Quietly and without fanfare, President Trump signed an executive order last week that, to me, is eerily reminiscent of the profiling that was common place during the Red Scare of the early Cold War years.

The order is titled Executive Order on Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service, and it gives Trump the power to purge thousands of federal workers whose job protections have allowed them to remain apolitical over the past four years. (If you’d like to learn more about the executive order and its potential impact, you can just do a ‘google’ search.)

The administration says it’s all about getting rid of “poor performers.”  However, the workers targeted tend to include most of the non-partisan experts — scientists, doctors, lawyers, economists — whose work is supposed to be done in a way that is fact-driven and devoid of politics.

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. I know the Blacklist is on my mind because I just attended a “zoom” lecture on Broadway and the Blacklist, a history of the impact of the blacklist on New York theater by K. Kevyne Baar. Still, the current environment and the recent executive order remind me of all the talk about commies in the State Department back in the day. (If you’d like to know more about that, check out the post titled Witch Hunts.)

I’ve always been interested in the theater but, before this summer, I knew a lot more about blacklisting in Hollywood and on television than on the Great White Way. Then I read a fiction book titled The Chelsea Girls by Fiona Davis.

Pre publication advertising for The Chelsea Girls led me to believe that it was about the Cold War. I think that’s a stretch. It’s really fairly light reading about a friendship between two women that spans the decades, beginning in World War II.

The story about how the two girls got caught up in the Cold War is just one of several. Certainly it’s not central even though there is a role for Richard Nixon as a Congressman on the House Un American Activities Committee, and for Roy Cohn as investigator for Senator Joseph McCarthy. (Cohn is perhaps best known now for his role as Donald Trump’s lawyer.)

Even though the author asserts “I hewed closely to the stories of several blacklisted artists,” Davis’ work raises enough questions that a more scholarly history titled Broadway and the Blacklist is quite welcome.

Barr brings a lot to the table. She’s a former professional stage manager who also worked as an archivist for NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

Here are  5 takeaways from her recent talk at NYU:

• There was no blacklist on Broadway. The theater community — unions as well as management — wouldn’t capitulate to pressure from HUAC  — the House Un American Activities Committee.  You can learn more about HUAC here.
• People who couldn’t work in Hollywood were able to work in  New York theater.  Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller are good examples.
• Arthur Miller wrote his play The Crucible in response to being accused of being a communist sympathizer in the 1950s.  You can read what he has to say about it here. You can rent or buy The Crucible on Amazon. The last time I checked it was also available on You Tube.
• New York theater and the Hollywood film industry differed in two ways:
  The theater wasn’t dependent on advertising. Hollywood was.
  The New York audience kept coming!

Lastly, just think about this: What if the film industry had just said “we don’t care?”

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Photograph courtesy of https://newyorktheater.me.

Want to buy the books? These links will help fund Cold War Studies.

The video below is the second in a two part series that takes you quickly through the last 50 or so years of Cuba’s political and economic history.

Here are the salient points:

By 1990, when the Russians were gone, things were really tough. It was becoming very clear that the Cuban people could not sustain life at such a minimal level indefinitely.

Castro and his advisers came up with a new strategy.

Agriculture was one of three areas of focus.

Acquisition of scarce hard currency through tourism and biotechnology was also central.

The key was to develop things that would produce a high rate of return.

Cuba’s economic decision-makers wanted to allow capitalist investment and enterprise to operate within Cuba itself.

They counted on the appeal of Cuba’s beautiful beaches.

They also believed that historic attractions like Old Havana could be used to promote the tourist sector.

Prostitution has increased and inequality between those working in the dollar economy and others has become a reality.

Multiplier effects include sales of tobacco and rum.

In mid 1990, the first joint venture hotel opened in Varadero beach with profits to be split 50-50.

The hotel, built with foreign capital, had construction costs of $30 million.

The growth of the tourist industry has been accompanied by large investments in construction to enlarge hotel facilities.

By 2011 there were well over 2 million tourists, many more than before the Revolution.

Joint venture capital includes major investors from Spain, Germany, Austria, and Finland among others.

