ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to establish a dynamic context within which the evolution and development of Peace Research can be set. In the United States, the domestic political agenda was dominated not only by the defence requirements of the Cold War but also by the mood of anti-Communism. The articulated strategy of the 1950s for the United States appeared in 1954 in a speech from Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. In the United States the shift out of the Fifties and into the Sixties was best exemplified with the election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1961. In the context of both Superpower and European relations, much of the early part of the decade gave rise to a mood of optimism. With the context thus set and the persistence of problems acknowledged, it is to the task of understanding and assessing Peace Research that we now turn. That Peace Research has reached fifty years is interesting and noteworthy.