Conference: Rhodesian UDI: 40 Years On
5-6 January 2006, LSE
Thanks to a British Academy Conference Grant, the CWSC organised a very successful conference on Rhodesian UDI. The conference formed part of the Southern Africa Initiative and was the second in a series of events on the Rhodesian question.
This conference provided a unique opportunity to place the UDI era in its historic context. It provided analysis of the Rhodesia question as a case study of the intersection of racial conflict in the Cold War and its socio-political impact, the implications for the structures of the international system, and its contemporary relevance to political scientists and scholars of international relations.
In addition, the conference highlighted new archival material and offered comparative analysis of the written record with oral history. Overall, the conference shed new light on the international dimensions of the crisis and analysis of the Rhodesia Front's attempts to implement a specific multi-racial model of modernity in the context of the Cold War in Southern Africa.
Professor Mick Cox, Co-Director of CWSC, welcomed Lord Owen (former British Foreign Secretary 1977-1979) who gave a lengthy Opening Address, covering his close involvement in the Rhodesia question and then answered questions from the audience.
The subsequent panels on the domestic, regional and international aspects of the Rhodesian UDI era highlighted the crucial context of the Cold War in Southern Africa, from the standpoint of both perception and reality.
CWSC Public Lecture, 17 January 2006, LSE
Still the Arc of Crisis? The Middle East from the Cold War to Iraq
Speakers: Professor Fred Halliday (LSE), Dr Toby Dodge (Queen Mary University London)
The Cold War was fought - and some would say won by the West - in the Middle East. Yet the legacy of victory has not been order but further conflict in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly in the future, Iran and Syria. How has this happened, even in a region apparently dominated by the United States? And what does the future hold for the Middle East?
CWSC Public Lecture, 24 January 2006, LSE
Part of the Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History
The Civil War, Historical Memory and the United States: Unity or Division?
Speaker: Professor David Blight (Yale University, USA)
The single most important American experience of the 19th century was the Civil War - a conflagration that destroyed the slave system in the South, led to the death of 600,000 people (more than in any other American war), and once and for all solved the American 'national question' in favour of the North.
But how has the Civil War been viewed by successive generations of writers? And what is its legacy today?
CWSC Public Lecture, 7 February 2006, LSE
The Idea of an American Century
Speaker: Professor Alan Brinkley (Columbia University, USA)
In 1941 the publisher Henry Luce announced the beginning of an American century and called upon Americans to take up the burden of global leadership.
Has the United States fulfilled its historic mission? Why has the idea of an American Century exercised such fascination for writers? And after 2000 should we now be thinking of another American century?
Professor Brinkley's paper is available online. Please note that an earlier version of this paper appears in "The American Century in Europe," edited by R. Laurence Morre and Maurizio Vaudagna, Cornell University Press.
CWSC Public Lecture, Book Launch, and Roundtable Discussion, 14 February 2006, LSE
The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times
Speaker: Professor Odd Arne Westad (LSE):
Discussants: Professor Fred Halliday, Professor of International relations at the LSE and Professor Richard H. Immerman, Edward J. Buthusiem Family Distinguished faculty fellow and chair of the department of history at Temple University (Philadelphia, USA)
In his major new study Professor Westad - Co-Director of the Cold War Studies Centre at the LSE - argues that it was not in Europe or the United States where the costs of the Cold War were borne but on the so-called periphery, in the Third World. It is also in the Third World where the bitter legacy of the Cold War can be most readily measured now. In this roundtable, Professor Westad discuss the main themes of his book with a panel of distinguished experts.
CWSC Public Lecture, 1 March 2006, LSE
The United States - Global Polluter? Kyoto and After
Speakers: Professor Robyn Eckersley (The University of Melbourne, Australia) and Sir Crispin Tickell (formerly British Ambassador to the United Nations)
Organized in conjunction with the Centre for Environmental Policy and Governance (LSE)
If anything has set the United States apart from the rest of the world it has been its consistent refusal to agree to any international agreements dealing with the dangers posed by 'global warming'. President Bush is not even convinced that such a threat exists. Why has the United States taken the stance it has?
What does this mean for the future of international relations? And what will it all mean for the future of the earth?
CWSC Public Lecture, 7 March 2006, LSE
Final lecture in the Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History.
Abraham Lincoln and the Almost Chosen People
Professor Richard Carwardine (Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford University)
The iconic status of Lincoln as both liberator and saviour of the American nation is assured. But who was the real Lincoln? What were his underlying aims? And what has been his legacy for the United States?
Professor Carwardine's paper is available online.
Conference: The LSE-GWU-UCSB International Graduate Conference on the Cold War
6-8 April 2006, LSE & The National Archives
CWSC Public Lecture, 3 May 2006, LSE
Vietnam and the American Dream - From Saigon to Baghdad
Speaker: Professor Marilyn Young (New York University, USA)
No event in recent American history has shaped the fate of the nation at home and abroad more than the Vietnam War.
Overcoming its restrictive legacy has been a major aim of successive American presidents; an aim most recently and forcefully articulated by President George W Bush in Iraq - a war with many objectives one of which however has been to bury the Vietnam 'Syndrome' for ever.
The LSE-PKU Conference on Chinese Foreign Policy and Global International Affairs
A two day seminar on Chinese foreign policy and global international affairs.
