Flirting with Neutrality: The Shah,Khrushchev, and the Failed 1959 Soviet–Iranian Negotiations

Despite the Eisenhower administration's strong support for the Pahlavi monarchy, tensions simmered under the surface of Mohammad Reza Shah's relationship with the United States throughout the 1950s. Following the Qarani coup attempt and the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the shah sought to diminish the Soviet threat to his regime and reduce his dependence on the United States by exploring Moscow's offer of a non-aggression treaty. Drawing on American, British, and Iranian sources, this article provides the first detailed history of these secret Soviet–Iranian negotiations that ended in disastrous failure for the shah in February 1959.     

The Struggle Between the United States and Israel over Recognition for Jerusalem as Israel's Capital, 1952–67

This study analyses the key role played by Washington in the international community's battle from 1952 to 1967 not to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It tries to explain both why the United States took on such a role and why its efforts were rewarded with such little success. It is suggested that the United States was guided chiefly by the principle of showing respect for the United Nations' authority. Yet, when this principle clashed with another, namely Israel's resolve for Jerusalem to be its capital, it was generally the United States that backed away.     

How Turkey’s democratic backsliding compromises the international dimension of democratization

Previous research suggests that linkage to the West can have a strong democratizing influence on transitioning states. Yet, Western linkage and leverage lost much of their democratizing force by the early twenty‐first century. Turkey's political trajectory over the last decade furnishes a representative case study of the waning power of the West as an anchor for democratization in high‐linkage countries. Despite Turkey's robust ties to the West, competitive authoritarianism has been further entrenched and signs of a drift toward full‐fledged authoritarianism emerged since the failed coup of July 2016. We argue that in a context where the European Union and the United States’ willingness to support democracy declined considerably the AKP’s distancing from the West in foreign policy and balancing the Western powers with its new economic and political relations with autocratic regimes have served to stifle the democratizing pressure of Western linkage by lowering the cost of autocratic behavior for the AKP government and facilitating Turkey's illiberal turn.     

“Operation Exodus”: Israeli government involvement in the production of Otto Preminger's Film Exodus (1960)

This article explores the Israeli government's enthusiastic and substantial role in the production of Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960), the influential pro-Zionist film on the creation of Israel which was loosely based on the highly successful novel by Leon Uris. This involvement followed a decade of mostly unsuccessful Israeli government endeavors to encourage its many supporters in Hollywood to produce films in and about Israel: both for their potential economic rewards and for international propaganda. Utilizing archival sources in the United States, Britain, and especially Israel, this article charts Israeli efforts to encourage Hollywood productions in the 1950s and the extent to which Israeli officials provided encouragement and assistance to Exodus: first to the novel and then critically to the film. The article shows that the film producers took into account British and Arab observations too. However, the degree to which Exodus served Israeli propaganda themes is finally demonstrated by the eager efforts made by Zionist bodies and Israeli government officials to promote its international distribution.     

Education and intimate war of position: The National Security League's Committee on Patriotism through Education, 1917–1919

The National Security League was an elite private lobbying group in the World War I preparedness movement in the United States. Its educational wing was a group consisting mostly of college professors called the Committee on Patriotism through Education, which sought to use education to promote a militaristic brand of patriotism. This paper adds to our knowledge of the geopolitics of the period by critically reviewing the Committee's propaganda efforts, as organized into its Patriotism through Education Series. More importantly, this paper theorizes this propaganda by engaging with two literatures that seldom cross paths: emerging interest in intimacy-geopolitics and Gramsci's concept of war of position. Intimacy-geopolitics is used to highlight the performative edge of war propaganda, as it directs desire and affect to toward geopolitical visions which accord with elite visions of the good life. Intimacy-geopolitics as an analytical framework helps connect affect and war in a way that avoids scalar hierarchies of violence. The Committee deliberately sought to direct emotion toward militaristic ends, and saw teachers as foot soldiers in that effort. Understanding how war propaganda works through affect, that is, how it positions country as an object of affection, also qualifies and dovetails with an understanding of war propaganda as elemental to the Gramscian war of position. Quite apart from accusations of war-profiteering, elite manipulation of desire and affect toward the war effort also worked to obfuscate class interest in favor of gender and other social roles.     

Nuclear proliferation: The Islamic Republic of Iran

Since the mid-1980s, Israel, thGawdat Bahgate United States, and other Western powers have accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons capability. Iranian officials have categorically denied these accusations and claimed that their nuclear program is designed for civilian purposes. This essay examines the history of Iran's nuclear program since the late 1950s and analyzes the forces that shape the country's nuclear policy. These forces include perception of security threats from Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States; domestic economic and political dynamics; and national pride. The following section will discuss the European and Russian stance on Iran's nuclear ambition as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts to reach a compromise that would satisfy the international community's concerns and Tehran's demands. The essay concludes with some predictions on how Iran's nuclear program is likely to evolve in the next few decades.     

