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This dissertation of limited scope traces the attempts by Gorbachev (1985-1991) to reform an economic, political and social system which was in a state of terminal decline. The origins of its demise, it is argued, lay in the ossified command economy inherited from Stalin. The enormous damage inflicted on Soviet agriculture during collectivisation in the 1930s~ when millions of productive peasants died, proved to be a fatal blow to that sector. Tlms, Gorbachev followed a two-fold strategy ofrefonn. Glasnost (openness) was introduced to allow constructive debate on economic and social matters. Despite a hesitant beginning, the right to criticise allowed the emergence of more radical campaigners, such as Yeltsin who demanded greater democracy. Significantly, the revival of ethnic nationalist demands in the republics led to disintegration. Perestroika (restructuring) was intended to modernise and boost living standards. The economy faltered but the market was not yet in place / History / M.A. (History)

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald Mrozek / Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon used the ideology of military containment of Communism to justify U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. Until 1968, opponents of this intervention attacked the ideology of containment or its application to Vietnam. In 1968, opponents of the war switched tactics and began to focus instead on the President’s credibility. These arguments quickly became the dominant critique of the war through its end and were ultimately successful in ending it. The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution were central to the change of opposition strategy in 1968. For Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin incident had provided the political impetus to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which the administration used as an insurance policy against Congressional dissent. For Congressional dissenters in 1968, inconsistencies in Johnson’s version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident allowed them to undermine the Resolution as a weapon against Congress. For the American people, revelations about the administration’s dishonesty during the incident simply added to grave doubts that Americans already had about Johnson’s credibility; the American people lost confidence in Johnson, ending his Presidency. The dramatic success of this new strategy—attacking the administration’s credibility—encouraged other opponents to follow suit, permanently altering the framework of debate over the war. This change in opposition strategy in 1968 had a number of important consequences. First, this change in rhetoric ultimately ended the war. To sustain his credibility against relentless attack, President Nixon repeatedly withdrew troops to prove to the American people he was ending the war. Nixon ran out of troops to withdraw and had to accept an unfavorable peace. Second, after the war, this framework for debate of military interventions established—between advocates using the ideology of containment and opponents attacking the administration’s credibility—would reemerge nearly every time an administration contemplated military intervention through the end of the Cold War. Finally, because opponents of military intervention stopped challenging containment in 1968, the American public continued to accept the precepts of containment and the Cold War consensus survived until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, a key program under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “New Look” policy, prepared the United States defense posture for “the long haul” in the Cold War. Eisenhower wanted to prevent the escalation of military costs while still providing an adequate defense. Eisenhower emphasized a retaliatory capability and improved continental defenses, the so-called “sword and shield,” which are key features of the New Look. The DEW Line would prove to be a vital component of both. Whereas the initial emphasis of the DEW Line was to warn against attack providing for both active and passive defense measures, soon there was a definite “counter-offensive” role for the DEW Line as well—the protection of the primary retaliatory capability of the United States: the Strategic Air Command (SAC). The place of the DEW Line in the history of the Cold War has been an under appreciated topic. With the exception of the scholarship from the 1950s and early 1960s, only recently have continental defense and particularly the DEW Line been removed from the shadows of other Cold War events, strategies, and military programs. This doctoral thesis is an account of the DEW Line’s conception, implementation, and position in Eisenhower’s New Look and deterrent strategy. The DEW Line proved to be a cardinal feature of Eisenhower’s New Look strategy: it strengthened overall U.S. defenses and defense posture as the one element of U.S. defense policy (“New Look”) that improved and connected both the active and passive measures of continental defense by providing early warning against manned bombers flying over the polar region; it bolstered the deterrent value of SAC; and it was instrumental in developing closer peacetime military cooperation between the United States and Canada. In fact, U.S.- Canadian diplomacy during the 1950s offers an important case study in “superpowermiddle power” interaction. However, despite the asymmetry in their relationship, U.S.- Canadian defense policies proved to be analogous. All of these objectives could not have been accomplished without the technological and logistical abilities necessary to construct successfully the DEW Line.