Cuba’s military is highly involved in the tourist sector.

There has been substantial construction of tourist facilities within Havana itself, which retains its position as the main tourist attraction within the country.

Old Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is particularly attractive to tourists.

Old Havana, the colonial core, is known for its lovely old buildings.

Finance was centered in Old Havana in an area known as ‘little Wall Street.’ This was a symbol of North Americanization.

Most activities was centered around the various plazas.

In Havana, rather than displacing residents of the old core, the area is being redeveloped with a concern for the integration of social services and living quarters.

While commercial activities are in place on the first floor of many buildings, renovated housing is available on the upper levels.

Due to a shortage of classrooms, elementary school classes are held in the public space of recently reconstructed museums.

Joint ventures and foreign real estate investment insure that resources are available to redevelop historical commercial structures.

UNESCO continues to assist with the renovation of convents, cathedrals, and other designated buildings.

Despite strenuous US objections, tourism alone is ensuring Cuba a fair amount of success in its efforts to be reintegrated into the regional economy of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Jamaica, Mexico, and other Latin American nations are involved in substantial joint ventures related to tourism.

Other Cuban trade efforts are also meeting with regional success.

The relaxation of US sanctions would provide a definite boost to the Cuban tourism industry.

Raul says: “We have to eliminate forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working.”

He goes on to say: “Without an increase in efficiency and productivity, it is impossible to sustain definitively the enormous social expenditures of our socialist system.”

Right now Cuba’s economy is stagnant.

The real value of wages in Cuba remains at around 40% of the 1989 level.

Cuenta-Propistas — the self-employed — have become the designated saviors of the Cuban economy.

Raul diplays remarkable faith in micro-enterprise and the “Gospel of Productivity.”

The key question: Can the micro (and cooperative)-enterprise sector absorb 500,000-1,200,000 apparently redundant workers?

The Fidelista model is discredited.

We will have to wait and see what happens.

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Video by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

(Please don’t use the contact info at the end of the video. You can always reach me at lisa@coldwarstudies.com)

I wrote this post for Cold War Magazine in 2016 when, for the first time in 88 years, an American president was visiting the island of Cuba. Now, Cuban Americans are in the news again because of their voting power in the upcoming 2020 presidential election, so I thought this would be a good time to reprint the article. The focus is on what’s been happening in Cuba since the 1959 revolution.

The video below will give you the insight you need to understand Cuba’s sociocultural, political, and economic conditions.

It is the first of two parts that will take you quickly through the last 50 or so years of Cuba’s political and economic history. (I’ll post Part Two next week.)

Here are the highlights:

Fidel Castro – popularly named “Savior of the Fatherland” and “Maximum Leader” – reached Havana on January 8, 1959.

President Batista fled Cuba very early in the morning on January 1, 1959.

Opposition to Batista first emerged in 1955. By December 1958 most Cubans despised his government.

Even the Eisenhower Administration wanted Batista out of office.

At the time of the Revolution, Havana was home to the privileged, hardworking, and marginalized.

A great deal of American investment was in the Vedado section of Havana where the Hotel Nacional was located.

In the 1950s, Havana was the center of commercialized vice, much of it underwritten by US organized crime.

The city was famous for its glitzy atmosphere.

At first everything was fine between Castro and the American government. But soon bad blood ensued.

When Cuba nationalized US petroleum properties, Eisenhower eliminated Cuba from the US sugar quota.

As the 1960s progressed, Castro was preoccupied with developing a model of socialist self-government that was uniquely Cuban.

Castro wanted to “ruralize the city” and “urbanize the countryside.”

Resources poured into rural areas for electrification and the construction of new towns.

Roads and buildings in Havana suffered from a lack of upkeep and maintenance.

In 1972, Cuba joined COMECON, the economic arm of the Soviet bloc, and in 1975 Cuba began implementing Soviet economic and planning principles.

Soviet models of economic and social planning facilitated Havana’s social, cultural, and political integration with the Soviet bloc.

1986 marked the beginning of a new period called the Period of Rectification. By this time, Cubans were disillusioned with the Soviets.