Europe's Christian Democratic Parties and American Possibilities

In this paper, I survey the histories of Europe's Christian Democratic parties and suggest that inasmuch as they show that religiously framed party politics can have significant and positive effects on both institutions and supporters, it is difficult to see how those lessons translate straightforwardly to the American social and political order. Even if they did, making a success, both electorally and substantively, of a Christian Democratic movement in the United States would require a degree of statesmanship that certainly seems in short supply these days.     

Visions of Statesmanship Across The Atlantic: Presidential Masculinity and the American Response to Benito Mussolini

This article explores how hegemonic masculinity forged discourses of modern statesmanship in the United States and Italy in the first three decades of the twentieth century. It unpacks the ‘presidential masculinity’ of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and compares these gendered performances of political leadership in the United States to Benito Mussolini's Fascist rule in Italy during the 1920s. In doing so, this article contends that the manliness of these three modern leaders rested on a contrasting of pairs: if Roosevelt embodied the hegemonic ideal of the ‘frontiersman-as-president’, Wilson personified its ‘unmanly’, bourgeois-liberal countertype and thereby engendered the initially hospitable view of Mussolini's Fascist masculinity in the United States during the Jazz Age. The article covers the publications in The Atlantic Monthly to reveal how the American disillusion with Wilson's liberal internationalism transformed the Duce into a Fascist surrogate for Roosevelt. In a decade of political, economic and social upheaval, the transatlantic ‘public relations state’ in both the United States and Italy discursively positioned Mussolini as the personification of the masculine ideals of acumen, willpower and virility for the American public; a ‘Doctor-Dictator’ who, akin to Roosevelt, became a symbol of modern manliness that signified stability, progress and reform. In the process, the Duce's Fascist manhood shaped hegemonic ideals of statesmanship across the Atlantic while hinting at the paltry support for the liberal democracies of the West.     

George W. Bush,Barack Obama and the future of US global leadership

The foreign policy world views of George W. Bush and Barack Obama differ dramatically. Bush made terrorism the focal point of his foreign policy and dismissed the idea that either allies or international institutions should constrain America's freedom of action. Obama sees terrorism as one of many transnational problems that require the cooperation of other countries to combat and, as a result, the United States must invest more in diplomatic efforts to build partnerships. Despite these differences, both presidents share one common conviction: that other countries long for US leadership. Bush believed that friends and allies would eventually rally to the side of the United States, even if they bristled at its actions, because they shared America's goals and had faith in its motives. Obama believed that a United States that listened more to others, stressed common interests and favored multinational action would command followers. In practice, however, both visions of American global leadership faltered. Bush discovered that many countries rejected his style of leadership as well as his strategies. Obama discovered that in a globalized world, where power has been more widely dispersed, many countries are not looking to Washington for direction. The future success of US foreign policy depends on the ability of policy‐makers to recognize and adapt to a changing geopolitical environment in which the US remains the most significant military, diplomatic and economic power but finds it, nonetheless, increasingly difficult to drive the global agenda.     

The “Ideological Offensive” in Education: the Portrayal of the United States in Secondary Curricula and Textbooks in Poland during the Stalinist Period (1948–1956)

During the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (1952–1989), schools played a decisive role in transmitting the official ideology of the ruling Communist regime and cultivating young supporters. One of the most important aspects of indoctrination was constructing in students’ hearts and minds a particular image and disposition towards the United States. While existing research has examined the high level of political propaganda in the content of textbooks and curricula during the Communist period in Poland, no one has specifically analysed how these materials depicted the United States during the critical Stalinist years (1948–1956). Analysis of official curricula and textbooks for civics and history courses in secondary schools indicates that over this period, school materials increasingly depicted the United States as ‘predatory,’ ‘imperialist,’ and ‘exploitative.’ This study illustrates how curricular materials aligned with the foreign policy objectives of the Polish United Workers’ Party and the Soviet Union.     

