security(2015-05) Griffin, Benjamin, M.A.; Suri, Jeremi; Lawrence, MarkThis paper examines the relationship between popular culture and policy. It argues that popular culture serves to make policy legible to a broad audience and exerts influence on policy makers themselves. It examines the way the administration of Ronald Reagan made use of the novels of Tom Clancy to build support for its national security agenda, how the public received the works, and in turn how the novels reinforced Reagan's confidence in his policy. The paper also explores how Reagan developed his political ideology and how his background informed the method in which he received, and then presented information. It argues that Reagan was the driving ideological force in his administration.Item Land of the in-between : modern architecture and the State in socialist Yugoslavia, 1945-65(2009-05) Kulić, Vladimir; Udovički-Selb, DaniloLand of the in-between explores how modern architecture responded to demands for political and ideological representation during the Cold War using socialist Yugoslavia as a case-study. Self-proclaimed as universal and abstract, modernism acquired a variety of specific meanings hidden behind seemingly neutral forms that, however, frequently contained decidedly political dimensions. During the Cold War, Yugoslavia deliberately positioned itself halfway between the Eastern and Western blocs, thus representing an excellent case for a study of shifting political meanings ascribed to architecture at that time. This dissertation follows two lines of investigation: transformations of architectural profession, and changes in the modes of architectural representation of the state. Consequences of two key moments are explored: the rise to power of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1945, and its expulsion from the Soviet bloc in 1948. These two moments correspond to two distinct phases that shaped architecture in socialist Yugoslavia: a period of intense Stalinization immediately after WW II, and a period of gradual liberalization after the country's sudden break-up with the Soviet Union. During the short-lived Stalinist period, the regime subjected Yugoslav culture to the doctrine of Socialist Realism. But after 1948, the state relaxed its iron grip, allowing for a degree of intellectual and artistic freedom. At the same time, Yugoslavia reestablished friendly relations with the West, opening itself to influences of Western culture. The revival of modern architecture that followed was in return instrumental in reinforcing Yugoslavia's new image of a reformed Communist country. Land of the in-between argues that Yugoslavia's political shifts gave rise to a uniquely hybrid architectural culture. It combined Communist ideology with Western aesthetic and technological influences to create a mix that complicated the common black and white picture of the Cold War. Architecture in socialist Yugoslavia thus operated within a complex framework of shifting political and cultural paradigms whose contrasts highlight the meanings that post-World War II modernism assumed on a global scale.Item Making American: Constitutive Rhetoric in the Cold War(2011-10-21) Thorpe, MarthaConstitutive rhetoric theory posits that community identity is rhetorically created. There are various approaches to constitutive rhetoric, though most rhetoricians have chosen to focus on the works of Maurice Charland and Michael McGee, whose approaches focus on audience so much that often the rhetor has no agency. This project blends their ideas with those of James Boyd White to create works of criticism that highlight an increased amount of agency for the rhetor. As examples, I have chosen four case studies from the year 1954: the Brown v. Board decision, the Army-McCarthy hearing (specifically McCarthy's heated exchange with Joe Welch), the addition of "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, and the first article in the first dated issue of Playboy. Each chapter is designed to provide an example of what a constitutive analysis in the style of White would look like. The project begins with a description of the theories and analyses, including constitutive rhetoric, postmodernism, and textual analysis. The Brown v. Board analysis begins with a brief history of the case, moves to a rhetorical analysis, and then connects the analysis to ideas of constitutive rhetoric. The McCarthy sections examines the "Have you no sense of decency?" exchange between Welch and McCarthy. It begins with a brief explanation of McCarthy's reputation, and then utilizes an understanding of conspiracy rhetoric in the rhetorical analysis in order to explain McCarthy's constitutive efforts. The Pledge of Allegiance analysis provides a brief a summary of the Congressional arguments made to add the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, then provides a textual analysis of the Pledge (with the addition), emphasizing the power of those words, especially given the epideictic nature of the Pledge. The Playboy research focuses on the first 1954 article, which directly addresses the question of American identity. The article is contextualized with Hugh Hefner's self-proclaimed Philosophy of Playboy. Finally, all of these case studies are tied together again with further explanations of constitutive rhetoric, showing that White's understanding of constitutive rhetoric can be used to bolster Charland and McGee's in order to give agency to the rhetor.Item Media cold warriors of Operation Pedro Pan : examining the impact of U.S. Cold War rhetoric on contemporary U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba(2011-05) Vail, Meghan Elizabeth; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna"Media cold warriors of Operation Pedro Pan" is a case study in which I examine the impact of 1960s Cold War rhetoric on contemporary U.S.