At the height of the Cold War, Soviet ideologues, policymakers, diplomats, and military officers perceived the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America as the future reserve of socialism, holding the key to victory over Western forces. The zero-sum nature of East-West global competition induced the United States to try to thwart Soviet ambitions. The result was predictable: the two superpowers engaged in proxy struggles against each other in faraway, little-understood lands, often ending up entangled in protracted and highly destructive local fights that did little to serve their own...

This book examines the dynamic evolution of Western detente policies which sought to transform Europe and overcome its Cold War division through more communication and engagement. Kieninger challenges the traditional Cold War narrative that detente prolonged the division of Europe and precipitated America's decline in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Rather, he argues that policymakers in the U.S. Department of State and in Western Europe envisaged the stability enabled by detente as a precondition for change, as Communist regimes saw a sense of security as a prerequisite for opening up...

At the beginning of June 1961, the tensions of the Cold War were supposed to abate as both sides sought a resolution. The two most important men in the world, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, met for a summit in Vienna. Yet the high hopes were disappointed. Within months the Cold War had become very hot: Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall and a year later he sent missiles to Cuba to threaten the United States directly. Despite the fact that the Vienna Summit yielded barely any tangible results, it did lead to some very important developments. The superpowers came to see for the first time...

This study examines the Sino-Soviet alliance from the end of the World War II through 1959, when the alliance ended as a result of foreign and domestic policies. It reevaluates the history of this alliance and offers the first comprehensive account of it from a Chinese perspective.

Drawing on recently declassified Soviet archival sources, this book sheds new light on how the division of Europe came about in the aftermath of World War II. The book contravenes the notion that a neutral zone of states, including Germany, could have been set up between East and West. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was determined to preserve control over its own sphere of German territory. By tracing Stalin's attitude toward neutrality in international politics, the book provides important insights into the origins of the Cold War.

Based on original research and previously unpublished material, this study reevaluates the Soviet Union's involvement in the Horn of Africa and traces the evolution of Moscow's foreign policy toward Somalia and Ethiopia during the Cold War.

This study examines the origins, evolution, and goals of Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden during the Cold War. The author analyzes their links with both their host and homeland societies and investigates their clandestine efforts to undermine the communist regimes of their homelands.

This study examines the creation and subsequent dismantling of the Hungarian Autonomous Region in the 1950s. The author analyzes the influence of Soviet aid and the ways in which the Romanian Communist Party dealt with the country's various ethnic and national groups.

This study examines US relations with Spain during its political transition to democracy after 1975. The author focuses on the US military presence in the country and analyzes how the Spanish democratic government's perception of the state's own recent past affected its aims and actions in the post-Franco period.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the breaking of political relations between China and the Soviet Union. Based on archival materials from several countries-particularly China-the authors analyze the split from 1959, when visible cracks in the relationship appeared, to China's foreign policy shift toward the United States in 1973.