It is debatable when the “Cold War” Era began and ended. The term “cold war, ” or “a new cold war, ” is sometimes used for describing today's U. S. -Soviet relations. However, it may be said that the “Cold War” Era, which followed World War II, was definitely over by the end of the 1960's by any definition. With the aid of historical hindsight, we can view the era in a better perspective. Besides, the archival sources relevant to research in the early Cold War years have progressively been opened to scholars, especially in the United States. A number of collections of archival documents have also been published in book form or in microfilms. For the theme of this issue of our journal, therefore, we take up the “Cold War” Era, with a focus on the foreign policy of the United States, the hegemonic power in the world of that era. Each of the articles in this issue attempts to re-examine a particular phase or aspect of U. S. foreign policy in the second half of the 1940's and in the 1950's, making extensive use of primary sources which include unpublished archival documents. The interpretative frameworks of these articles are varied; but each of them attempts to shed new light upon the subject which it deals with. It is our hope that these articles, both individually and collectively, could make some contributions to scholarly understanding of U. S. foreign policy and international relations in the “Cold War” Era.

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In his memoir, The Fifteen Weeks, Joseph Jones, the draft writer of the Truman Doctrine, wrote that “there is a great difference between thinking or determining this [the policy to aid Greece and Turkey] and announcing it as the policy of the U. S. to a questionable Congress and an apathetic electorate.”
Indeed, the announced Doctrine assumed such a highly ideological tone as to ask every nation in the world to “choose between alternative ways of life.” But what was the Truman Administration really “thinking or determing” in 1947?
Historian Richard Freeland has argued the crisis of March 1947 originated not in Greek developments but in American politics. Surely the Truman Administration was not breaking new ground in extending aid to Greece and Turkey, because in September 1946 Byrnes had already agreed with Bevin to aid them jointly. 'Freeland, therefore, insisted that Truman's politics of ideology derived not from the Greek “civil war, ” but from American domestic politics, particularly the necessity of maneuvering the Republican dominated Congress.
But Freeland's hypothesis is, it can be argued, only a partial truth. The Truman Administration was actually “thinking or determining” to obtain world hegemony for the U. S. on behalf of the disintegrating British Empire.
In fact, on March 11, 1947, just one day before announcing its new Doctrine, the Truman Administration established the SWNCC Special Ad Hoc Committee regarding Extension of US Aid to Foreign Governments (except Greece and Turkey). This body reflected Acheson's judgement that the problem of Greece and Turkey was part “of a much larger problem growing out of the change in Great Britain's strength and other circumstances not directly related to this development.”
The Truman Doctrine needs to be analyzed, therefore, from the standpoint of a transformation of the entire world system. Here three factors were at work: the retreat of the old center, Britain; the social effects of that retreat on the peripheral states, Greece and Turkey; and the intervention throughout the globe of the new center, the U. S. The politics of ideology was the method chosen by the Truman Administration to fulfill America's imperial ambitions.

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Despite the large volume of Cold War studies in the United States, aspects other than U. S. -U. S. S. R. relations did not often attract scholars' attention. During the 1970's, however, we find a new trend in works by Gabriel Kolko, Akira Iriye, John Gimbel, and others, all of which emphasize factors besides U. S. -Soviet relations.
This article addresses U. S. export control policy on strategic materials, directed against the Soviet Bloc from 1945 to 1950. Focusing on relations between U. S. export control and aid policies, it asks: how did the United States dominate international relations at that time?
In his “Truman Doctrine, ” President Truman divided the world into two free and subjugated halves. But the “Free World” itself contained the seeds of oppression. Over the matter of export control we find serious conflict between the United States and U. S. aid recipients. The United States urged them to take the U. S. standard of trade control. But, because of their much greater dependence on East-West trade they were very reluctant to do so. What mitigated this conflict was (a) tensions arising from the Soviet atomic bomb explosion and the Korean War, and (b) U. S. threats to terminate aid to the allies.
By using recently declassified American and British records, this article delineates the developmentof U. S export control policy in both Europe and Asia. It consists of four chapters: (1) the origins of U. S. export control policy; (2) the formation of COCOM (the international organization on export control against the Soviet Bloc); (3) the impact of Chinese communism; and (4) the Korean War and the globalization of trade control.
As the activities of COCOM and the United States on export control remain secret, we still do not have accurate knowledge of the matter. The primary sources which this article used help to make clear the activities from 1945-1950. The materials also uncover new facts on the origins of the abnormal state of Sino-Japanese trade after World War II.