-Cuba policy. In my report, I contextualize the 1960s covert U.S. endeavor Operation Pedro Pan and draw parallels between the media portrayals of Pedro Pan children from the 60s and the discourse utilized by adult Pedro Panes today to market their immigration experience to contemporary voters and younger generations of Cuban Americans. Operation Pedro Pan was intended to undermine the Castro Government and accomplish democracy in 1960s Cuba. I argue, however, that because of the contemporary publicity surrounding Pedro Panes and their use of the same Cold War rhetoric to characterize their immigration experiences, the children of Operation Pedro Pan will ultimately prevent the same achievement of democracy in Cuba that the covert endeavor purported to accomplish in the 1960s.Item Mutually assured construction : resurrecting the West Texas missile silos(2016-05) East, Andrew Joseph; Dahlby, Tracy; Brenner, RobertA group of enthusiasts near Abilene, Texas are turning decommissioned, Cold War-era nuclear missile silos into homes, doomsday shelters, historical monuments and businesses, offering a unique glimpse into the blue-collar, do-it-yourself psyche of a region of Texas forged during the Cold War.Item Pan-American dreams : art, politics, and museum-making at the OAS, 1948-1976(2012-12) Wellen, Michael Gordon; Giunta, Andrea; Barnitz, Jacqueline; Guridy, Frank; Reynolds, Ann; Smith, CheriseIn the 1950s and 1960s, the Organization of American States (OAS), a multinational political organization headquartered in Washington, DC, attempted to mediate U.S.-Latin American political and cultural relations. This dissertation traces how, in the United States, Latin American art emerged as a field of art historical study and exhibition via the activities of the OAS. I center my analysis on José Gómez Sicre and Rafael Squirru, two prominent curators who influenced the circulation of Latin American art during the Cold War. Part I focuses on Gómez Sicre, who served as head curator at the OAS from 1946 to 1981 and who founded the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976. I offer an analysis of Gómez Sicre’s aesthetic tastes, contextualizing them in relation to his contemporaries Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Marta Traba, and Jorge Romero Brest. I also discuss his efforts to build a network of art centers across the Americas, indicating how his activities fed into a Cold War struggle around notions of the “intellectual.” Part II examines the activities of poet and art critic Rafael Squirru, who served as Director of Cultural Affairs of the OAS from 1963 to 1970 and who theorized Latin American art in terms of the “new man.” I reconstruct how the phrase “new man” became a point of ideological conflict in the 1960s in a battle between Squirru and his political rival, Ernesto Ché Guevara. Throughout this dissertation, I indicate how Gómez Sicre and Squirru framed modern art within different Pan-American dreams of future world prosperity, equality, and cooperation. By examining the socio-political implications behind those dreams, I reveal the structures and limits of power shaping their influence during the Cold War. My study concentrates on the period from the founding of the OAS in 1948 to the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976, and I contend that the legacies of Pan-Americanism continue to affect the field of Latin American art today.Item Precarious paths to freedom : the United States, the Caribbean Basin, & the new politics of the Latin American Cold War, 1958-1968(2012-05) Miller, Aragorn Storm, 1972-; Lawrence, Mark Atwood; Brown, Jonathan C; Stoff, Michael B; Brands, H W; Dietz, Henry AAt first glance U.S. policy towards Latin America between 1958 and 1968 appears to have been a failure. Initiatives intended to promote democracy and economic development, and to insulate the hemisphere from the ideological and military struggles of the global Cold War, reaped only authoritarian regimes, uneven and sluggish economic growth, and political debates over the global systems of capitalism and communism that distracted attention from the unique and pressing problems of Latin America. A closer examination of the U.S.-Latin American relationship, however, reveals that the policies pursued by Washington succeeded in an unlikely arena, in the nation that seemed to matter most to U.S. policymakers. That nation was Venezuela, which emerged from generations of tyranny in 1958 only to become the focal point first for a right wing counterrevolutionary insurgency sponsored by the Dominican Republic, and then for a leftist guerrilla war that involved the competing ideologies of Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China. From 1958 onward U.S. policymakers identified Venezuela as a crucial bulwark against right-wing and left-wing extremism and as an ideal partner in the creation of a modernized, prosperous, and pro-U.S. Latin America. Venezuelan moderates, meanwhile, dexterously manipulated U.S. support to realize these goals and to eliminate the existential threats posed by domestic and foreign extremists. The study of the Washington-Caracas partnership from 1958 to 1968 illuminates the ways in which U.S. and Latin American policymakers could, under certain circumstances, solve the most vexing political, ideological, and military problems besetting the hemisphere through an innovative blend of democratic, diplomatic, and coercive means.Item Prisoners of War-Cold War Allies: The Anglo-American Relationship with Wehrmacht Generals(2012-02-14) Mallett, Derek RayThis study examines the relationship between British and American officials