Papers to be presented include:
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Professor Wang Jisi: The Current State of Sino-American Relations
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Professor Michael Cox: The "China Threat" Revisited: Reflections of the Past - Visions of the Future
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Professor Wang Zhengyi: International Political Economy in China
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Professor Li Anshan: China's Relationship with the Developing World after the Cold War
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Dr. Piers Ludlow: European integration and the resolution of the German problem: Lessons for East Asia?
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Professor Jia Qingguo: China's Rise in a Uni-Polar World
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Professor Barry Buzan: Reflections from Europe on China's "Peaceful Rise" Strategy
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Professor Niu Jun: China and the World: a Sixty Year Perspective
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Professor Odd Arne Westad: Most Favoured Enemy: Sino-American Relations since the mid-1970s
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Dr. Athar Hussain: China as an Economic Power - Aspects and Consequences
International Symposium: Cold War and Hot War: The Arab-Israeli conflict, 1967-73, 10-12 May 2006, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor
The years 1967-73 are represented in much of the existing secondary literature as the 'classic' Cold War years in the Middle East.
The goal of this symposium would be to re-assess the role of the Cold War in shaping the events of this pivotal period in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
CWSC Public Lecture, 8 May 2006, LSE
Part of the CWSC LSE-PKU Public Lecture Series
"Peaceful Rise": A Discourse in China
Speaker: Professor Wang Jisi (Peking University)
Professor Wang Jisi will speak about the discourse of "peaceful rise" in China. He will address the formation of this idea, what the idea means in China, and what's missing from the debate. Professor Wang is Dean of the PKU School of International Studies and former Director, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Professor Wang's paper is available online.
CWSC Public Lecture, 12 June 2006, LSE
The 2006 James Bryce Lecture on the American Commonwealth - in conjunction with the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA).
Ordinary Liberty: What Americans Really Mean by Freedom
Speaker: Professor Orlando Patterson (John Cowles Professor of Sociology, Harvard University, USA)
This lecture links Professor Patterson's longstanding interest in freedom in the making of the modern world and his more recent research on its relevance for modern America in relationship to the intersecting problems of race, immigration and multiculturalism.
CWSC-Gilder Lehrman Institute Summer Seminar in Cold War History, 23-29 July 2006, Cambridge University
LSE-Peking University Summer School 2006August 2006
Peking University, Beijing
Professors Wang Jisi (PKU), Arne Westad (Department of International History, LSE) and Professor Michael Cox (Department of International Relations, LSE) taught two summer school courses in China. Professors Wang's course explored the history, thrust, and determinants of contemporary Chinese foreign policy and its history since the founding of the People's Republic.
In particular, it focused on new characteristics of China's foreign relations such as the "peaceful rise" discourse, development, cooperation, and global challenges in the post 9/11 world. These developments and the changing nature of Chinese society were set against China's historical background: "leaning toward one side", 1949-57; "revolutionary diplomacy" 1958-71; and "from rapprochement to opening and reform," 1972-88.
Professors Westad and Cox taught a course called Worlds in Collision: International relations from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of China. This course examined the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and September 11, which marked the beginning and termination of two very different eras, the peaceful end of the Cold War and the radical Islamists' attack on the United States.
This course explored how the world has adapted to these, and other equally important changes, with special emphasis being placed on the rise of China and its global implications.
The first part examined the "new" Cold War history and the immediate impact of the end of the Cold War on the international system in general and East Asia in particular.
The second part looked at the world order in the so-called 'post-Cold war' era. The course concluded with a discussion of the Bush presidency, the 'war on terror', Iraq, the spread of nuclear weapons, the "new" transatlantic crisis, and China's impact on world politics.
CWSC Public Lecture, 4 October 2006, LSE
Will the Global "War on Terrorism" Be the New Cold War?
Speaker: Professor Barry Buzan (Department of International Relations, LSE)
Many have talked of the 'war on terror' as if it were a new Cold War. This simplistic and misleading understanding is subject to a major critique by one of the leading writers on International Relations today.
CWSC Public Lecture, 17 October 2006, LSE
The inaugural lecture of the Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History.
Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Parties
Speaker: Professor Joyce Appleby (Professor Emerita UCLA)
The drafters of the U.S. Constitution didn't anticipate parties, and none of America's first leaders looked upon them with favour.
When Jefferson organized an opposition to the policies of George Washington and his Federalist regime, he did so to save the principle of the American Revolution. In the ensuing battle over just what were those principles, the footprint for all succeeding American political parties was made.
Cold War Studies Centre Seminar, LSE
U.S. Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?
Speaker: John Robert Kelley (LSE: PhD Candidate-International Relations)
CWSC Public Lecture, 2 November 2006, LSE
Seven Years that Changed the World: Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War
Speaker: Professor Archie Brown (Oxford University)
CWSC Public Lecture, LSE
The Collapse of the Soviet Empire - Reflections of an Insider
Speaker: Andrei Grachev (Former Press Secretary to President Mikhail Gorbachev)
Andrei Grachev is a political analyst and journalist in Russia. He was born in Moscow in 1941 and graduated in History from the Moscow Institute of International relations.
He was Editor of the international magazine “World Youth” in Budapest (Hungary). Then, Deputy Director on the International Department of the Central Committee of CPSU and adviser for Mikhail Gorbachev he was later appointed assistant and official Spokesman of the President of the USSR until his resignation in December 1991.
Cold War Studies Centre Seminar
6 December 2006, LSE
Cold War Strategic Cultures and Military Reform in Germany and Austria
Speaker: Dr Bastian Giegerich (International Institute of Strategic Studies)
Join us at a forthcoming IDEAS event.