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While the United Nations were devoting their last efforts towards the defeat of the Axis Powers, strategists within the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had started to prepare for the “next war.” The USSR appeared as the most probable enemy in the war plans from the fall of 1945. Rapid demobilization and resulting reorganization of American armed forces, however, curtailed effective deterrence toward the USSR which maintained relatively superior forces along the “Iron Curtain.”
Official declaration of the Cold War by President Truman in 1947 accelerated the rapid strengthening of the U. S. armed forces and a number of emergency war plans, short and long term, were drafted.
In this article, the author has endeavoured to trace the evolution of the American strategy toward the USSR between 1945 and 1949, based chiefly on the JCS Official History. Special attention has been paid to the changing role of nuclear weapons within the overall strategy.
The Far East was always given low priority by war planners and it led to the retreat of the U. S. defense perimeter in Asia since the “loss of China” in the fall of 1949. Japan under the occupation was, however, enjoying calm and peaceful days.

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American policy toward Korea had its own character during the time from the summer of 1947 to the outbreak of the Korean War. It differed from the policy up to that time, because the possibility of negotiating with the Soviet Union had disappeared. Also, it differed from the policy after that time because the American direct military commitment to South Korea had not yet been established. The American policy during this transitional period may be defined as containment by limited means.
The U. S. did not recognize the strategic value of Korean peninsula in the context of the war against the Soviet Union. The U. S. tried to maintain a non-communist government in South Korea for political reasons. First of all, the U. S. could not endure the loss of its prestige, which had been staked on Korea since the Cairo Declaration in 1943 and its two years Occupational Administration in South Korea. Secondly, the U. S. had to prevent political repercussions throughout the Far East. Unless the U. S., upon withdrawal of its troops from South Korea, left sufficient indigenous military strength to enable South Korea to defend itself against any but an overt act of aggression, U. S. withdrawal could be interpreted as a betrayal of its friends and allies in the Far East. Thirdly, the overthrow by Soviet-dominated forces of a regime established in South Korea under the aegis of the UN would constitute a severe blow to the prestige and influence of the UN.
From the end of 1949 to the spring of 1950, this policy was authorized in the larger context of its Far Eastern strategy, which was formulated under the influences of the Chinese Revolution. Although the level of American commitment to South Korea was increasing, there was no change in the policy to contain the communist threat without direct military commitment.

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In July 1947 the United States took the initiative in proposing a preliminary peace conference to the other member nations of the Far Eastern Commission. The American initiative failed to yield any results, and the United States tabled the proposal. Two years passed with no progress towards a peace settlement with Japan.
The primary reason for the long delay in peace making was, of course, the rapid change in U. S. -Soviet relations from wartime cooperation to postwar confrontation. Intertwined with development of the Cold War situation, intra-government politics within the United States also cast a shadow over the path to peace. The State Department and the Defense Department developed conflicting opinions about the question of a Japanese peace treaty. The two departments differed as to the degree of importance to be given to military considerations. They differed especially about the importance of military bases in Japan. General Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo entertained his own views, which were different from both the, views of the State Department and those of the Defense Department. Delay in forming a consensus within the United States government was a serious obstacle on the road to a peace settlement with Japan.
Relying mainly on documents compiled in the Foreign Relations series and partly on sources available at the MacArthur Memorial Library and the Truman Library, this article attempts to analyze the process of intra-governmental politics through which the Truman administration adjusted internal differences and reached agreement on a peace policy. Its analysis is limited to the one year period which began with the Acheson-Bevin meeting in September 1949 and ended with the adoption of NSC 60/1 in September 1950.