and the fifty-five Wehrmacht general officers who were held as prisoners of war in the United States during World War II. This relationship transformed as the war developed and new national security concerns emerged in the immediate postwar era. As largely evidenced by the records of the United States War Department and the British War Office, the transformation of this relationship illustrates two important points. First, despite some similarities, the respective priorities of British and American authorities regarding their POW general officers differed significantly. British officials consistently interrogated and eavesdropped on all of their senior officer prisoners, primarily seeking operational and tactical intelligence to aid the Allied war effort. By contrast, American officials initially had little regard for the value of Wehrmacht general officer POWs. Second, by the end of the war, admiration for the prowess of German officers and the German military tradition in particular, coupled with anxiety about Soviet intentions and the strength of the Red Army, drove Washington into a collaborative relationship with many of the Wehrmacht general officers in its custody. The evolution of America's national security concerns in the years immediately following the end of World War II impacted its policy governing the treatment of high-ranking prisoners of war.Item Sheltering society: civil defense in the United States, 1945-1963(Texas Tech University, 1999-08) Fehr, Kregg MichaelIn the 1990s, as in the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear weapons captured headlines. At the end of the decade, India and Pakistan engaged in a regional arms race that featured a number of underground detonations. In the spring of 1999, intelligence sources learned that the Chinese had been stealing nuclear secrets from the United States. And, throughout the Nineties, military theorists warned that the crumbling of the Soviet Empire, the economic difficulties of the Russian Republic, and the resultant sale of military hardware ensured that it was only a matter of time before a terrorist organization acquired a warhead and threatened the world with nuclear blackmail. Most Americans did not rush out to purchase bomb shelters at the end of the millennium or at midcentury. The apparent lack of concern for civilian preparedness measures during a nuclear era raises questions about the value of civil defense strategies, and the government and popular response to preparedness initiatives. In 1999, a few studies on civilian defense existed, but a new and more complete reassessment of American civil defense was needed.Item Testing the seams of the American dream : minority literature and film in the early Cold War(2011-08) Burns, Patricia Mary; Bremen, Brian A.; Wilks, Jennifer; Lee, Julia; Miller, Karl; Kackman, MichaelTesting the Seams of the American Dream: Minority Literature and Film in the Early Cold War delineates the concept of the liberal tolerance agenda in early Cold War. The liberal tolerance message of the U.S. government, the Democratic Party, and others endorsed racial tolerance and envisioned the possibility of a future free from racism and inequality. Filmmakers in often disseminated a liberal message similar to that of the politicians in the form of “race problem” films. My shows how these films and the liberal tolerance agenda as a whole promises racial equality to the racial minority in exchange for hard work, patriotism, education, and a belief in the majority culture. My first chapter, “Washing White the Racial Subject: Hollywood’s First Black Problem Film,” performs a close reading of Arthur Laurents 1946 play Home of the Brave, which features a Jewish American protagonist, in conjunction with a reading of the 1949 film version, which has an African American protagonist. The differences between the two texts reveal the slippages in the liberal tolerance agenda and signal the inability of filmmakers to envision racial equality on the big screen. “The American Institution and the Racial Subject,” my second chapter, discusses the 1949 film Pinky as well as Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gómez and Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter. All of these works suggests that the attainment of education promises entry into the mainstream by racial minorities, yet Paredes and Sone question this process by interpreting it as resulting in the dual segregation of their protagonists. My third chapter, “Earning and Cultural Capital: The Work that Determines Place,” looks at the promise that with hard work anyone can attain the American Dream. I show how the 1951 film Go for Broke!, Ann Petry’s The Street, and José Antonio Villarreal’s Pocho work to dispel this American myth. My final chapter, “The Regrets of Dissent: Blacklists and the Race Question,” examines the 1954 film Salt of the Earth alongside Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go and John Okada’s No-No Boy to reveal the dangerous mixture of race and dissent in this era.Item The Cold War and US-Guatemalan Relations During the 1960's(2012-10-19) Tomlins, David BrennanDuring the 1960's Guatemalan stability began to falter due to a political and social breakdown; guerilla violence and government repression emerged from this decade as common occurrences. In response to the instability within Guatemala, the US focused on providing significant financial aid to bolster a weak economy, while simultaneously working with the Guatemalan police and military to create more efficient and modern internal security forces capable of combating Communist subversion. Despite US attempts to foster stability, in 1963 President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes was removed from office by a military coup organized by his opponents within Guatemala. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration continued to support the Guatemalan government and continued to provide economic and military assistance. Despite US assistance, the internal social and political divisions in Guatemala continued to result in violence. In the midst of the escalating violence, elections were held in 1966 and the center left candidate Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro was elected as the new president of Guatemala. The election of a politically left president further radicalized the Guatemalan right, which resulted in attempted coups and acts of terror. The violence from the leftist guerillas and the radical rightist elements forced Mendez Montenegro to allow the military to use harsh counter-terror strategies to bring the country under control. Despite negative developments, the US consistently tried to help build Guatemalan stability. Unfortunately, its policies ignored the socio-economic inequalities, and internal division which was the biggest problem facing the nation. The internal political division that created the violence and instability made it impossible for any US assistance to have a meaningful impact. During the 1960's these developments in Guatemala paved the way for the violence and genocide of the 1980's and solidified a policy of US involvement that was inadequate and ineffective.Item "The greatest good for the greatest number" : American land redistribution in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1969(2016-05) Conrad, David Andrew; Metzler, Mark, 1957-; Lawrence, Mark; Li, Huaiyin; Maclachlan, Patricia; Oppenheim, RobBetween 1945 and 1969, United States policymakers advocated the redistribution of farmland in East and Southeast Asian countries including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and South Vietnam. Land reformers hoped to prevent communist insurgencies in rural Asia and promote economic growth, but land redistribution was not merely a means to an end. Mid-century American policymakers viewed the equalization of landownership as an end unto itself because of their shared Jeffersonian ideology. Despite a consistent worldview and a largely consistent methodology, reformers faced different challenges and achieved varying degrees of success in the countries they hoped to reform. The example of the Philippines, while arguably more Latin American than Asian with respect to landownership patterns, serves as a prologue to the American land reform experience in Asia. The postwar reforms begin with the well-known example of Japan, which set the standard for subsequent reforms both in terms of policy specifics and outcomes. The nearly-contemporary example of South Korea provides a unique twist since the United States itself was the peninsula’s largest landowner at the time of the reform. The American contributions to Taiwan’s post-1949 reform are recovered in chapter 4, while chapter 5 delves into bureaucratic infighting in Washington as a prelude to the final, troubled episode of South Vietnam.Item The rhetoric of presidential summit diplomacy: Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Soviet summits, 1985-1988(2009-05-15) Howell, Buddy WaynePresident Ronald Reagan participated in more U.S.-Soviet summits than any previous U.S. president, as he met with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, on four occasions between November 1985 and June 1988. Prior to, during, and following each meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan often engaged in the rhetoric of public diplomacy, including speeches, statements, and media interviews. The four Reagan- Gorbachev summits accompanied significant changes in U.S.-Soviet relations, in the Cold War, and also within the Soviet Union. Many scholars attribute improved U.S.- Soviet relations to a change in Reagan?s Soviet rhetoric and policies, arguing that he abandoned the confrontation of his first term for conciliation during his second term. Other scholars argue that Reagan failed to abandon confrontation and, consequently, missed opportunities to support the liberalization of the Soviet system. Based upon close analysis of Reagan?s summit rhetoric, this dissertation contends that he did not abandon his confrontational policy objectives, but he did modify his rhetoric about the Soviets. Reagan reformulated the conventional Cold War rhetoric of rapprochement that emphasized nuclear arms controls as the path to world peace by emphasizing increased U.S.-Soviet trust as prerequisite to new arms treaties. Reagan?s summit rhetoric emphasized the need for the Soviets to make changes in non-nuclear arms areas as a means of reducing international mistrust and increasing the likelihood of new U.S.- Soviet arms treaties. Reagan advocated that the Soviets participate in increased bilateral people-to-people exchanges, demonstrate respect for human rights, and disengage from various regional conflicts, especially Afghanistan. Reagan adopted a dualistic strategy that combined confrontation and conciliation as he sought to promote those changes in Soviet policies and practices. During his second term as president, Reagan made his confrontational rhetoric less strident and also used more conciliatory discourse. At the same time, he subsumed his anti-Soviet objectives within his conciliatory rhetoric. This rhetorical strategy allowed Reagan to continue to advocate anti-Soviet objectives while at the same time seeking to promote improved relations and world peace. The findings of this dissertation suggest that existing scholarly views of Reagan?s summit rhetoric and his role in promoting the liberalization of the Soviet system should be reconsidered.