This article traces the development of Japan’s foreign policy since the end of World War II. It asks whether the concept of a reactive state is still valid as an explanation of Japan’s foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. The article surveys the origins and key features of the Yoshida Doctrine, and discusses the limitations placed on Japan’s Cold War foreign policy. The article introduces t...

The early days of the Cold War had vivid memories of World War II and a challenge to see into denied territories. From this emerged a new capability to image from space—a capability that was innovative, daring, and one of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. This capability saw the development and operation in the 1960s of Corona—a series of photoreconnaissance satellites that orbited 115...

When confronted with starvation, the amoebae of Dictyostelium discoideum initiate a developmental process that begins with cell aggregation and ends with a ball of spores supported on a stalk. Spores live and stalk cells die. Because the multicellular organism is produced by cell aggregation and not by growth and division of a single cell, genetically diverse amoebae may enter an aggregate and,...

During the last decades we have witnessed an explosion of historical research on science during the Cold War period 1. The availability of archival and other historical resources, and the recognition that the social history of this period cannot be written without acknowledging the contribution of science and technology, are some of the reasons behind the accumulation of historical research on ...

Exploring whether the Cold War was a security dilemma illuminates both history and theoretical concepts. The core argument of the security dilemma is that, in the absence of a supranational authority that can enforce binding agreements, many of the steps pursued by states to bolster their security have the effect—often unintended and unforeseen—of making other states less secure. The anarchic n...

The CIA was originally established as an agency charged with putting together information from all other intelligence agencies. However, in the midst of the Cold War and with the election of President Eisenhower, a new role for the CIA surfaced. Across the globe, in Iran, in 1951 the people had elected a Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossaddegh, who opposed British control over Iranian oil fields. T...

A great convergence of cartography, secrecy, and power occurred during the Cold War. In the American case, a complex series of interactions between secret and classified programs and institutions and their publicly accessible counterparts accomplished both traditional and novel objectives of military geographic intelligence. This process also yielded the World Geodetic System, a masscentered “f...

even though subsequent to the cold war, washington and moscow geostrategic competition came to an end in many parts of the world, a fresh rivalry has been sparked between them in central asia and the caucasus. this rivalry has been developed between regional and transregional powers with the aim of gaining geopolitical advantages, enhancement of security structures, dominance over energy resour...

As location is the key to property values, so context is, or at least should be, the most important variable in the understanding of war. The necessity to take due account of the central significance of the several contexts of war is the first of the four caveats to be addressed. The analysis of recent changes in war presented in the next section of the article needs to be informed by the warni...