No Cold War. The Cold War in the Third World - Einzelansicht

The Cold War was a dynamic, largely unstable, environment of superpower struggle (and resistance) in the so-called 'Third World'. Against the backdrop of imperial agony, non-alignment, and ongoing decolonization, both the US and the USSR believed there should be no political vacuum in the world regions. Especially in the Global South, superpower interference facilitated, exacerbated and fuelled internal conflicts, often leading to bloody proxy wars. Local conflicts at the 'global peripheries' regularly became veritable international crises. However, the superpowers could never fully control the situation on the ground, underscoring the limits of their agency, on the one hand, and the capacity of local actors to internationalize their greed and grievances on the other. These conflicts at the global periphery might have seemed far away from Washington, Moscow or Berlin, but they had important consequences for the 'core'. Moreover, the Cold War has had lingering effects in our current world, which makes its study essential to comprehend the present.

Hal Brands: Latin America’s Cold War, Harvard 2012.

Gregg A. Brazinsky: Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War, Chapel Hill 2017.

Leslie James, Elisabeth Leake (eds.): Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence, London 2015.

Sara Lorenzini: Global Development: A Cold War History, Princeton 2019.

Lorenz M. Lüthi: Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Cambridge 2020.

Robert J. McMahon (ed.): The Cold War in the Third World, Oxford 2013.

Odd Arne Westad: The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times, Cambridge 2007.

Presentations and end of term paper (25 pages)