Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonized World

Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project, Harvard University, talk at the Geneva Graduate Institute, June 5, 2024.

In recent decades, Cold War historiography has paid growing attention to the autonomy and agency of the players beyond the US-Soviet dichotomy. In the wake of Westad’s seminal The Global Cold War (2005), scholars have increasingly explored the episodes, events, and institutions that demonstrate the agency of the Global South. From the Bandung Conference to Pan-African networks, the so-called Third World assumes a pivotal role in the latest historiographies. Newly independent states, among others, are recast as actors in their own right and not mere pawns in a game played by two superpowers.

Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonizing World advances this recentering of the narrative by focusing on decolonizing or newly independent states, along with related actors, as the makers and breakers of the Cold War world order. This special issue thus seeks to reframe the Cold War from the standpoint of Latin American, Middle Eastern, African, or Asian actors – where the US and Soviet Union appear not as the protagonists but as the dependent variables of decolonial world-making.

During the workshop, our keynote speaker, Mark Kramer from Harvard University, critically assessed the originality of the proposed theme by drawing on scholarship about Cold War dynamics in the Third World that was produced contemporaneously with the events. We are confident that his talk and the subsequent discussion will resonate with students and scholars focused on decolonization and the Cold War. The outcomes of the workshop will be featured in a special issue of The Global Sixties Journal slated for publication in late 2025.

Supported by the Pierre Du Bois Foundation.