Cosmopolitan crimes

The Cold War: A World History

Issue 22 - Considering the transnational prominence of European cinema, European crime films present an interesting case. As a genre, crime “is clearly the most popular genre across Europe for novels, television series and films”, and crime fiction productions are abundant on a national level in most European countries (Bondebjerg et al. 223). Crime fiction, therefore, appears as the genre most able to facilitate transborder cultural exchange and communicate “Europeanness” at local, national, regional, and transnational levels. This is surely the case of television productions where “crime drama seems to be a powerful, cross-cultural phenomenon with the noteworthy possibility of travelling internationally” (Hansen et al. 3). However, while crime novels and television series have been receiving much critical attention—especially within the context of Nordic Noir—crime films are absent from most of the scholarly discussions and struggle to gain cross-border popularity. It can be argued that crime drama on television has profited from a changed transnational production and distribution culture which has not benefited European crime films in the same way.

Cinema as a form of composition

The Social Mind

This book should command the attention of all Cold War historians. It is a book of prodigious research and immense erudition. Lorenz Lüthi has visited archives in the United States, England, Russia, China, Australia, India, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, among other places. His aim is noteworthy: to “de-center” the Cold War. He argues that, for the most part, developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe had roots not in the global Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union but in “structural” changes in each of these regions that presaged the Cold War's end. He rejects the triumphalist narrative of some U.S. writers, minimizes the role of President Ronald Reagan, and claims that Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, did not want to end the Cold War and instead yearned to win that conflict. Overall, Lüthi stresses the agency of local actors and regional dynamics and claims that the capacity of Moscow and Washington to shape events was circumscribed by “decolonization, Asian-African Internationalism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, Arab-Israeli hostility, and European economic developments” (p. 1).Despite the ambition and learning that inform every page of this tome, the book is beset with interpretive ambiguities and conceptual problems. Lüthi argues that the Cold War was not predetermined but was the collective result of “ideological clashes, unilateral decisions, political disagreements, and misperceptions” (p. 13). Its origins rest in the desires of the USSR to “overthrow the imperialist-capitalist world system and the establishment of a stateless and classless society across the globe” (p. 3). In contrast to Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History (New York; Basic Books, 2017), Lüthi pays scant attention to the economic contradictions within global capitalism in the late nineteenth century, the cyclical fluctuations of business cycles in the early twentieth century, the rise of the Left, the yearnings for structural change within capitalism, and the disillusionment spawned by two world wars and the Great Depression. Rather, Lüthi's focus is on imperial aspirations and ideological conflict. He elides geostrategic motivations, the underlying dynamics of global capitalism, and the legacy of World War II. He does not explain that controlling German power in Europe and harnessing Japanese power in Asia were key components of the global Cold War as well as the regional Cold Wars in Europe and Asia. He does not show how the perceived structural dynamics of global capitalism impelled policymakers in North American, Europe, and Japan to focus on integrating the core industrial areas of global capitalism with markets and raw materials in the “periphery”; that is, in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He does not illustrate how socioeconomic unrest and political turmoil stemming from the Great Depression and World War II created perceptions of threat and opportunity in Moscow and Washington that set the conditions for the Cold War.The great attribute of this volume is Lüthi's detailed description of developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Cold War historians will be surprised by his decision to place developments in the Middle East at the forefront of the volume (chapter two), even while he argues that the Cold War did not come to the Middle East until the Suez crisis (chapters 8–10). The Middle East commands initial attention because Lüthi focuses on the legacy of British imperialism and the desires of officials in London to remake their empire in the aftermath of World War II with the help of the Arab League. In this context, Lüthi luminously describes inter-Arab dynamics, Arab-Israeli hostilities, and the rise of pan-Islamism. He