Tactical Flexibility: Libyan Foreign Policy under Qadhafi, 1969–2004*

On September 1, 1969, a group of junior Libyan Army officers took control of the Libyan government in a bloodless coup d'état. After the coup, the group formed the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), chaired by Muammar al‐Qadhafi. In the four decades following, Libya faced numerous foreign policy challenges. The Qadhafi regime took on a distinctly anticolonial flavor that mirrored the revolutionary political trends of Egypt under of Gamal Abdul Nasser. This change in foreign policy posture shook Libya's relations with the United States and the United Kingdom and initiated the degradation of Libyan–Western ties. Under Qadhafi's leadership, Libya chose an ideological path for that focused on the strengthening of sovereignty while pursuing policies of unity and anti‐imperialism. This often put Libya at loggerheads with the West, and at times with its neighbors. Nevertheless, Qadhafi maintained popularity among his constituency. ¹ His domestic fame was the product of a carefully constructed persona that gave him the charismatic appeal necessary to maintain leadership during the latter quarter of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Publicly, Qadhafi highlighted the similarities between himself and Libya's rural working class. He lived in a tent, and wore modest clothing. He fancied himself a devout Muslim, and praised the wisdom of the Libyan masses. He connected with his constituency through rhetoric that illustrated the stability of his policies over time, and their connection to the ideas that originally made him popular. This argues that the source of Qadhafi's charismatic power lay in his rhetoric, which connected Libya's foreign policy decisions to his foreign policy vision, the basis of his charismatic leadership. Qadhafi articulated his foreign policy vision during his first major speech to the Libyan people in September 1969, and he referred to it time and again when speaking about major Libyan foreign policy decisions. To demonstrate, this article describes the basis of Qadhafi's leadership authority and defines the parameters of his vision. Then Qadhafi's rhetoric surrounding major shifts in Libyan foreign policy is analyzed to show its congruence with his foreign policy vision. The rhetoric surrounding the Libya–Egypt war, the end of Libya's Chad intervention, Libya's surrendering of the two Lockerbie bombing suspects to be tried under Western authority, and Qadhafi's denunciation of the weapons of mass destruction programs—all major shifts in Libyan foreign policy—demonstrate how Qadhafi was able to maintain a single message, and thus his authority, over his first 35 years in power based on values established in the early days of his revolution. The flexibility of his vision enabled Qadhafi to maintain authority, while tactically adjusting Libyan foreign policy positions.     

The Arlington Cemetery Case: A Court and a Nation Divided

Seventeen years after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, his eldest son won a sweeping victory over the federal government in the United States Supreme Court. On December 4, 1882, the Supreme Court upheld a federal trial court's ruling that the United States government's claim of title to Arlington National Cemetery rested on an invalid tax sale. The Justices thus affirmed the lower court's verdict that George Washington Custis Lee (“Custis Lee”), eldest son of Mary and Robert E. Lee, held legal title to Arlington. The Supreme Court also upheld the lower court's decision to permit Custis Lee to bring suit against the government officers who occupied Arlington. On the latter point, the Justices split 5 to 4, with a majority ruling for Custis Lee. The outcome of United States v. Lee, commonly known as the Arlington case, made it clear that the Lee family, and not the United States government, owned Arlington.     

"Oh Mary,Don't You Weep": Progressive Religion in the Living Wage Movement

Abstract

Despite religion's absence in much of secular labor and social movement theories' analyses, progressive religious coalitions are a fundamental partner in the rise of new labor activism in the United States. At a time when media and academia focus on the strength of the "religious right" at the federal level, the success of the municipal living wage movement demonstrates the under-recognized power of the "religious left" in cities around the nation. Through examples from case studies, I document the importance of progressive religion's material and cultural contributions to the movement. In the end, I also contend that paying attention to the successful dynamics of religion-labor alliances at the municipal level can provide important lessons for revitalizing progressive religion's role at the federal level.     

Libya and the International System: Retracing the Aftermath of the Lockerbie Bombing

The defining moment of Libya's relationship with the United States during the last decade of the 20th century was the 1991 implication of Libya and its government by the United States and United Kingdom in the 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The controversial decision of the United Nations Security Council to employ sanctions against Libya after its refusal to surrender two bombing suspects to the United States and United Kingdom was largely ignored by European countries with interests in Libya, and led to the eventual open opposition to sanctions by many of Libya's African neighbors. Libya was quickly found guilty in the U.S. and UK courts of public opinion; however the common assumption that Libya's refusal reflected its indignation toward the West is problematic, and does not take into account historical factors that pushed Libya away from compliance, nor the lengths to which Libya attempted to sidestep those factors in order to respect international law. This article places Libya's reaction to the destruction of Flight 103 into the context of its recent relationship with the United States, and argues that despite the tainted U.S. public perception of Libya and its leader, the aftermath of the destruction of Flight 103 no longer plays an important role in shaping United States–Libya relations.     