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As pointed out by some scholars, the inauguration of Eisenhower in 1953 coincided with the death of Stalin, and occasioned a change in the nature of the “Cold War.” About the same time the completion of the hydrogen bomb by the United States and then by the Soviet Union made the leaders of both countries acutely aware of a terrible consequence of nuclear confrontation, and compelled them to change their Cold-War strategies. This nuclear deadlock, in turn, contributed to the intensification of the non-military aspect of the Cold War—often described as “political-economic warfare.”
This article examines the foreign economic policies of the United States in the areas of foreign trade, natural resources and foreign aid—primarily from the viewpoint of this “political-economic warfare.” During the 1950's high government officials in Washington, determined to wage “political-economic warfare” on a global scale, strove to do two things: to solidify the allies based on close economic interdependence; and to draw into America's orbit the Third World countries—the sources of raw materials essential for the industries of the West.
With these objectives in mind did Washington formulate foreign economic policies. For example, it took extreme care to keep oil flowing not only to the United States itself but also to its allies. Japan received special attention from Washington, especially after the worsening of the Indochina situation, and was aided to expand its export trade, which helped lay the foundation for Japan's future economic growth.
As for foreign aid, Washington's attitude was ambiguous, reflecting the conservative tradition of the Republican Party. However, a combination of the rising tide of nationalism in the Third World and Moscow's “economic offensive” forced reluctant Washington officials to make further commitment' to the economic development in the underdeveloped regions.
In the final analysis, it is highly doubtful whether America's engagement in the “political-economic warfare” with the Soviet Union strengthened in any way its leadership position in the world.

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The purpose of this paper is to describe how President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles reacted to the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the Suez Crisis of 1956 with the extensive use of the newly opened materials, such as Eisenhower Diary and Dulles Telephone Calls Transcripts in the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. In particular, this paper attempts to elucidate the following points: First, the U. S. withdrawal from the Aswan project was not Dulles' “spur of the moment” decision, but the result of American efforts to isolate Egypt from other Arab countries. Second, Eisenhower and Dulles had unsuccessfully sought far quick solution of the Suez crisis without any clear courses of action. Third, the U. S. attitude in the Suez crisis had been influenced by the policy makers' optimism that Britain and France might not resort to military force.

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Until now the interaction of Soviet politics with the Soviet Union's technological needs has drawn little systematic attention, but the study of this interplay is likely to be more important in the coming years. There are two reasons for this. One is that the latent differences of “esoteric communication” about the future of Soviet technology and East-West trade can be found among Brezhev, Kosygin and Suslov. Another is that the way of the Soviet leadership's dealing with the technological problems tends to exert a powerfull effect on Soviet politics.
This study pays attention to the top three Soviet leaders' different assessments of “the economic and technological achievement of the Soviet Union, ” “the difficulties or possibilities of economic reform, ” “the introduction of Western technology” and “the structure of foreign trade, ” and to the change of power relations among these three. This study then attempts to analyze the domestic political structure of Soviet foreign economic policy toward Western countries.
The above analysis gives the following results:
(1) The top three Soviet leaders continued to have different views on the economic and technological achievements of the Soviet Union, the benefit of introducing Western technology, economic reform and the distribution of resources.
But General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev benefited from the foreign and domestic crisis which took place from 1968 to 1970, and in place of economic reform he put his program introducing Western technology into practice in the 1970's.
(2) This means that the domestic political structure of Soviet foreign economic policy can be explained by analyzing the Soviet leaders' assessment of the prolonged stagnation of the Soviet economy, the importance of accelerated scientific and technological progress, the difficulties or possibilities of technological innovation through economic reform, and the possibilities of greater reliance on Western technology.
(3) In conclusion, first, the different assessments between Brezhnev and Kosygin of the Soviet reliance on Western technology became the prime factor which decided the positiveness of each leader's foreign economic policy toward Western countries. Secondly, the debate on the subject of economic reform and the distribution of resources (consumer goods and producer goods) turned into a conflict between “horizontal” and “vertical” international specialization, and became the second factor which decided the content of Soviet foreign trade policy.
Therefore, we can say that Soviet foreign economic policy is decided by these two domestic political factors and power relations among top Soviet leaders.

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