Cubans were pressuring their government to return to the core Revolutionary project with its significant gains in the status of women and blacks.

Unfortunately for Cuba, glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union put an end to any hoped for reforms.

In 1990, with the end of the Cold War, Cuba entered a challenging period known as The Special Period (of War) in Time of Peace.

Cuba had an oil driven economy and 98% of the island’s petroleum came from the Soviet bloc.

Aside from oil, 66% of Cuba’s food, 86% of all raw material, and 80% of machinery and spare parts came from Soviet dominated trading partners.

Factory closures became common, food scarcity was widespread, and the already inadequate technology base began eroding.

Exports were also affected since 66% of Cuba’s sugar, 73% of the island’s nickel, and 98% of the country’s citrus fruits had been exported to the Soviet bloc.

Cuba’s abandonment by the USSR was further complicated by a tightening of US sanctions.

Things were very tough. Learn more in Part II.

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Video by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

(Please don’t use the contact info at the end of the video. You can always reach me at lisa@coldwarstudies.com)

As I think everyone knows, China played a major role in the US-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War, especially impacting the superpowers’ presence in the Third World.

And, it’s playing a major role today as this year’s American presidential election gets closer.

What do the American people think of China today?

. . . a Pew survey conducted in June and July (of 2020) found that Americans have an increasingly unfavorable view of China, with Democrats especially wary of the U.S.’s close economic relationship with the country and keen to press its leaders on human rights concerns, like the Chinese government’s abuse against Uighurs. Democratic officials are eager to highlight Trump’s record of flattering Chinese President Xi Jingping and overlooking Xi’s failure to uphold his side of Trump’s much-touted trade deal by buying more U.S. goods.” (The Huffington Post, August 22, 2020)

Although the Republicans have chosen not to publish a party platform, President Trump has made clear that being tougher with China would be a top priority in his second term if he is reelected. (Politico, August 23, 2020)

The Democratic party platform, on the other hand mentions China 22 times in largely adversarial terms compared to 7 references in the 2016 document. (The Huffington Post, August 22, 2020)

The Early Cold War

Let’s look back to the early Cold War for some insight.

The Chinese Revolution of 1949 was an especially traumatic event. Both President Roosevelt and President Truman supported Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China, hoping for a democratic China that would be a pillar of peace in the Far East.

The United States stepped up its economic and military assistance to the Nationalist government, even though American military advisers like General Joseph Stilwell thought that Chiang’s regime was so corrupt that it was not salvageable.

Since Stalin also made his peace with the Nationalist leader, both the Americans and the Soviets were hoping for a reconciliation between the two Chinese factions – Mao Zedong’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. Nevertheless, all efforts failed.

Mao engaged in a form of guerilla warfare that he called the “people’s war,” combining Marxist-Leninist  political and economic theory with insurgent warfare.

The Communists’ base of power was dependent on the peasantry in the countryside, and the strategy was to strangle urban areas by gradually isolating them. Mao was successful.

Chiang’s regime fell, and the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on the mainland on October 1, 1949.

American Political Division

In the US, conservative Republicans accused President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson of appeasement of communism, although it was obvious to many that Chiang could not have been saved without massive American military intervention. 

As Acheson noted in a State Department White Paper released in the summer of 1949

The unfortunate but inescapable fact is that the ominous result of the civil war in China was beyond the control of the government of the United States. Nothing that this country did or could have done within the reasonable limits of its capabilities could have changed the result; nothing that was left undone by this country has contributed to it. It was the result of internal Chinese forces, forces which this country tried to influence but could not.

Growing Friction

Gradually, China began to play a more independent role on the world stage. Even though Moscow and Beijing signed a Treaty of Alliance in 1950, they became increasingly antagonistic toward each other.

The US was aware of the growing friction.

In November 1950, John Foster Dulles noted:

. . . our best defense lies in exploiting potential jealousies, rivalries, and disaffections within the present area of Soviet Communist control . . .

