scholarly journals The great Project Camelot: Implications and repercussions of a controversy in social sciences

Sociologija ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 458-480
Author(s):  
Marko Bala
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Project Camelot

The paper examines the relationship between social sciences and the military-industrial complex in the United States of America during the Cold War era. Based on the review of the most representative texts on this problematique, the author?s main goal is to prove the plausibility of critical view according to which the social sciences have been instrumentalized during the Cold War by centers of power such as CIA and the Pentagon in order to accomplish certain strategic goals. The main focus of our interest is Project Camelot, an ambitous research program which was canceled in the midst of the international scandal which erupted as a consequence of the exposure of the project?s political nature. The first part of the paper describes the Camelot controversy and the reaction of social scientists, as well as the debate on ethical, epistemological, political and practical implications of social scientific research, which was triggered by the affair. The second part of the paper describes research projects whose characterics are similar to those of Project Camelot, and the author hypostasizes that the controversial project cannot be viewed as an isolated case, but rather as a paradigmatic example of the Cold War social science. The text pays special attention to the question of sponsorship/sources of funding of social research, an issue whose scale and importance is especially highlighted in the third section of the paper. The concluding part points on the problem of militarization and instrumentalisation of social sciences fifty years after Project Camelot, while the emphasis is put on the necessity of maintaining the memory on the worst cases of the abuse of behavioral expertise.

Writing into the Cold War West

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 390-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Piette
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Manhattan Project ◽  
The United States ◽  
Toxic Waste ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Energy Field ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

John Beck's fine study of the representation of the postwar American West, analyzes the cultural impact of the secret state's establishment of its arsenals, proving grounds and waste disposal sites after the Manhattan Project. The giant Southwest Defense Complex is registered, with acute and telling political energy, in texts by Cormac MacCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Bradford Morrow and Don DeLillo, as a brute invisible energy field at the edges of national experience. This is one of the best studies of the military-industrial complex on record, typified by sharp close reading, blistering and theoretically wise readings, and a sure-footed grasp of difficult and evasive histories and strategies of deception. Beck sketches relations between toxic waste disposal, repressive anti-marginal politics, Cold War megadeath and atomic culture with an eloquence and passion controlled by a cool theoretical head. The review article argues that Beck's study is a major contribution to the analysis of the artificial state of emergency instituted by the AEC and Pentagon deep within the United States.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

scholarly journals The soviet school system in Central Intelligence Agency estimates at the initial stage of the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-197
Author(s):  
Zaur Imalverdi oglu Mamedov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
School System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Soviet School ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Comprehensive Knowledge ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The paper is devoted to the analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency of the USSR school system. The US was in dire need of information about its new adversary. The situation was aggravated by the closed nature of the Soviet state and the absence of a long continuous tradition of intelligence activities of American intelligence. The president and other government bodies wanted to have comprehensive knowledge of any processes and phenomena in the world. US intelligence should have been able to solve this problem. In this regard, the first stage of the Cold War for the CIA was largely due to an analysis of official and semi-official sources, as well as the development of various strategies. In order to find out about various areas of the life in the USSR, analysts extracted information from Soviet scientific literature, press, radio, legislation and interrogations of former German prisoners. The National Assessment Bureau, led by William Langer and Sherman Kent, compiled reports on Soviet military capabilities, industry, agriculture, the political system, etc. The Soviet school system was considered by American intelligence specialists in the framework of the military and economic potential of the enemy, as well as the strategy of psychological warfare. The paper analyzes the reports concerning the educational system in the USSR in the aspect of school education, its strengths and weaknesses. The results allow us to conclude that the information about the Soviet school system contributed to the formation of the foreign policy and domestic policy of the United States.

