Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and Communism in Bulgaria, 1941-48
Speaker: Dr. Vesselin Dimitrov, Department of Government
Chair: Professor Anita Prazmowska, Department of International History
The Significance of Reconstruction after the Civil War in American History
Speaker: Professor Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University
Part of the IDEAS-Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History.
Reconstruction, after the Civil War, is the least-known era in the American past.
Professor Foner explains why an understanding of Reconstruction is essential to knowledge of the course of American history, and American society today.
Listen:
IDEAS Graduate Seminar: Independence, Dependence and Third World Solidarity: Tanzania and China, 1964-1975
Speaker: Alicia N. Altorfer-Ong
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
Book Launch: To the Threshold of Power
Speaker: Professor Macgregor Knox, LSE Department of International History
Chair: Professor Paul Kennedy
To the Threshold of Power is the first volume of a two-part work that seeks to explain the origins and dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist dictatorships. It lays a foundation for understanding the Nazi and Fascist regimes - from their respective seizures of power in 1922 and 1933 to global war, genocide, and common ruin - through parallel investigations of Italian and German society, institutions, and national myths
IDEAS Conference: Peace Movements in the Cold War and Beyond
1-2 February 2008
Co-organized by the the Centre for the Study of Global Governance and the Free University of Amsterdam. Find out more.
IDEAS Graduate Seminar: Catalysts, Process, and Non-Linearity: On the Way to a More Comprehensive Account of the End of the Cold War
Speaker: Florian Wastl, PhD Candidate, LSE
Chair: Professor George Lawson
IDEAS Public Lecture
25 February 2008, LSE
Bringing Trans-Atlantic Security Into The 21st Century
Speaker: Ambassador Victoria Nuland (US Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Bringing the Transatlantic Relationship into the 21st Century requires a stronger NATO, a stronger European Union and a stronger relationship between them. NATO continues to contribute to global security and peace in vital operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo and the Mediterranean, and to serve as a consultative forum for issues important to North American and European allies, while also transforming to meet the challenges of this century.
Philippe Roman Chair Lecture
26 February 2008, LSE
The Nuts and Bolts of Empire
Speaker: Professor Paul Kennedy
All great and long-lasting empires have required a sophisticated logistical system and a secure communications system to sustain themselves in a world of endless challenges. Without such ‘nuts and bolts’, imperial ambitions soon collapse.
Professor Kennedy examines the hard, infrastructural underpinnings of the Roman, Spanish and British Empires, concluding with some reflections of how today's sole superpower, the USA, compares in this regard.
Listen to the lecture.
IDEAS-Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History
The Pivot Of The Twentieth Century
Speaker: Professor David Kennedy (Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University)
Chair: Dr. Piers Ludlow, International History Department
Winston Churchill said in 1945 that "the United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world." Yet just five years earlier America had been an economic catastrophe and an isolationist bastion. David M. Kennedy explains how that transformation came about, and its consequences.
Listen to the lecture.
IDEAS Public Lecture
6 March 2008, LSE
American Economic And Military Imperialism: Are They Connected?
Speaker: Professor Michael Mann
Chair: Professor Fred Halliday
This presentation defines the various types of empire seen in recent centuries and attempts to categorize American imperialism in these terms. It then discusses two recent intensifications of American imperialism: the US-headed neo-liberal/ floating dollar offensive that began in the 1970s, and the military imperialism intensifying during the 1990s and 2000s. It asks whether the two were closely connected as, for example, world systems theorists argue. It concludes they were not.
They were pushed by different interest groups with different motivations and with very different consequences. Whereas the economic intensification was carefully calibrated to American interests and succeeded in preserving American global dominance, military intensification was much more ideological and emotional and has failed, to a degree undermining American dominance.
IDEAS Southern Africa Initiative Seminar
Tuesday 11 March 2008
UN Peacekeeping/Peacemaking: The Lessons of Rwanda
Speakers: Linda Melvern and Andrew Mitchell
Chair: Dr. Sue Onslow, CWSC Fellow
This panel brings together two speakers with detailed knowledge of recent violence and conflict in Africa, and the challenges these posed to the international community and the United Nations.
International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War
4-5 April 2008
Co-organized by the Center for Cold War Studies (CCWS) of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the George Washington University Cold War Group (GWCW), and the Cold War Studies Centre at LSE IDEAS.
IDEAS Seminar
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
China in the Conception of International Society: English School's Encounters With China
Speaker: Professor Xiaoming Zhang, Peking University
Chair: Professor Barry Buzan, Department of International Relations
Elaborating on China as a factor in the English School theorizing on international society, including the historical comparisons of international systems/international society, expansion of international society, and China's rise in international society.