China on the World Stage

At the Geneva Conference on Indochina in 1954, the Chinese are said to have played an important diplomatic role, persuading North Vietnam to accept the compromise with the French that divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

In April 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai was a prominent force at the Bandung Conference of Nonaligned Nations in Indonesia. His speech congratulated the new nations in their struggle for national sovereignty and their growing independence from colonialism.

It’s been reported that the Soviets were jealous of China’s appeal to the nonaligned. As a developing country itself, China could claim solidarity with many nations struggling for national identity and modernization.

China’s economic performance in the 1950s outstripped India’s and seemed more relevant than the Soviet Union’s. At any rate, the Soviets were considered a developed industrial power, a part of the so-called Second World along with its Eastern European satellites. China could claim that it was part of the Third.

As early as 1956, Nikita Krushchev declared:  

. . . in 10 years’ time, the Soviets’ chief enemy in the world [will] be China.

Mao Speaks

In November 1957, Khruschev convened a world conference of 64 Communist parties in Moscow to try to ensure unity in the international Communist movement. It was Mao’s first time in the spotlight on an international stage. (Previously Premier Zhou Enlai had represented the People’s Republic of China.)

In his message, Mao argued that the new strength of the Communist bloc should be an unrelenting campaign against imperialism. He asserted:

It is my opinion that the international situation has now reached a new turning point . . . There is a Chinese saying, ‘Either the East wind prevails over the West wind or the West wind prevails over the East wind.’ It is characteristic of the situation today, I believe, that the East wind is prevailing over the West wind. That is to say, the forces of socialism are overwhelmingly superior to the forces of imperialism.<

Mao went beyond this, though, and argued that there was no reason even to be afraid of nuclear war. 

What if a nuclear war destroyed half of mankind . . . The other half would survive — and so would socialism.

The Soviets React

Khruschev was shocked. The Soviets had earlier promised to help China develop a nuclear arsenal of its own. Now they decided that this was a ‘no go.’

Soon after, the Chinese began harassing the Soviet specialists in their country.  The Soviets responded by pulling all of their 12,000 advisers out of China.

By the summer of 1960, the Sino-Soviet dispute was out in the open. 

The impact of these activities on the Third World was to push the Soviets into a more competitive stance in order to stave off Chinese inroads as well as dampen Western influence.

The Soviets moved to cultivate countries like Indonesia, India, and Burma, both to contain Chinese influence and to counter the Americans. They also provided aid to African countries like Tanzania and Ghana where the Chinese were active.

The Third World

In the Third World, then, both Moscow and Beijing were trying to negate Western influence, with the Chinese spurring on increased Soviet activity.

To the Americans, all the talk about “wars of national liberation” was increasingly threatening. Possibilities for peaceful political change and economic development were elusive. 

Despite the Sino-Soviet competition, there was no good news for the West. 

___________________

Source:

Democrats Are Walking A Fine Line on The Election’s Main Foreign Policy Issue: China (The Huffington Post, August 22, 2020)

Trump cites school choice, China as second-term priorities (POLITICO, August 23, 2020)

Peter Rodman, More Precious Than Peace (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994) all quotes from pages 87-94. 

Photograph by Andrea (Flickr)

Would you rather read a comic book or a 500 page biography?

In 1948, President Truman’s campaign answered that question with a 16 page comic book published by the Democratic National Committee.

By this time, President Truman was used to the snickering of political cartoonists. They’d made fun of his stance on many controversial issues: the desegregation of the armed forces; his decision to drop the atomic bomb;  and the Republican takeover of Congress (called the Do Nothing Congress by Truman). Now that he was in the middle of the 1948 presidential campaign, political and editorial cartoons were everywhere.

Actually Truman sort of liked them. We know this because, after he left office, he became an avid collector. And, while in office — as we have seen — he used them to his advantage. 

Benjamin Franklin: Join, or Die?

Political and editorial cartoons have long been part of propaganda campaigns.  They trace their origins in the US to Benjamin Franklin and his cartoon Join, or Die (1754). The cartoon depicts the disunity of the Thirteen Colonies during the French and Indian War. It became even more famous later on when it was used to encourage the former colonies to unite during the American Revolution. 

Political cartoons were in and out of favor during the early 19th century, but in the 1880s, the media became popular again.

