scholarly journals INTEGRATION PROCESSES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

2019 ◽  
Vol 2(13)/2019 (2(13)/2019) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Adam KUŹ

The purpose of the paper is to answer the question: what is the main reason why the Central and Eastern Europe countries did not enter into fruitful and long-term cooperation both in the interwar period and after the collapse of the Soviet Union despite a far-reaching commonality of interests? Conflicts between these countries are not decisive factors in their lack of integration. The degree of integration is proportional to the degree of involvement in Central and Eastern Europe of powers that could act as an external hegemony. In the interwar period, the United States, England and France, and after 1989, the United States had the right potential to undertake such a task in its interest. None of them, however, took up such a role in the long run. Attempts to integrate the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to date, starting from the Versailles conference, indicate that the American protectorate is a necessary factor for implementing closer forms of cooperation between these countries.

1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Buszynski

Southeast Asia in United States policy fell from a region of high priority during the Vietnam war to become, after the fall of Indochina, an area of relatively minor interest. For the United States, Southeast Asia evoked memories of misperception, intensified over-commitment, and simplistic assumptions that characterized the American effort to defeat local Vietnamese national communism. Since the formulation of the Nixon doctrine of disengagement in 1969, United States policy towards Southeast Asia has been undergoing a process of long-term readjustment in recognition of the exaggerated significance that the region had assumed in American thinking. The fall of Saigon in April 1975 was a major stimulus to this readjustment as it gave the Americans compelling reasons to anticipate a reassertion of Soviet influence in the region. Successive American administrations attempted to place the region in a wider global context to avoid the dangers of extreme reaction to local national communism while developing the flexibility to coordinate a response to the Soviet Union at a global level. The main concern of American policy was to remove the basis for direct United States involvement in the region in a way that would satisfy post-Vietnam war public and congressional opinion and the demands of strategic planners for greater freedom of manoeuvre against the Soviet Union.


Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.


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