A Response to Fabiano Santos and Fernando Guarnieri*

This article responds to Fabiano Santos and Fernando Guarnieri's dispatch, published under the title “From Protest to Parliamentary Coup: An Overview of Brazil's Recent History” in the December 2016 issue of JLACS. I start by pointing out several errors in the authors' use of terms such as “fascism” and “coup.” I proceed to map out the omissions that allow them to portray Rousseff's impeachment in a moral and Manichean light, as a coup of malignant social actors against innocent victims. I then reconstruct the chronology of Rousseff's long-winded downward spiral of self-inflicted agony, from the electoral larceny of October 2014 through the gigantic popular protests of March 2015 to the final vote in August 2016, showing how the authors chose to omit every fact that revealed Rousseff's and the Workers' Party's own responsibilities in the economic collapse and the political crisis of the country they governed for five and a half and thirteen and a half years, respectively. I conclude by pointing out the contradiction between the authors' claim that there was a parliamentary coup in Brazil and their claim that the country's political system has remained intact.     

The New Men's History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History

Historians with feminist commitments have expressed reservations about men's history and men's studies. This unease has existed more or less from the first appearance of men's history as a specialised area of inquiry, and shows no signs of abating. The first part of this article explores the sources of this unease. It discusses several guiding premises of men's history and shows that they tend to lead to the occlusion of men's gendered power over women. Nonetheless, the scrutiny of the gender of men is the logical outgrowth of several decades of theoretical and empirical work on gender–witness the many historians of women and gender who have recently turned their attention to the systematic study of manliness and masculinity. With the help of examples drawn from the scholarship on the history of the British colonies in America and the early United States, the second part of this article enumerates several strategies for successfully highlighting men's gendered power in histories of manliness and masculinity.     

Kang Youwei’s propaganda adjustments after the Hundred Days Reform, 1898–1900

ABSTRACT

After the failed Hundred Days Reform, Kang Youwei launched a propaganda campaign in the newspapers under his control. In addition to casting himself in a favorable light, the campaign served two other purposes: to justify his own fleeing from China and to solicit foreign intervention to free Emperor Guangxu from house arrest. Immediately following the bloody coup d’etat in 1898, Kang identified Empress-Dowager Cixi as the chief instigator of the tragedy. By 1899, he turned to blaming some of her “evil ministers” as well. A year later he accused both parties. After the founding of Baohuang hui (Chinese Empire Reform Association) in 1899, Kang’s overseas propaganda began to call for an armed rescue mission and for funds from the overseas Chinese communities for this purpose. The adjustments Kang made to his propaganda campaign were echoed by progressive newspapers published inside China. Together, they created a public opinion that forced the Qing government to proceed with the political reform.     

‘In the best interests of the child’: juggling the geography of children's gardens (between adult agendas and children's needs)

This review paper presents literature, particularly in children's geographies, in support of the proposition that the rationales for the current children's garden movement flourishing particularly in the United States, albeit well-intentioned, continue to be dominated by adult discourses acting ‘in the best interests of the child’. The paper concludes that broadening the debate on ‘children and gardens’ through inclusion of research that focuses on children's competence and empowerment offers a different perspective of what children might want from these spaces. This highlights new directions for research on children's gardens which would focus this garden typology more on children's needs than adult agendas, and therefore contribute positively to development of these gardens as sustainable environments for children's learning and enjoyment of nature.     

The Alliance for Progress and President João Goulart’s Three-Year Plan: the deterioration of U.S.-Brazilian Relations in Cold War Brazil (1962)

This paper analyses U.S.-Brazilian relations during the elaboration of João Goulart’s Three-Year Plan in late 1962, which sought to tackle Brazil’s severe economic imbalances without compromising growth and through the implementation of distributive reforms. Although the plan followed the principles of John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, Washington did not offer adequate assistance because of Goulart’s threats to increase links with the Soviet bloc. The United States hardened its position, seeking to change the orientation of the Brazilian government. This led to the abandonment of the Three-Year Plan, and contributed to social and political destabilisation that resulted in Brazil’s March 1964 military coup.     

Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's ‘Billion Dollar Gift’ to the United Kingdom in the Second World War

On the basis of research in Canadian, British, and US records, this article examines the development and implementation of the most generous financial act in the Second World War: Canada's billion dollar gift to the United Kingdom in 1942. The origins of this extraordinary measure, the political and economic factors that influenced its introduction, and the reasons why its replacement differed so markedly in format even as it replicated the fundamental purposes of the gift, are all assessed within the context of Canada's economic relations with Britain and the United States. As this analysis demonstrates, the gift advanced Canada's enlightened self-interest and bolstered the war effort of its oldest and closest ally. It was an economic success but a political failure; how it was perceived and depicted in Canada ensured that it would not be repeated, even though the conditions and requirements that necessitated the gift had not changed and equivalent measures had to be implemented.