stresses Anwar el-Sadat's desire to expel Soviet influence from Egypt, the complex dynamics spawned by the Palestinian quest for statehood, and the repercussions of the Iranian revolution. By the early 1980s, he writes, “the Cold War ceased to be the critical structure that shaped the regional system in the Middle East” (p. 518). But it is not clear what he means by the “regional system,” or whether the Cold War had ever shaped it. It is also not clear what constituted the regional Cold War in the Middle East when so many of the wars were hot, not cold. The role of oil in shaping the local, regional, and international dynamics of the different versions of Cold War in the region goes totally unexamined.Lüthi's discussion of Asia is central to the overall thesis of his book. “Three countries,” he writes, “played major roles in Asia's Cold War. China, Vietnam, and India all were dynamic agents in the shaping of their own fates and not just passive battlegrounds in the global competition between the United States and the Soviet Union” (p. 115). Lüthi shows how the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese rapprochement with the United States, the unification of revolutionary Vietnam, and “the collapse of communism as a unifying program for national liberation” (p. 537) reshaped the Asian Cold War during the 1970s. But here again it is not clear precisely what the Asian Cold War was, and why Japan is totally omitted from its discussion. Perhaps Lüthi would argue that Japan lacked agency, but even if that was the case the country was crucial to the trajectory of the Vietnam War and the U.S. role in it. Numerous historians—Howard Schonberger, Michael Schaller, Andrew Rotter, William Borden, and Robert Blum, among others—have shown in great detail how the goal of reconstructing and stabilizing Japan impelled U.S. officials to thwart Communist gains in Southeast Asia, create an independent South Vietnam, establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and support the rightwing military coup, crackdown, and massacres in Indonesia. While ignoring these dimensions of the Asian Cold War, Lüthi presents fascinating chapters on China, Vietnam, and India, on Asian-African internationalism, and on nonalignment. He shows that the Asian Cold War had many manifestations and permutations. At different times, in different ways, these trajectories affected the U.S.-Soviet global conflict and were influenced by that conflict. But Lüthi also acknowledges that “the end of the global Cold War primarily required a strategic rethinking in Moscow which would only come in March 1985 with Mikhail S. Gorbachev's ascent to power” (p. 537).Strategic rethinking was necessitated by developments in Europe. Lüthi incisively describes the successful integrationist initiatives in Western Europe and the concomitant failures in the Soviet-imposed Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. He emphasizes the ability of Western economies to recalibrate, innovate, and adjust to changing economic and monetary conditions, and he highlights the failures of centrally managed systems to do so. He minimizes the role of the United States in the reconstruction of Western Europe, mentioning that it “provided a stable and supportive framework” (p. 380). Ultimately, the failure of Communist economies to compete and modernize contributed to the flagging popular support for Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. But Lüthi does not make much of an effort to analyze the basic shortcomings in Communist systems, nor does he examine why and how liberal capitalist and social-democratic market economies were able to adapt successfully. For example, he describes the impact of declining oil prices in the 1980s and the constraints that imposed on Moscow's ability to subsidize the economies of its East European satellites, but he rarely makes an attempt to analyze the dysfunctionality of Soviet agricultural policies or the flawed operations of central planning. He stresses the resilience of West European economies but barely mentions the creation of social welfare states and the role of governments in providing minimal social provision and expanding educational opportunity, access to medical care, and support for basic research.This volume is a monumental attempt to de-center the Cold War and restore agency to middle-level powers and local actors. What it does is de-center international politics. It illuminates that much was going on in the latter half of the twentieth century that was not the product of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War but at times intersected with it and contributed to its denouement. Small powers had their own agendas, and regional dynamics had their own logic. In complicated ways, developments in one region influenced those in another. Thanks to the prodigious research of an author with staggering linguistic skills and breathtaking knowledge of multiple literatures, one comes away much better informed about the complexities of international politics but not equally enlightened about the Cold War itself.

Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe is an interesting contribution to the discussion of neutrality in scholarship and politics. It is especially useful as a contribution to the analysis of the relationship of science, culture, and politics during an era of strong division. Because the book focuses on the period after the First World War, it offers an interesting prehistory of issues that became prominent during the Second World War and the Cold War. During all of these periods, changes in international politics influenced the relationship of scholarship, culture, and politics.The main focus of the book is on the smaller European states that adhered strictly to a neutral position during the First World War. Important concepts connected to “neutrality” include “impartiality,” “objectivity” and “internationalism,” which are covered in the book's fifteen essays, divided into four thematic parts dealing with internationalism, science, culture, and politics. The starting point for the volume is that neutrality as a cultural, scientific and political resource was in itself a construct that was given meanings and used rhetorically for a variety of new purposes. The concept endowed smaller countries and intellectuals with a new kind of role in European (and even world-scale) scientific, political, and cultural discussions. The aim of the smaller countries was to become neutral mediators between the former belligerent states in order to facilitate international cooperation and enhance international scientific cooperation. The period after the First World War is defined as an era of emerging nation-states, but the main actors in the discourse were primarily individuals, small groups, and organizations.The book discusses the intersections of science, culture, and politics before and during the negotiations that led to the controversial Treaty of Versailles. The talks helped neutrality to gain a new appeal, spurring small, neutral countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to mediate in the complex situation. The war and its aftermath introduced modern nation-states as the basis for a new world order. Although the actors analyzed in the volume were committed to internationalism, they ultimately reinforced nationalism as representatives of nation-states.Before the First World War, Germany was a scientific powerhouse and closely connected to wider scientific developments in Europe. After the war began and Germany became a defeated power in 1918, the demand to leave Germany out of scientific circles, such as the International Research Council (IRC)—especially in the wake of the “Proclamation of the Civilized World” in 1914—caused a complex situation in European scientific and political spheres. No matter how important the cause of internationalism and peace may have been, remaining neutral in politics and science proved exceedingly difficult. This was true of Dutch relations with Germany and scientific organizations such as the IRC. Denmark met difficulties in enhancing science on the basis of internationalism. In Sweden and Norway, the Nobel Prize institution gave both countries more power within the scientific community. Sweden, which had strongly emphasized its neutral and apolitical role in foreign policy, met the challenge when it wanted to gain a role as a mediator of the new era based on peaceful scientific, technological, and economic progress. The demands and goals of objectivity and impartiality in the case of the Nobel Prize were challenged when international ties in science and culture were severed. Swedish science had been strongly oriented toward Germany, and it had to reassess its Nobel Prize policy under the pressure of divided scientific values.These issues pertained not only to science and politics but also to “European” ideas and idealism. Pan-Europeanism, Zionism, and scientific debate created the basis of cultural encounters in Europe in the 1920s. The aim to restore peace and to solve the problems caused by the war—such as the problem of refugees when millions of people were left without their countries and citizenship—became the main aim of the international actors. The First World War was both a military disaster and a humanitarian catastrophe confronting the League of Nations and individual actors. In the process, neutral Scandinavian countries had a role to play.Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe is an enlightening contribution to the international and transnational interaction of scientists, organizations, and smaller states in the interwar period. By analyzing themes such as neutrality, objectivity, impartiality, and internationalism in the context of a divided world, the volume sheds valuable light on themes that resurfaced during the Cold War. The book is well worth reading for those interested in Cold War–era developments in the fields of science, culture, and politics.

List of Figures Foreword Preface: On Symbolic Misery and Its Attenuation (And the Crime Film) Acknowledgements Introduction: Global Fugitives: Outside the Law and the Cold War 'Consensus' 1. Un greve, sanglant et poetic (A Strike, Bloody and Poetic): French Film Noir and the Defeat of the Popular Front 2. The Revolution That Wasn't: Black Markets, Ressentiment, and Survival in Postwar British Film Noir 3. The Wintering of the Italian Spring: From Neorealism to Film Noir via Verdi 4. Occupy the Zaibatsu: Postwar Japanese Film Noir: From Democracy to the (Re)Appearance of the (Old) New Order Conclusion: Mediterranean Noir: Sunlight Gleaming Off a Battered .45 Appendix Bibliography Endnotes Index?