This dissertation argues that through a secret backchannel, US National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador to the US Anatoly Dobrynin formed a relationship which provided the empathy needed to bridge many of the ideological differences between their two countries. It examines transcripts of their telephone conversations from 1969-1977 when the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in detente, or a relaxation of tensions, during the Cold War. The dissertation concludes that the Kissinger-Dobrynin backchannel serves as a case study of the effectiveness of back channels in international diplomacy.

<p>The main research question of this thesis is how do grand strategies form. Grand strategy is defined as a state's coherent and consistent pattern of behavior over a long period of time in search of an overarching goal. The political science literature usually explains the formation of grand strategies by using a planning (or design) model. In this dissertation, I use primary sources, interviews with former government officials, and historical scholarship to show that the formation of grand strategy is better understood using a model of emergent learning imported from the business world. My two case studies examine the formation of American grand strategy during the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras. The dissertation concludes that in both these strategic eras the dominating grand strategies were formed primarily by emergent learning rather than flowing from advanced designs.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis examines the nature and dynamics of U.S.-Iran relations during the Cold War under the leadership of U.S. President Richard Nixon, his adviser Henry Kissinger, and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran. This revisionist account critically examines the popular view of Mohammad Reza Shah as a mere instrument of American strategies of containment during the Cold War. Relying on recently declassified American documents, British government papers, and the diaries, memoirs and oral histories of Iranian actors, this thesis restores agency to the shah as an autonomous Cold War actor and suggests that Iran evolved from a client to a partner of the United States under the Nixon Doctrine. This partnership was forged during Nixon’s first term in office between 1969 and 1972, as the United States embraced a policy of Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf region. Thanks to a long-standing friendship with the president, the shah was able to exercise extraordinary influence in the Nixon White House. This partnership reached its peak during Nixon’s second term as the United States supported Iran’s regional primacy against the challenge from Iraq. The shah drew Nixon and Kissinger into Iran’s secret war against Iraq in Kurdistan in 1972, by portraying Iran’s long-standing regional conflict with Iraq as a Cold War confrontation with the Soviet-backed Ba’th regime in Baghdad. When the shah unilaterally decided to abandon the Kurds in a deal with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1975, Kissinger had little choice but to acquiesce, despite the personal embarrassment and domestic recriminations that followed. The U.S.-Iran partnership declined following Watergate and Nixon’s resignation in 1974. In spite of the best efforts of the shah and Kissinger, between 1974 and 1976 the United States and Iran were unable to reach an agreement on U.S. nuclear exports to Iran. President Gerald Ford tried to impose a discriminatory nuclear agreement on Iran that was rejected by the shah because it violated Iran’s national sovereignty. Under Ford, the United States reverted to treating Iran as a client rather a partner of the United States.

Soviet-Third World relations during the Cold War are still not clearly understood. Largely based on previously unused primary material, this study aims to fill this gap in knowledge by emphasising the interplay between domestic, local, regional, and global dimensions in analysing Moscow’s involvement in the Horn of Africa. By offering a detailed examination of Soviet involvement in Somalia and Ethiopia during the Cold War, this thesis aims to shed light on the factors, shaping Moscow’s policies in the area. While it does not lay any claim of representativeness for other Third World regions, this thesis aims to highlight the intricate interplay between ideology and realpolitik in the making of Soviet foreign policy. Additionally, it tries to determine to what extent the ‘local pull,’ exerted by both Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, as well as by Soviet and other Bloc diplomats, informed the Kremlin’s policy in the area. This thesis shows that the two main strands of Moscow’s foreign policy, the pragmatic statist line and the ideological Cominternist approach, were not in conflict with one another. Instead, they were amalgamated into a flexible tactical approach, designed to maximise Soviet influence by whatever means available, along the path of least resistance. Another strand in the argument is interwoven with the pericentric framework for the study of the Cold War. While accepting recent interpretations of superpower-Third World relations, this research develops a more nuanced account of the centre-periphery interaction. The act of local engagement was Moscow’s initiative, in accord with its wider geo-political plans. Once engaged, the local actors proved instrumental in informing the Kremlin’s exercise of maintaining a presence. As with its entry, Moscow’s disengagement was predicated on strategic considerations. The period of perestroika, assigned the Third World lower priority in the Kremlin’s global agenda, engendering a withdrawal from the Horn.