Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Gregory Winger examining U.S. policy toward Afghanistan in the 1970s, leading up to the seizure of power in 1978 by a Soviet-backed Communist organization known as the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). In 1973, the monarchy in Afghanistan was overthrown, and a new government emerged under President Mohammed Daoud Khan, who had served as prime minister for the king in the early 1960s until forced to resign in 1963. In returning to power in 1973, Daoud relied for assistance on the PDPA and the Soviet Union, despite his wariness of them. The new arrangement in Afghanistan posed challenges for the United States. In line with the doctrine President Richard Nixon enunciated in Guam in July 1969, the U.S. government backed Daoud in his embrace of nonalignment and his efforts to steer a middle course between the PDPA and the ultraconservative Islamic clerics in Afghanistan. But because the United States never provided strong enough support to Daoud to counter the extremists, he found himself in an increasingly perilous situation, culminating in his downfall at the hands of the PDPA in April 1978.The next article, by András Nagy, analyzes the response of the United Nations (UN) to the Hungarian revolution of October–November 1956 and the Soviet invasion that crushed it, killing more than 2,500 Hungarians. Cold War divisions in the UN Security Council usually prevented the UN from responding effectively to events that involved key interests of either of the superpowers, and this was certainly the case during and after the Hungarian revolution. Nagy provides a detailed account of the UN's actions in the autumn of 1956, including the impact of the simultaneous East-West crisis over Suez. He then examines how the UN failed to stem the wave of repression under János Kádár that persisted for more than three years, with more than 100,000 arrested, roughly 230 executed, and more than 25,000 sent to prison. The UN's inability to mitigate the harsh consequences of the invasion underscored the organization's inefficacy during the Cold War.The third article, by Molly Todd, discusses an important dimension of the human toll of the counterinsurgency war in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s, a war that not only killed tens of thousands but also led to a massive forced exodus from the northern highlands of the country. Faced with Marxist guerrillas armed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, the U.S.-backed government in Guatemala resorted to brutal counterinsurgency tactics that uprooted roughly 2 million people (nearly 80 percent of the population in some northern areas), including 200,000 who fled to southern Mexico. The Guatemalans who sought refuge in Mexico received assistance from numerous sources, including the UN Commission on Refugees, several Mexican government agencies, a medley of humanitarian relief organizations, and leftist “solidarity” groups based in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Todd shows that most members of the solidarity groups, who wanted to challenge U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, were unable to break fully with the assumptions and practices that undergirded U.S. preponderance throughout the region.The next article, by Stefano Bottoni, examines the role of the Securitate secret police and intelligence organs in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Communist Party leader whose increasingly harsh repression culminated in his violent overthrow in December 1989. The Securitate was originally set up in 1948 to enforce the Communist regime's policy of widespread, brutal violence. But even before Ceaușescu came to power in 1965, the rampant violence of the early years of the Communist regime had become more selective and ethnicized. Rather than being targeted at entire social classes, as in the late 1940s and 1950s, the violence used by the Securitate was targeted at particular individuals and at ethnic groups whose activities were deemed inimical to Romanian security interests, above all the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania. Bottoni traces the changing functions of the Securitate, showing how the Romanian secret police can be compared with the repressive organs in other Communist states.The next article, by Hadrien Buclin, explores the vigorously anti-Communist policies adopted by the Swiss government in the 1950s against potential domestic subversives, some of whom ended up going to prison or losing their jobs because of the beliefs they espoused. Despite Switzerland's long-standing policy of strict neutrality in international affairs, the Swiss authorities had no intention of pursuing a neutral policy at home. They took a firm stance in favor of liberal democracy and cracked down on those who aspired to set up a Soviet-style dictatorship in Switzerland. Buclin considers how Swiss policies on this matter were similar to and different from the practices in other Western countries, especially the United States. Anti-Communism in the United States was hardly surprising in light of the U.S. government's leading role in opposing the Soviet Union around the world, but the strength and durability of anti-Communism in Switzerland were more surprising in light of the Swiss government's commitment to international neutrality. Buclin explains how Swiss leaders sought to reconcile anti-Communism with neutrality.The final main article, by Christoph Lorke, discusses how East German television crime dramas in the 1970s and 1980s were shaped by and reflected the goals of Soviet-style regimes in the Cold War. All the countries in the Soviet bloc wanted to ensure social conformity and stability in the Cold War standoff, but economic, political, and cultural developments in the West could indirectly stir discontent among younger people in Eastern Europe (and especially East Germany), who wondered why they could not have what was available in the West. To ensure conformity and to build normative support for the Communist state, television in East Germany, including popular crime dramas, projected images and norms compatible with the Communist social order.The six articles are followed by three forums analyzing recent books. The first deals with a book published by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball in 2015 on the Nixon administration's attempted use of nuclear coercive diplomacy to force a settlement of the Vietnam War. Two distinguished experts—Robert Jervis and Mark Atwood Lawrence—offer their appraisals of the book, and Burr and Kimball respond. The second forum deals with a biography of the late Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping published by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine in 2015. A Russian edition of the book had come out several years earlier, and Pantsov (who is originally from Moscow but has long lived in the United States) cooperated with Levine in translating the original text into polished English. Three leading experts on Chinese politics and foreign policy during the Cold War—Joseph Fewsmith, Frederick C. Teiwes, and Sergey Radchenko—present critical evaluations of the book, and Pantsov responds. The final forum looks at a book published by Timothy Snyder in 2015 on the origins and nature of the Holocaust. Two distinguished experts on Germany and the Holocaust—Michael Berenbaum and Jeffrey Herf—offer conflicting perspectives on Snyder's book. Berenbaum is favorable in his assessment, whereas Herf is largely unfavorable.The issue concludes with 24 shorter book reviews.

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