The pinprick approach: Whitehall’s top-secret anti-communist committee and the evolution of British covert action strategy

This article examines Great Britain’s approach to covert action during the formative years of British Cold War intelligence operations, 1950–1951. Rather than shy away from such activity in the wake of the failure in Albania in the late 1940s, the British increased the number of operations they pursued. This was the start of a coherent strategy regarding covert activity that can be conceptualized as the “pinprick” approach. The strategy was overseen by a highly secretive Whitehall body, the Official Committee on Communism, which in effect became the government’s covert action committee. This article uses the commission’s recently declassified papers for the first time to assess the merits of this approach

Between political rhetoric and realpolitik calculations: Western diplomacy and the Baltic independence struggle in the Cold War endgame

Fifteen years after the Baltic SSRs' independence declarations, this article sheds new light on the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian struggle to regain statehood in the context of international relations between 1988 and 1991. Based on declassified archival sources from Western and Eastern archives, memoirs and official histories, it reveals the nature of 'Western' Baltic policies and analyses how (far) they impacted on the Soviet Union's demise. Second, the role universal normative values played in Western, Soviet and Baltic politics will be discussed in historical perspective; with the article concluding by offering some reflections on the general relationship between political rhetoric and foreign policy