The Anglo-American Worldview and the Question of World Order

2019 ◽  
pp. 175-190
Author(s):  
Andrew Gamble
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

One of the distinctive features of the idea of an Anglosphere has been a particular view of world order, based on liberal principles of free movement of goods, capital and people, representative government, and the rule of law, which requires a powerful state or coalition of states to uphold and enforce them. This chapter charts the roots as well as the limits of this conception in the period of British ascendancy in the nineteenth century, and how significant elements of the political class in both Britain and the United States in the twentieth century came to see the desirability of cooperation between the English-speaking nations to preserve that order against challengers. This cooperation was most clearly realised in the Second World War. The post-war construction of a new liberal world order was achieved under the leadership of the United States, with Britain playing a largely supportive but secondary role. Cooperation between Britain and the US flourished during the Cold War, particularly in the military and intelligence fields, and this became the institutional core of the ‘special relationship’. The period since the end of the Cold War has seen new challenges emerge both externally and internally to the Anglo-American worldview.

The Cold War Origins of the U.S. Central Command

2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Odom
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Command ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Joint Chiefs Of Staff ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

During the Carter administration the Middle East and Southwest Asia became a third major theater in the Cold War struggle along with Europe and the Far East. Initially, President Jimmy Carter tried to remove this region from the Cold War competition, but the collapse of the shah's regime in Iran prompted Carter to reverse course and to build a “Persian Gulf security framework” that later allowed the United States to deal with three wars and many smaller clashes. The interagency process implementing this dramatic change was rent with clashes of departmental interests. The State Department and the military services resisted the structural changes they would later need to confront not only the Soviet threat but also intraregional conflicts. Moreover, the Reagan administration, after forcing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make the Central Command formal, actually slowed the process of its growth, leaving it far from ready to embark on the Gulf War in 1990–1991.

scholarly journals Social Sciences in Hungary During the Cold War and After

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Karády
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Thaw Period

Based on various types of recently explored empirical evidence, this study attempts to account for the complex and ever-changing relationship the social sciences in Hungary have entertained with their foreign counterparts, both institutionally and through their intellectual references since their birth in the early 20th century. Historically, up until Communist times, Hungary was a German intellectual colony of sorts while remaining receptive mostly to French and other influences as well. This changed fundamentally after 1948 with the process of Sovietization. This implied the outright institutional suppression of several social disciplines (sociology, demography, political science, and psychoanalysis) and the forceful intellectual realignment of others along Marxist lines. Contacts with the West were also suspended and the exclusive orientation to Soviet social science enforced through­out the long 1950s. A thaw period after this attempt at Russian cultural colonization followed the years after the 1956 anti-Bolshevik uprising. From 1963 on, the Hungarian social sciences saw the reestablishment and state-supported promotion of disciplines that were suppressed earlier, the softening of the ascendancy of official Marxism, and the opening of channels of exchange with the West. In spite of the continuation of political censorship, ideological surveillance, and occasional expulsion of politically dissident scholars until 1989, Hungarian social scientists could benefit more often and intensively from Western sponsorship (such as study grants from the Ford foundation) and collaborations. After the fall of Communism, the expansion and reorientation of the social sciences to the West, dominated by Anglo-Saxon contacts, are demonstrated by various indices, such as data on the book market of the social sciences and books purchased by libraries, translated, or cited in major reviews.

Piecing together the peace dividend: Managing change in communities dependent on defence expenditure

1992 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Roe
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Managing Change ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Peace Dividend ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Defence Expenditure

Summary To date governments have been slow to appreciate that, as well as a peace dividend, arms reduction will bring social and economic hardship to communities which have relied upon defence expenditure for employment. Conversion of military bases, let alone restructuring of defence industries, cannot be left to market forces to achieve; government intervention is required to ensure the successful adjustment of communities. During the Cold War, the dominance of the “military-industrial complex” spread the notion that disarmament would threaten not only security, but jobs. Current geopolitical changes present an opportunity to challenge this argument. Local employment initiatives are essential to prevent defence cuts from causing unemployment.

‘We Have to Pay the Price’: German Workers and the US Army, 1945–1989

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-584
Author(s):  
Adam R. Seipp
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United States Army ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Labour Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

This article examines the relationship between German civilian workers and the United States Army in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War. Using archival and published sources, the article offers an entangled history of ‘local national’ employees and their role in maintaining the American presence in Central Europe. Beginning in the late 1960s, German labour unions began to challenge American labour policy. In doing so, they consistently argued for a more forceful assertion of German sovereignty. This labour relationship was therefore important for both the military history of the Cold War and for the development of German democracy.

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