Reviewed by: Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature by Kristin L. Matthews Brian K. Goodman Matthews, Kristin L. 2016. Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. $90.00 hc. $29.95 sc. 222 pp. "In the war between capitalism and Communism," wrote the reformed Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers in 1952, "books are weapons, and, like all serviceable weapons, loaded." But as Kristin L. Matthews shows in her valuable study, Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature, by the start of the Cold War books had been treated as loaded weapons for some time. During the Second World War, for instance, the Office of War Information distributed posters reminding American citizens that "BOOKS ARE WEAPONS IN THE WAR OF IDEAS" (22). What was different for Americans during the early Cold War was a new faith in the "seemingly unlimited power" of the United States, a flimsy confidence that still masked a lingering sense of cultural insecurity (11). In Reading America, Matthews introduces us to the extensive postwar "reading industrial complex" that responded to this paradoxical situation by further "weaponizing" long-standing American discourses linking literacy, citizenship, and freedom (18). All this hawkish language is a reminder that scholars of Cold War literary culture are one of the only groups as fond of using martial metaphors as Cold Warriors themselves. By now most recent scholarship in the field has left behind the master trope of "containment," an impressively flexible concept imported from US military and diplomatic strategy. But new research is still being pursued [End Page 571] in the shadow of the so-called "cultural Cold War," a framing that turns scholars into sleuths, sniffing around for evidence of covert CIA funding that might corroborate our most paranoid readings of the period's literature. Matthews successfully avoids this trap in Reading America, while still embracing one of the most promising trends in recent Cold War literary studies: a methodological turn toward book history and the comparative study of print cultures. But unlike recent works such as Greg Barnhisel's indispensable Cold War Modernists (2015), Matthews turns away from the "cultural war abroad," focusing instead on the battles over literacy and reading that raged on the "home front" (14, 16). Matthews begins Reading America by reconstructing the overlapping historical contexts that produced a reading boom in early Cold War America. In her introduction and first chapter, Matthews shows how a range of factors, including the paperback revolution, the G.I. Bill, the rise of New Criticism in universities, the Great Books Program, and popular reading clubs, put more books in American hands than ever before while also prescribing what it meant to be a "good" reader. Meanwhile, the postwar book market was flooded with best-selling reading guides, anticommunist primers, and works by panicked literacy experts with titles like What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't (1961). Matthews describes the new Cold War consensus as the conviction that "reading particular texts in the right way could train Americans to understand, practice, defend, and spread democracy across the globe" (10). In subsequent chapters, Matthews does show how this consensus evolved and fractured over time, but her primary attention shifts to the function of reading within classic works of Cold War literature. For instance, in her second chapter, Matthews explores the "intersections among reading, maturity, and postwar character" in J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (1951), an object of perennial interest for scholars in the field. But whereas previous works by Alan Nadel, Pamela Steinle, and Leerom Medovoi have focused on the public reception of Catcher in the Rye or the ways the book figured in wider cultural debates, Matthews turns inward, performing a counterintuitive reading of the text itself, in order to "illuminate" broader developments in Cold War reading culture (33). Far from characterizing Catcher in the Rye as a novel of rebellion, Matthews presents Salinger's prematurely gray protagonist Holden Caulfield as the fulfillment of the postwar ideal of the "mature citizen-reader" (42). Holden is a nostalgic and censorious reader, a cultural traditionalist [End Page 572] searching for stability and order in a discordant world. According to Matthews, Holden is essentially...

Uspostavljanje modela filmske edukacije u srednjoj školi

Alternative Pathway to Television: Negotiating Female Representation in <em>Broad City</em>’s Transition from YouTube to Cable