The 1948 Democratic National Convention

Some say the 1948 presidential campaign of Harry Truman is one of the greatest political campaigns in the modern era. No one gave him a chance of beating the Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey of New York. The Southern Democrats, called Dixiecrats, led by Strom Thurmond, and the Progressives, led by Henry Wallace, had both splintered from the Democratic party. In fact, Hubert Humphrey’s civil rights speech at the convention provoked a walk out.

Nevertheless, the convention re-nominated Truman and adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals.

Thirty-five southern delegates walked out of the convention. The move was on to remove Truman’s name from the ballot in the southern United States. The problem of course: Truman’s support for a stronger civil rights platform than they found acceptable.

The Democratic party lost faith, and refused to spend their usual large sums of money on the election. Truman’s prospects for victory were dim.

The 1948 Presidential Election

On election day, Truman went to bed at 6:30. He woke up about midnight just in time to hear NBC announce:

While the President is a million votes ahead of the popular vote, when the country vote comes in Mr. Truman will be defeated by an overwhelming majority.

Truman concluded:

. . . to the sorrow of myself, and to those who were listening with me, it looked very much as if the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives because, of course, it was not possible for me to get a majority of the electoral votes. I went back to bed, and went to sleep.

About 4 AM Truman woke up again.  This time he heard the NBC announcer proclaim:

While the President has a lead of two million votes, it is certainly necessary that this election shall go into the House of Representative. He hasn’t an opportunity of being elected by a majority of the electoral votes of the Nation!

Truman called the Secret Service in and said:

We’d better go back to Kansas City, it looks as if I’m elected!

The Media Had It Wrong

As it turns out, Truman was right. He carried 24,105,812 popular votes to Dewey’s 21,970,065. This translated into his winning 28 states and 303 electoral votes. Dewey ended up with 189 electoral votes from 16 states.

Not surprisingly, the cartoonists had been having a field day.

__________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

Truman Comic Book: The Story of Harry S. Truman
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/story-harry-s-truman?documentid=NA&pagenumber=1

Truman Cartoons in the Library of Congress:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/cartoon-drawings/?fa=subject:truman,+harry+s.

Join, or Die (1754)
By Benjamin Franklin – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress;Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g05315. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10604794

It’s hard to believe that we still have one more primary to go before the 2020 Democratic Convention the week of August 17. 

The Connecticut primary, originally scheduled for April 28, will now be held on August 11. Although 60 delegates are at stake, the contest is anticlimactic. The Connecticut vote will not be a game changer since one candidate — Joe Biden — has already wrapped up the Democratic nomination.

Actually, the disorder so far this year has been relatively minor when compared to that of the 1968 election season. Importantly, this was the last year that it was possible for a candidate to run for the American presidency without participating in a single primary.

In a previous post titled Election 2020: Is American Democracy in Danger, I discussed some findings from the 2018 book titled How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Both authors are professors of  government at Harvard University. You might want to take a look at the 10 takeaways in that post for a little more insight.

Gatekeeping and Populist Outsiders

As it turns out, US primary elections once served a “gatekeeping” function, filtering out politicians who rejected in words or actions “the democratic rules of the game.” Very often these rules are discounted by populist outsiders who want to gain power by claiming that they represent the voice of the people. They tell people that the existing system is not really democratic, that it’s been hijacked, corrupted, or rigged by the elite — meaning the establishment. Then they promise to “drain the swamp” and return power to the people. 

In Latin America between 1990 and 2012, five presidents were populist outsiders: Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Lucio Gutierrez, and Rafael Correa. All five ended up weakening democratic institutions, and the world is still living with how that turned out.

According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, the responsibility for filtering out individuals with authoritarian leanings rests with political parties and party leaders. In other words, these are democracy’s gatekeepers, those tasked with keeping authoritarians off party ballots at election time.

For most of America’s past, these party gatekeepers kept so-called unconventional candidates off the ballot. But a turning point came in 1968. 

A Turning Point

1968 was a turbulent year in the United States. You can read more about it in our post on Protest and Resistance: The Lead Up to the 1968 Election. 

