The Journal of Cold War Studies features peer-reviewed articles based on archival research in the former Communist world and in Western countries. Articles in the journal draw on declassified materials and new memoirs to illuminate and raise questions about numerous historical and theoretical concerns: theories of decision-making, deterrence, bureaucratic politics, institutional formation, bargaining, diplomacy, foreign policy conduct, and international relations.
Editor's Note
Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 1-2. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_e_00870?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Articles
Decentering the Cold War in Southern Africa: The Portuguese Policy of Decolonization and Détente in Angola and Mozambique (1974–1984) Bruno C. Reis Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 3-51. Contrary to the expectations of many, the break between Portugal and its former colonies in southern Africa was far from complete after decolonization. This article points to three major reasons. First, the impact on relations with Angola and Mozambique of the fragmentation of Portuguese state power and tense polarization in the Portuguese polity after the military coup of 24 April 1974 has been overstated and was far from entirely negative. Second, diplomatic relations were normalized between Portugal, Angola, and Mozambique during the Cold War in a way that has significant parallels with West Germany's Ostpolitik. Portugal's Südpolitik saw a cultural identity worth preserving despite geopolitical divisions and pushed for better relations and deepened ties with these states to help move them away from strict alignment with the Soviet bloc. Third, officers of the Armed Forces Movement that carried out the April 1974 coup exercised a fundamental, positive influence in Portuguese policies toward Angola and Mozambique during decolonization and for years afterward. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00873?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
“The World Was Not Turning in Their Direction”: The United States and the Decolonization of Angola Tiago Moreira de Sá Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 52-65. In the mid-1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to export the Cold War to Angola at levels that were unprecedented on the African continent. In the case of the United States, this led to immense support for local allies—the National Liberation Front of Angola and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola—in the form of many tons of heavy weaponry, millions of dollars, and the use of mercenaries and even paramilitary operatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. This article explains U.S. actions in Angola from 1974 to 1976 against the backdrop of the Cold War, highlighting the decision-making process in Washington, the international context, the internal context, and the actions of both superpowers. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00871?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Praying for Justice: The World Council of Churches and the Program to Combat Racism Kate Burlingham Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 66-96. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, individuals around the world, particularly those in newly decolonized African countries, called on churches, both Protestant and Catholic, to rethink their mission and the role of Christianity in the world. This article explores these years and how they played out in Angola. A main forum for global discussion was the World Council of Churches (WCC), an ecumenical society founded alongside the United Nations after World War II. In 1968 the WCC devised a Program to Combat Racism (PCR), with a particular focus on southern Africa. The PCR's approach to combating racism proved controversial. The WCC began supporting anti-colonial organizations against white minority regimes, even though many of these organizations relied on violence. Far from disavowing violent groups, the PCR's architects explicitly argued that, at times, violent action was justified. Much of the PCR funding went to Angolan revolutionary groups and to individuals who had been educated in U.S. and Canadian foreign missions. The article situates global conversations within local debates between missionaries and Angolans about the role of the missions in the colonial project and the future of the church in Africa. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00856?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Independence, Intervention, and Internationalism: Angola and the International System, 1974–1975 Candace Sobers Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 97-124. This article explores the escalation of tensions surrounding Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, when a protracted war of national liberation escalated sharply into an international crisis. Rather than see Angola as merely a proxy war, the article depicts the varied responses to Angolan anti-colonial nationalism as consequences of “internationalization,” or the deliberate and endogenous process of framing the struggle for Angolan independence in global terms. By establishing Angolan independence as part of a worldwide battle against imperialism, racism, and Western hegemony in the early 1960s, and by raising the issue in international forums, creating transnational support networks, and operating across borders and oceans, the Angolan national liberation movements created the ideological and political preconditions for the military interventions and Cold War political theater of the 1970s. Angola thus demonstrated how national liberation movements, as transnational actors, learned to operate within the international system to gain necessary material and moral support but also provoked the ire of more powerful external actors who had their own political and ideological reasons for opposing a pro-Soviet regime in Angola. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00854?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
“Yugoslavia's Help Was Extraordinary”: Political and Material Assistance from Belgrade to the MPLA in Its Rise to Power, 1961–1975 Jovan Čavoški Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 125-150. Based on newly declassified documents from former Yugoslav archives, this article reconstructs the process of material and political assistance that was rendered to the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) by Yugoslavia throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s until the time of Angola's independence and the beginning of the Angolan civil war in 1975. The archival evidence demonstrates that Yugoslavia's assistance to the MPLA guerrillas was one of the crucial factors that enabled the organization not only to survive the vicissitudes of international politics, but also to preserve and stabilize its strength for the final phase of the power struggle in Angola. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00857?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Apartheid's Bomb and Regional Liberation: Cold War Perspectives Anna-Mart van Wyk Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 151-165. South Africa had a small, highly classified nuclear weapons program that produced a small but potent nuclear arsenal. At the end of the 1980s, as South Africa was nearing a transition to black majority rule, the South African government destroyed its nuclear arsenal and its research facilities connected with nuclear armaments and ballistic missiles. This article, based on archival research in the United States and South Africa, shows that the South African nuclear weapons program has to be understood in the context of the Cold War battlefield that southern Africa became in the mid-1970s. The article illuminates the complex U.S.–South African relationship and explains why the apartheid government in Pretoria sought nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the face of extensive Soviet-bloc aid to black liberation movements in southern Africa, the escalating conflict with Cuban forces and Soviet-backed guerrillas on Namibia's northern frontier, and the attacks waged by the African National Congress from exile. A clear link can be drawn between the apartheid government's quest for a nuclear deterrent, liberation in southern Africa, and the Cold War. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00855?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
The Secret War of Intelligence: The Mysterious Mission of “Jack Strong” and its Impact on the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s Piotr Żuk Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 166-185. For nearly a decade, a colonel on the Polish General Staff, Ryszard Kukliński, provided invaluable information about Soviet and Warsaw Pact military activities to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the codename “Jack Strong.” Along with Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who cooperated with the CIA in the late 1950s and early1960s until he was arrested and executed by the Soviet regime, Kukliński has gone down in history as one of the most valuable U.S. intelligence sources in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. This essay examines Kukliński's case in light of three recent Polish-language books written from divergent perspectives. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_a_00872?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Book Reviews
Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist James G. Hershberg Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 186-189. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00858?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War Arthur Eckstein Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 189-193. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00859?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Last of the President's Men Nathan Pavalko Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 193-195. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00860?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Southeast Asia's Cold War: An Interpretive History Keith W. Taylor Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 195-196. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00861?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Sovetskaya politika po rasshireniyu yuzhnykh granits: Stalin i azerbaidzhanskaya karta v bor'be za neft’ (1939–1945) Kristina Minkova Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 196-200. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00862?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
The Near Abroad: Eastern Europe and Soviet Patriotism in Ukraine, 1956–1985 Taras Kuzio Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 200-203. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00863?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Kremlin jalanjäljet: Suomettuminen ja vuoden 2002 vakoilukohun tausta Iivi Anna Masso Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 203-206. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00864?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
So Much to Lose: John F. Kennedy and American Policy in Laos Kai Chen Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 206-207. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00865?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
DDR Spionage: Von Albanien bis Grossbritannien Kenneth Lasoen Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 208-210. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00866?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World Radoslav Yordanov Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 211-213. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00867?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Dealing with Dictators: The United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe, 1943-1989 Robert Hutchings Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 214-217. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00868?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T
Gorbachev: His Life and Times. Alex Pravda Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1: 217-221. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/jcws_r_00869?ai=s7&ui=s96v&af=Tamp;af=T