President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
The history of African decolonization is inherently linked with the processes, rivalries, and challenges of the global Cold War. Even those states that saw a pacific removal of colonial authority, such as Ghana or Senegal, did so under the shadow of the rivalry between the capitalist and communist states. However, the process was even more stark in Southern Africa, where the Cold War saw the contests for armed African liberation interpreted as proxy conflicts between the two ideological blocs.
Curatola’s most important accomplishment is creating a comprehensive look at how the United States changed its perspective on national security policy during 1949 by identifying and highlighting the importance of the lesser known national security issues that may have been hidden by the creation of the nuclear bomb.
Strategic assessments reveal a given nation’s understanding of the security landscape and its relative power position. However, strategic appraisals can also betray the fundamental values and prevailing attitudes of the country generating the assessment. American estimators have shown a propensity to frame questions in a manner reflecting their internal predispositions—a tendency that has often contributed to flawed images of external threats. This was the case during the early Cold War when American analysts routinely transferred judgment to Soviet decision-makers. By projecting their own proclivities onto an adversary whose preferences did not align with the United States, analysts persistently misdiagnosed the threat and concealed opportunities to exploit Soviet vulnerabilities. It was not until American strategic analysis underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1970s that more reliable assessments began to emerge. The Cold War, then, offers a stark warning about the pitfalls of an ethnocentric view of the security landscape. Adversaries, after all, are bounded by distinctive national styles that diverge from American logic.
Her Cold War by Tanya Roth offers an insightful explanation of how, contrary to the popular narrative, Cold War era servicewomen were essentially the pioneers of the second wave feminist push for gender equality in the United States. The book focuses on the period between 1945 and 1980—a deceptively small window of time for such an impactful period both for women in the military and in U.S. culture more broadly. In 1945, there was no Department of Defense, separate Air Force, or a permanent place for women in any existing branch of the military. By 1980, only two generations later, the first groups of women were piloting military aircraft and graduating from military service academies.
Wright’s “Africa in Global Society,” despite being twenty years old, contains a set of timeless lenses for viewing Africa in the contemporary era: Regionality, Continentality, New Issue solutions, and Democracy. When analyzed through this four-pillared framework, strategic and political engagement strategies may be more coherently framed and contextualized to facilitate the elusive whole-of-government approach.
Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films is a fresh study that attempts to answer these intriguing questions. Through a close reading of a cluster of “Cold War nuclear crisis films,” which is described as “a staple of the Cold War popular cultural milieu from the 1950s to the 1980s,” this clearly written and thought-provoking book explores how these screen narratives depicted the nuclear weapons apparatus and strategic decision-making.
Ambassador Herman Cohen is one of many career diplomats, along with ambassadors like John Campbell and David Shinn, who devote personal time to researching, understanding, and commenting on African affairs. Cohen’s most recent work traces U.S. foreign policy in Africa from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump, intertwining historical files and personal insights to weave a picture of what the author titles, Eight Decades of Realpolitik.
In the end, this episode was a true-life spy vs. spy story. Both the KGB and the U.S. intelligence community ended up spending a lot of time and money bugging and de-bugging, tying up valuable resources. And it is likely the KGB followed the NSA’s and CIA’s efforts since it had bugged the equipment. Readers interested in a detailed technological Cold War spy story pitting U.S. technical spy sleuths against Soviet spies hell-bent on installing listening devices in the U.S. Moscow Embassy, will profit from this book.
Secretary Lehman, awaiting the declassification of several key Cold War documents, recently published Oceans Ventured, meticulously documenting the Navy’s aggressive operations in the 1980s. Secretary Lehman’s readily accessible book tells the story as if you were having a casual conversation at the Black Pearl, listening to the reminiscences and sea stories of a well-traveled naval officer.
National security officials who want to know more about the formation of the American national security state or who are searching for a role model in conducting public service may be interested in this book. In his effort to pass on Goodpaster’s insights regarding national security affairs to subsequent generations of officials, Nelson strikes the tone of a how-to guide: how to become Goodpaster, or at least emulate this thoughtfulness and charisma.
