From the editors: William Inboden is the William J. Power, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. A former State Department official who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, Inboden is also a distinguished scholar of international history. His most […]
Roundtable Review of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (2023) by William Inboden
From the editors: William Inboden is the William J. Power, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. A former State Department official who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, Inboden is also a distinguished scholar of international history. His most […]
Prisoners of the Cold War
I grew up watching reruns of The Prisoner, a classic sixties television series created and produced by the famously eccentric TV icon Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan also stars in the series, playing a disillusioned British spy struggling to escape his allotted role in the Cold War. A striking opening montage sets the plot in motion. McGoohan’s […]
Review of Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America (2020), by Tanya Harmer
At about nine o’clock on the morning of September 11, 1973, Beatriz Allende, the daughter of Socialist President Salvador Allende, arrived with her younger sister Isabel at the Chilean presidential palace in the heart of downtown Santiago.[1] The military coup that would end her father’s presidency, and Chile’s dream of a peaceful revolution, had begun […]
CEAS Talk: “Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War” with Taomo Zhou
Friday April 30, 2021 • Virtual Event What happens when geostrategic collaborations between states intersect with ethnic tensions? In response to this question, this talk examines how two of the world’s most populous countries interacted between 1945 and 1967, when the concept of citizenship was contested, political loyalty was in question, national identity was fluid, […]
HPS Talk – “Vannevar Bush and Cold War Science Policy,” by Johnny Miri
This talk took place on Friday March 26, 2021 Vannevar Bush is best remembered for his leadership of American military research during World War II, overseeing the creation of such formidable technologies as the atomic fission bomb, radar, and the proximity fuse. In the closing stages of the war, Bush prepared the groundbreaking report Science: The Endless Frontier, […]
How a city plan, the atomic age and Cold War economics converged to shape today’s Austin
Austin’s creation of what today we call its “creative class” was made possible by developments that hived the city into two realities: A pleasant, well-groomed and very White West side, and an out-of-sight, out-of-mind East side for those who would never be in any promotional brochures By Brooke Shannon This article first appeared in Urbanitus, […]
Out of the Rubble: Doctors Strikes and State Repression in Guatemala’s Cold War
Medical professionals are often viewed as apolitical, but what happens when they come to challenge a government? On February 4th, 1976, a cataclysmic earthquake brought an embattled Guatemala to its knees. Amidst a raging civil war, the terremoto (earthquake) razed countless houses and killed roughly 21,000 people in just 39 seconds. Thousands more emerged from […]
Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary, by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali
Nikita Khrushchev is one of the most important men of the last century. Moreover, he was the main protagonist of Soviet foreign policy during the most perilous period of the Cold War which climaxed with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. How dangerous was the Soviet Union to the West during Khrushchev’s term? Which factors […]
Precarious Paths to Freedom: The United States, Venezuela, and the Latin American Cold War (2016)
By Marcus Oliver Golding The role of the United States during the Cold War is one often marked by tragedy, repression and the support for authoritarian regimes throughout the western hemisphere. That perception is shared throughout Latin America, which makes one wonder if there are cases in which U.S. foreign policy actually helped Latin Americans […]