The Cold War is the name the U.S. has promoted to describe the international world order that lasted from 1945-1991. Norwegian Cold War historian Odd Arne Westad notes in his award winning work The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times that “the Soviets never used the term officially before the Gorbachev error.” Still. emerging from the destruction of World War II, two “super powers,” the USA and the Soviet Union, led two coalitions of nations in a world order based on a constructed simplified binary. Yet, this duality was never fully exclusive. Moreover, a third group, the Non-Aligned Movement, resisted the super power construct and vision of world order. Main countries involved included Indonesia, India, Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Ghana. However, membership expanded to nearly 100 nations during the “Cold War Era.”
The ubiquity of standardized narratives reinforces a history that is rarely, if ever, challenged. In fact, more nuanced, analytical responses on tests that challenge the dominant explanation would be penalized or marked as wrong. The demands of contemporary education, globalization, and new scholarship about the Cold War invite alternative perspectives of the Cold War Era. Providing these opportunities for students develops critical thinking skills they will use to engage with information in a complex global world.
Essential Questions:
- How can Cold War periodization be altered beyond the standard rendition – 1945-1991?
- What are the limits of the Cold War binary narrative?
- To what extent does our understanding of the Cold War impact our contemporary political-ethical-cultural world views?
- What nations are given agency (the power to act) and what nations are presented as passive/marginal players during the Cold War?
Module Resources:
- Scholar Screencast, by Joseph Golowka
- Recording: 23 Minutes
- “If we take a global view of the Cold War, the conflict looks very different. The thirty years following World War Two saw the rise of large revolutionary nationalist movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that sought to end foreign domination of their nation.”
- C3 Inquiry Lesson
- Secondary Sources/Informational Texts
- Digital Archive: Sino-Soviet Relationship 1949 – 1989
- Odd Arne Westad, Rethinking Revolutions: The Cold War in the Third World in Journal of Peace Research (1992).
- Melvyn Leffler, Inside Enemy Archives: The Cold War Reopened in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75 (1996).
- CNN Cold War Documentary Series “The Cold War” – 45 Minutes, Episode #17, Good Guys, Bad Guys (1998).
- Podcast 28 minutes -Dialogue Radio, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Cold War: A New View. (2003)
- Sam Tanenhaus, A History Lesson Needs Relearning, New York Times Editorial (2014).
- The Angolan Civil War 1975 – 2002: “The Angolan civil war may have been considered a Cold War proxy war by the rest of the world, but Pearce’s study finds few ordinary Angolans cared about that ideological divide. (2015)
- C-SPAN Video: Foreign Intervention in Africa During the Cold War. Elizabeth Schmidt talked about how foreign intervention influenced emerging nations in Africa during the Cold War including tensions within the U.S. government over how to respond to Africa’s decolonization. (2016).
- Smithsonian.com article “What Does the 6th Day War Tell US About the Cold War” (2017)
- Primary Sources
- Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945).
- Indonesia’s Declaration of Independence (1945)
- Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948)
- Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan (1951).
- Cable from China’s Embassy in Indonesia, “What the US is doing prior to the Asian-African Conference (1955).
- President Sukarno of Indonesia: Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference (1955).
- Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru:Speech at Bandung Conference (1955).
- Political Cartoon – Karl Knecht: The 29 nation Afro-Asian conference in Bandung against Communism.(1955).
- John Collins, “Tightrope Tito” political Cartoon (1955).
- Political Cartoon By Cummings, ‘The Daily Express’, Depicted: Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Richard Nixon (1957).
- Speech by Mao Tse-tung “The People Of Asia, Africa And Latin America Should Unite And Drive American Imperialism Back To Where It Came From” (1959)
- Fidel Castro speech to the UN denouncing imperialism and colonialism (1960)
- Kwame Nkrumah speech: “I Speak of Freedom” (1961)
- Photo Set – Departure Ceremonies for Sukarno, President of Indonesia from White House, Washington, D.C. (1961).
- Telegram From the Embassy in France to the Department of State with President de Gaulle’s insights on the crisis (Oct 22, 1962)
- Fidel Castro’s letter to Khrushchev (Oct. 26, 1962)
- President Kennedy’s telephone call with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (Oct. 26, 1962)
- Macmillan offers a deal to disarm some of their nuclear arsenal.
- Report sent to General de Gaulle President of the French Republic By Edgar Faure, on his mission to China (1963).
- Speech by Mao Tse-tung “American Imperialism Is Closely Surrounded By The Peoples Of The World” (1964)
- “There are Two Intermediate Zones”, speech by Mao Zedong (1964).
- Rhodesia’s Declaration of Independence (1965)
- The Shah of Iran’s Final Speech (interrupted by student protests) (1968)
- Additional Measures to Expose Imperialist Policies, Soviet Memo (1971).
- Bangladeshi Declaration of Independence (1971)
- Joint Communique of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China (1972).
- Salvador Allende Speech to the United Nations – excerpts (1972).
- National Security Meeting Minutes, June (1975). President Ford is briefed on the situation in Angola and requests possible options that the US could pursue to be made ready.
- Memo of Conversation between the White House and China about Angola, December (1975). The Chinese emphasize that South Africa must exit the conflict if there is to be any chance of rallying other African states to oppose Neto.
I was on a three high school teacher team who taught 11th grade 20th century US history within a global context. The last third of the course was post 1945, and was able to generalize the anti imperial and independence movements that so dominated those decades. Some would argue it still does. This course operated from 1969 to 1990, approx. Jim Hill