In short, in the months leading up to the presidential elections that year President Lyndon Johnson had escalated the war in Vietnam, and the conflict was spiraling out of control. 

April 1968 saw the assassination of America’s revered civil rights leader, Martin Luther King.  

A second tragedy occurred in June, when Bobby Kennedy was shot just hours after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. He was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. PDT on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot.

Democrats Are Divided

Kennedy’s passing left the Democrats divided. Some supported Johnson’s foreign policy while others were in favor of Kennedy’s antiwar position. The traditional party organization stepped in to resolve the conflict, but unity was hard to come by.

Party insiders threw their weight behind the current vice president, Hubert Humphrey. But he was unpopular because of his association with Johnson, and because he hadn’t run in a single primary. Still, with the backing of “party leaders, union bosses, and other insiders,” he won his party’s nomination on the first ballot. Chaos ensued.

Protests and Party Insiders

On August 28, protesters marched on the convention. 

“Confrontations exploded on the convention floor,” and “uniformed police officers dragged several delegates from the auditorium.”

 In the end, Humphrey’s candidacy marked the end of the “party-insider” selection system. In the wake of the Chicago convention, there was far reaching reform that affected both political parties.

After Humphrey’s defeat in the 1968 election, the Democratic Party created the McGovern-Fraser Commission to rethink the nomination system.

That commission came up with a system revolving around binding presidential primaries. Beginning in 1972, most delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions would be elected in state-level primaries and caucuses.

Delegates would be preselected by the candidates themselves to ensure their loyalty. There would be no more party leaders upsetting the apple cart by making backroom deals. The traditional party gatekeepers could now be circumvented.

The Democrats changed this a little bit in the early 1980s when they stipulated that a share of their national delegates would be comprised of elected officials who would be appointed by state parties rather than elected in primaries. These superdelegates were to represent between 15 and 20 percent of national delegates, serving to counterbalance primary voters who might settle on candidates that governors, big city mayors, senators and congressional representatives disapproved of.

The GOP, on the other hand, saw no need for superdelegates, opting to maintain a more democratic nomination system.

Outsider Candidates

By placing presidential nominations in the hands of voters, the gatekeeping function of the party elite was weakened, potentially opening the door to outsider candidates. 

• In the 23 years between 1945 and 1968, under the old system, only one outsider — Dwight Eisenhower — publicly sought the nomination of either party. 
• In contrast, during the first two decades of the new primary system, 1972-1992, eight outsiders ran, five Democrats and three Republicans. 
• Between 1996 and 2016, eighteen outsiders competed. Thirteen of these were Republicans. 

Until 2016, celebrity outsiders had always fallen short. 

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic Party nomination in 1984 and 1988, while Southern Baptist leader Pat Robertson (1988), television commentator Pat Buchanan (1992, 1996, 2000), and Forbes magazine publisher Steve Forbes (1996) ran for the Republican nomination. But they all lost.

Even after the 1968 changes, it proved difficult to circumvent the party establishment.

The Invisible Primary

Capturing a majority of delegates required winning primaries all over the county, which, in turn, required money, favorable media coverage, and, crucially, people working on the ground in all states. Any candidate seeking to complete the grueling obstacle course of U.S. primaries needed allies among donors, newspaper editors, interest groups, and state-level politicians . . . 

Arthur T. Hadley wrote about this in his 1976 book, The Invisible Primary. He claimed that this phase

which occurred before the primary season even began was ‘where the winning candidate is actually selected.’ Members of the party establishment — elected officials, activists, allied interest groups — were, thereby, not necessarily locked out of the game. Without them . . . it was nearly impossible to win either party’s nomination.

Nearly impossible, maybe, but not entirely.

Enter Donald Trump.

The post 1968 primary system had left Republican leaders without an absolute way to stop Trump’s rise. After 1968, they no longer held all the keys to their party’s presidential nomination.

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Much of the information is this post is sourced from Chapter 2 of the 2018 book titled How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It’s well worth a read.