This study examines the use of television series as a tool of hegemony in the process of socialising the Neo-Ottomanism ideology of the political power in Turkey.The discourse of Neo-Ottomanism came to the agenda in the 1950s after the Second World War and its foundations began to be laid in the 1980s.Neo-Ottomanism, which has been used in varying tones and to varying extents by right-wing political governments throughout the historical process, has become entrenched in the political and social sphere in the 2000s.The neo-Ottomanist discourses of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which came to power in 2002 by defining its political identity as a conservative democrat, which have become prominent in domestic and foreign policy especially since 2009, have also been frequently used in shaping social and cultural life.Therefore, this study aims to reveal the use of television series in the hegemonisation of the neo-Ottomanist discourse in Turkey since the 2010s.In this context, the study, which is theoretically based on Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, presents quantitative data on the television series about the Ottoman and Seljuk period between 2010 and 2024.The data on the series in question were obtained through document analysis technique.As a result of the study, it has been concluded that after 2010, in parallel with the intensive use of the Neo-Ottomanism ideology in the policies and discourses of the political power, the number of Ottoman-themed television series has increased and the neo-Ottomanism discourse of the political power has been maintained through the aforementioned series.However, it is noteworthy that in the Ottoman/Seljukthemed television series, the scenario is constructed by referring to the current events in Turkey's domestic and foreign politics and the policies of the AK Party government in this regard.Structured Abstract: Neo-Ottomanism, as the ideology of adopting the political and cultural heritage of the Ottoman Empire, was first used by Turgut zal in the 1980s and revived in the 2000s during the AK Party governments and adopted as a central ideology in domestic and foreign politics as well as in social practices.Neo-Ottomanism, which has been used in varying tones and to varying extents by right-wing political governments throughout the historical process, has become firmly entrenched in the political and social sphere in the 2000s.After coming to power in 2002, AK Party's neo-Ottomanist discourses, which have become prominent in domestic and foreign policy especially since 2009, have been frequently used in the shaping of social and cultural life.Therefore, this study aims to reveal the use of television series in the hegemonisation of the neo-Ottomanist discourse in Turkey since the 2010s.In the study, which is theoretically based on Antonio

After the Second World War, a bipolar world, known as the Cold War Era, has been clearly formed between the Western Bloc and Communist Bloc while the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak on each side. In Eastern Europe, the United States was restrained and felt helpless about Soviet expansion in this area with the perception of Yalta system. On the other hand, in Asia, with the breakdown of talks, an all-out war resumed. A Chinese civil war fought between Kuomintang (also as KMT or Chinese National Party) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the end of 1948, KMT has occupied the inferior position. In the early period of 1949, CCP forces crossed the Yangtze River and successfully captured Nanking, the capital of KMT’s Republic of China (PRC) government. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and millions of Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the CCP takeover of mainland China, the United States came to reformulate its China Policy which later marked a turning point in Sino-American relationship during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950. In June 1948, the leader of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was officially denounced and his party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), was ejected as a member of the Cominform by the Soviet Union. Since the West branded Tito a Soviet puppet for his loyalty and constancy of faith to Stalinism, the Tito-Stalin Split presented a whole new realm of possibilities to the United States for its dilemma in china—“Chinese Titoism.” With the influence of Stilwell Incident over Sino-American relationship and the facts of Tito-Stalin Split, Truman made an about-face change to U.S. China Policy in 1949. By the early 1949, the Truman Administration has already been making plans to diverge from Chiang and his KMT such as the publication of China White Paper; at the same time, Truman Administration keeping making chances to have conversations with the CCP. By meeting and negotiating with the CCP officials, Truman Administration attempted to disunite Communist China and the Soviet Union, expected Mao to be the “Asian Tito,” and then Communist China can joint forces with the United States to fight against the Soviet Union, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Until the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, the United States finally realized that what it faced is hostile china along with the Sino-Soviet partnership. By applying Graham T. Allison’s three decision-making models, namely, the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Organizational Behavior Model (OBM), and the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) as the theoretical structure and basis, the thesis would step by step explore the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950 through the perspectives of the rational assessment and choice on national interest, struggles between/among organizations based on different target and organizational culture, and pulling, hauling and bargaining games among relative bureaucrats. In addition, the thesis also applied the principles from Alexander L. George’s book, Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy, to aim at examining how President Truman’s, who has the final say, character, personality, value and world views made effect in the decision-making process of the target case study. In the process of theory confirming, the thesis discovered that by the period of transformation of Chinese regimes in 1949, the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948 presented the United States a new inspiration for the Communist World, that is, the Eastern Bloc is not a rigid “Iron Curtain.” Truman Administration considered that Titoism may set its roots upon China, the Yugoslav-Soviet Conflict could be a replay situation that occurred in mainland China, and both would put the strategic thought—Engaging China to counter the Soviet Threat—into practice. Nevertheless, from the historical perspectives, this kind of strategic thought seemed over-optimistic, which did not conform to fully rational considerations. However, with regard to the background of the early Cold War Era and the suspicion between the Truman Administration and KMT, the alternative that the United States took reflected the principles of “bounded rationality model.” As a result, by examining the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950, what the thesis explored not only the facts about the Sino-American relationship in this period, but also the continuity and change of Truman’s China Policy along with its cause and effect.

