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The Cold War: Global Perspectives and Legacies

Ned Richardson-Little

Kommentar

"The Cold War was primarily a geopolitical conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allied states, but it also evolved into a global competition between opposing visions of modernity. From the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1989/91, the Cold War divided Germany and continental Europe and shaped the fault lines in armed conflicts around the world. The first part of the seminar will look at the origins of the conflict in the collapsing war time alliance that defeated the Axis powers and the disputes over the political influence in post-war Europe that led to the creation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The second part of the course will examine how the Cold War moved beyond Europe to become global. Decolonization and anti-imperialism fueled conflicts that were increasingly organized around ideology such as the Chinese Civil War, wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cuban Revolution and the Congo Crisis. The third part will examine the split in the communist world between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and relaxation of tensions between East and West known as Détente. Finally, the fourth part will look at the collapse of the Cold War as an organizing framework for political conflict with the rise of political Islam and the decline of armed struggle. Readings will cover the many interpretations of why the Cold War ended with the implosion of the Soviet Union, from the nuclear arms race, to the rise of transnational human rights movements to the structural failings of planned economies to compete with market capitalism. Selected Readings: Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017) Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (2011) Paul Thomas Chamberlain, The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (2019)" Schließen