Photo by kalihikahuna74 (OkinawaKhan808).  RIchard “Tricky D#%k” Nixon (Republican), Hubert Humphrey (Democrat), & George Wallace (Courage)

Like many of you I’ve been disgusted and appalled by the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. They’re just the latest in a long string of racist incidents in the United States. As an individual, I feel powerless, and I’ve struggled with how we in the Cold War Studies community can make a difference. I haven’t come up with any easy answers, but I’ve decided on two baby steps that I hope will lead to more substantive action. 

In today’s post, I’ll pass on some resources that I hope will help us all examine our attitudes and actions. Our community is diverse and international so I know that there’s not ‘a one size fits all’. We’re all in a different place on our social justice journey. But I hope you find something in this listing that is relevant to where you find yourself now and where you want to be. After I lay out some resources, I’ll suggest an action that we might take, targeting especially our American readers.  

Here’s my list. It’s in no particular order, and was recommended to me by the black scholar and activist, Bryan Massingale, the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham University. 

(In full transparency, if you choose to purchase any of these items through our affiliate links, Cold War Studies will receive a small commission. We thank you!)

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (2007) is a book by activist and writer Tim Wise that has also been made into a documentary. According to the film site Kanopy, the documentary explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. The reviewer goes on to say that “Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class.” He argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today. You can watch the trailer below. Watch the full film on Kanopy.

Just Mercy (2014) is a powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us. Amazon says that the book is a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. Bryan Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and a professor of law at New York University Law School. He has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the Supreme Court, and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color. He has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. The book has also been made into a movie. You can watch the trailer below and the full film on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV.

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) is a documentary film directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House. Narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson, the film explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin’s reminiscences of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his personal observations of American history.  It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards and won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. You can watch the trailer below. The full movie is available on Amazon.

13th (2016) explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans. It gets its name from the American Constitution’s 13th amendment, which reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”  You can watch the trailer below. The film is available on YouTube and on Netflix.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018) is a New York Times best-selling book that explores “the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.” I’ve just checked this book out of the library, but haven’t started reading it yet. Have any of you read it? 

If you have suggestions, I’d love for you to enter them in the comments. And, just as an aside, I noticed this morning that Netflix has a good selection of movies that they’ve put in a Black Lives Matter section on their site. You might want to take a look.

Now for the action item. The 2020 elections are coming soon. Regardless of your preferences, I think we can all agree that it’s really important for everyone to vote, so here’s the action item I mentioned earlier. Voter suppression is a ‘hot’ issue and a group called Reclaim Our Vote is tackling that problem. I’m suggesting that you go to their nonpartisan website and check them out. Volunteer if you’re so inclined.They’re  currently working to inform and motivate voters of color in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas. You can sign up to make phone calls or send postcards.

My very best wishes to you all. Let’s work together to stand for change!

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Background

Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 -1964, was responsible for the launching of a bold political offensive against the West in the Third World.

At the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet foreign policy had run out of steam. Instead of applying pressure, the Eisenhower administration extended an olive branch, expressing interest in solving lingering problems, especially the Korean conflict. The Kremlin seemed receptive to the opportunity and an armistice was reached in Korea in June 1953.

The Khrushchev Years

Shortly after, in July 1953, the Soviets announced a 4-million-ruble contribution to the United Nations program of technical assistance to the underdeveloped nations.

In September 1953, the Soviet government signed a 5 year trade agreement with India.

In 1954, Afghanistan became the first Third World nation to receive Soviet credits since World War II.

In 1954 also, in a major initiative toward the Arab world, the Soviet Union cast vetoes in the UN Security Council protecting the Arab position on several issues. One veto blocked a Western resolution on the division of Jordan River waters. Another blocked a New Zealand resolution that would have reaffirmed the 1951 condemnation of Egypt’s denial to Israel of access to the Suez Canal.

In February 1955, The Soviets and India announced a million-ton steel mill project at Bhilai. The Soviets gave a $100 million credit to India for this project.

In April 1955, a conference of nonaligned states was held in Bandung, Indonesia. The Soviets recognized the conference, and wrangled an invitation for their Chinese allies, thus undermining rigid adherence to Zdanov’s “two camp” strategy. Now, the nonaligned nations mattered.