Reviews and Short Notices

: Each of the three great conflicts of the 20th century- World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, has changed the international system. Each at its end has been accompanied by the hope for a collective security system in order to prevent future conflicts. The Cold War lasted 40 years. Today we are on the threshold of a new world order. The revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the subsequent unification of Germany disrupted the postwar security order in Europe. The dissolution of the 'Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union has caused dramatic changes in the region. In the East, the Commonwealth if Independent States has e future. In the West, we see more gradual adaptation to the new European situation. The end of the Cold War has inspired European public opinion to call for the redesigning of Europe's security structure and has raised questions about the future relevance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The end of the Cold War, has inspired a serious discussion for the prospects of building a collective European security system without military alliances and dividing lines between nations or groups of nations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current political and geostrategic environment in post-Cold Europe, the rising instability and threats to European security, and the necessity for a new collective security system.

IN CANADA THE VIETNAM WAR is primarily remembered as an episode in domestic politics - riots, protests, dissent - or as a peculiarly unfortunate period in Canadian-American relations. In some ways, this is appropriate. The war was, above all, a public phenomenon, in which diplomacy came up against the force of public opinion and lost. 'Quiet diplomacy,' as far as Canadian-American relations were concerned, was a lost cause, as politicians desperately tried to shore up their standing with an aroused and irritable public opinion. There was no policy choice except expedience and no alternative but surrender to the loud demands of many Canadians. It was, in some respects, the well-intentioned diplomat's worst nightmare.That story is true enough, as far as it goes, but it applies mostly to the second half of Canada's involvement with Vietnam, from 1965 until the fall of Saigon to the communists in 1975. It does not describe the first half of the Canadian experience in Southeast Asia, from 1954 to 1965. That episode was just as interesting because it, too, brought together contradictory elements in Canada's external policy. On the one hand was Western solidarity, surely the touchstone of Canadian foreign relations from the 1940s through the 1990s, and perhaps still. On the other was the sense of a world beyond the cold war - the emerging nations of Asia and later Africa - and that the Western position in the cold war might be damaged or imperilled unless the interests of the poor and populous countries of Asia were taken into account.Professor of History, University of Toronto. The author is at present working on histories of Canadian foreign relations and of the impact of the Vietnam experience on Canada.The 1950s thus witnessed the first serious engagement of the Canadian government in Asia. The Liberal government of Louis St Laurent and his foreign policy advisers was not indifferent to the logic of population statistics. China and India and the countries in between accounted for half of humanity, and they were steadily growing. With China overcome by chaos and then communism, it made sense to pay attention to India. Canada was linked to India through the shared history of the politics and culture of the British Empire and through the British Commonwealth.The story of that early experience is depressing as well. In 1954 Canada undertook to help clean up the aftermath of a colonial war that seemed to pit East against West, North against South, communism against democracy, and the emergent nationalism of the Third World against the colonial hangovers of European imperialism. The Canadian government of the day, Liberal in politics and liberal in temperament, was a firm member of the Western alliance. Yet it also defined itself as untainted by European - even British - colonialism and as unmoved by the sometimes hysterical and always strident anti-communism that in the 1950s disfigured American public life. At the time, these qualities were considered moral assets, and they were deployed in 1954 in formerly French Indochina. But vision and good intentions took policy only so far, for experience in Vietnam showed that Canadian-Indian differences were far greater than convergences.ORIGINSCanada's involvement in Indochina and its tangled diplomacy dated back to the collapse of French power in World War Two. Canadian policy during that war and after was to sustain French resistance and then restore France as a major component in the international system. As Canadian diplomats discovered, that meant accepting what the French government believed to be necessary for the restoration of French power. That in turn meant coming to terms with French policy in Indochina.(f.1)Indochina was the jewel of the French colonial system. Before the Second World War, it was exotic, isolated, and remote, and the French governed it with an iron hand. Its three components, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, were ruled either directly by French proconsuls or indirectly through local, powerless, monarchs. …