In June 1955, India’s prime minister Nehru paid a visit to the Soviet Union.

In November and December of that same year, the Soviet’s new Premier, Nikolai Bulganin, and Party First Secretary Khrushchev visited India, Burma, and Afghanistan. The India trip was the first of Khruschev’s many Third World encounters.

The visit to India was the highlight of the officials’ month long journey. While there, the Soviets promised support for the Indian position on the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan and the Goa dispute with Portugal, scoring points at the expense of the British, the Americans, and the Chinese.

Later that same year, on September 27, the Soviets chalked up another success when Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, announced that his country would be purchasing advanced weapons from Czechoslovakia. Although Czechoslovakia was the supplier of record, Nasser soon admitted that the deal had been negotiated with the Soviets. The $200-$250 million barter deal (some say as high as $400 million) included Soviet MIG-15 and MIG-17 jet fighters in exchange for Egyptian rice and cotton.

The Soviets had moved from ceremonial visits, trade deals, and steel mills to massive arms supply in a region of vital strategic importance to the West. 

In these early years, the Soviet advantage seemed overwhelming. Khrushchev went so far as to declare that the new nations born of the breakup of the colonial empires were “natural partners of the socialist countries in a vast zone of peace . . . .”

Still, many of the emerging nations valued their independence, and only a handful — North Korea, Cuba, North Vietnam — declared themselves fully “Marxist-Leninist.”  Nevertheless, it would take the West 30 years to make significant headway.

The Eisenhower Years

In March 1956, on the heels of the Soviet tour of India, John Foster Dulles (the US Secretary of State) paid a visit to New Delhi. Since 1951, the United States had been shipping huge quantities of emergency wheat and rice to India to relieve famine.

According to Peter W. Rodman, in his book More Precious Than Peace:

From 1945 to 1956, U.S. economic aid delivered to India, including both loans and grants, totaled nearly $435 million. (Soviet aid delivered through 1956 totaled some $40 million, though over $300 million was pledged.) U.S. aid was predominantly in the form of grants; Soviet aid was then entirely credits. Yet when Dulles arrived at Palam Airport, Nehru was not there to greet him, on the grounds that he (Nehru) was not only foreign minister but also head of government and therefore their ranks were not equal.

Not surprisingly, Americans were quite sensitive about the treatment. It raised a number of questions about American’s role and prospects in the new nations.

President Eisenhower and his secretary of state acknowledged that the Soviets presented strategic challenges, and they devoted a great deal of diplomatic effort to constructing alliances to block Soviet expansion. “Pactomania” as it was called was a worldwide attempt to counter the Soviets.

In Latin America, the US reinforced the Rio Pact of 1948; in Southeast Asia, there was the Manila Pact of 1954; in the Western Pacific, there were mutual defense treaties in 1954 with the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China; in the Near East there was the Baghdad Pact of 1955; and in Japan, there was a security treaty in 1960.

Covert action was also on the table: the Eisenhower administration used CIA action in Iran in 1953 to remove Prime Minister Mosaddeq from office; there was action in Guatemala in 1954; and most embarrassingly, an American U-2 was shot down in May 1960 in a reconnaissance overflight of the Soviet Union.

Despite all the above activity, the administration was concerned about the monetary costs of opposing Soviet expansionism over a long period of time, fearing that it might pose an economic threat to the American way of life.

America’s leaders understood that they needed to have a positive program to respond to Soviet activities in the Third World. They wanted to distance the US from the colonial legacy and respond to the aspirations of the new nations for economic advance, social progress, and political independence. Soon the nation was engaged in a prolonged national debate over the purposes of foreign aid. As with many Cold War policy disagreements, this debate is continuing as we move into the 2020 election year.

Conversation Starters: Here are a couple of questions to consider. Feel free to add your opinion in the comments.

What do you think about “pactomania?” Are the agreements the United States signed during the Cold War still important today? 

How important is America’s leadership on the world stage?

Source: Peter Rodman, More Precious Than Peace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994) pp.52-61. Please note that this is an affiliate link.

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