Xiaoming Zhang is Professor of International Relations at School of International Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China, where he has taught since 1988.
IDEAS Graduate Seminar
7 May 2008
Britain in Europe and Europe in the World: Labour's New Foreign Policy, 1968-1970
Speaker: Daniel Furby, PhD Candidate, Queen Mary University
IDEAS Public Lecture
8 May 2008
The Powers to Lead
Speaker: Professor Joseph S. Nye
Before a packed audience that included several luminaries, past and present, from the world of British foreign policy Professor Nye distinguished between different kinds of power and very different kinds of political leaders.
Leadership is always necessary in any endeavour, applying equally to politics, business, society, and culture. Whilst enriching our understanding of the concept Nye highlighted how the changing nature of leadership derives from broader social and political changes.
Listen to the lecutre.
International Conference: Conflict and Community: Transatlantic Relations During the Cold War
12-13 May 2008, Tampere University, Finland
IDEAS Graduate Seminar
14 May 2008
Dreams and Realities: Britain and the Indo-Pakistani Conflict in 1947
Speaker: Yuanmei Yao (Peking University, China)
Chair: Dr. Svetozar Rajak, IDEAS Academic Director
In 1947, India became independent from the Empire of Britain, dividing into India and Pakistan. Within months of independence, India and Pakistan were at war in Kashmir.
Britain tried her best to mediate the conflict, and hoped they could resolve it peacefully. However, Britain's good will satisfied neither India nor Pakistan but evoked criticism from both sides. It was always made the first whipping boy by both the Indians and the Pakistanis. This seminar discussed what quandary Britain was in over the Kashmir dispute.
IDEAS Book Launch
19 May 2008, LSE
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population
Speaker: Professor Matthew Connelly (Columbia University)
Chair: Professor Paul Kennedy, IDEAS Philippe Roman Chair
With its transnational scope and exhaustive research into archives such as Planned Parenthood and the newly opened Vatican secret archives, historian Matthew Connelly's withering critique exposes the cost inflicted by a humanitarian movement gone awry and urges renewed commitment to the reproductive rights of all people. It holds vital lessons for our missionary zeal to save the world-whether from poverty, from HIV/AIDS or from climate change.
IDEAS Seminar
Thursday 22 May
Oil and the American Century
Speaker: Professor David Painter (Georgetown University, Washington, DC.)
Chair: Professor Alan Sked, Department of International History
Oil has been central to military power and to modern industrial society since the early 20th century, and control of oil has been a significant source of US pre-eminence in the international system.
The lecture examined the role of oil in international history and highlight its geopolitical, economic, and environmental consequences.
IDEAS Book Launch
2 June 2008
The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order
Speakers: Parag Khanna (Director of the Global Governance Initiative)
Professor Michael Cox (IDEAS Co-Director)
Chair: Dr George Lawson, Department of International Relations
The Second World is the story of how the most strategic and least understood countries adapt to, but also shape, globalization. It is also about how these countries respond to the rise of China and the European Union and the pressures they face from America.
IDEAS Seminar
5 June 2008
New Trends in China's Strategic Thinking
Speaker: Professor Wang Jisi (Dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing University)
Chair: Professor Arne Westad, IDEAS Co-Director
IDEAS Conference
12-14 June 2008
Overcoming the Iron Curtain
Co-organized by the Universities of Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle in cooperation with Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt Stiftung, CIMA, LSE IDEAS Cold War Studies Centre, and The Johns Hopkins University, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Bologna Center.
Sorbonne, Paris
IDEAS Book Launch
18 June 2008
What Does China Think?
Speaker: Mark Leonard (Executive Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations)
Chair: Dr George Lawson
What Does China Think? introduces us to the thinkers shaping China's future, and opens up a hidden world of intellectual debate that could change our world.
Leonard reveals a Chinese model of Globalisation that could re-shape the face of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
Listen to the event.
IDEAS Graduate Seminar
19 June 2008
Sino-Soviet Economic Relations and the Collapse of the Sino-Soviet Alliance
Speaker: Wang Shiwen (Doctoral candidate from Peking University, PRC and now a research exchange student at LSE)
Chair: Dr. Svetozar Rajak
On Valentine's day of 1950, China and the Soviet Union signed the the Sino-Soviet Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance Treaty and related economic agreements, and forged an alliance. The Sino-Soviet Alliance includes three layer of relations: economic relations, party relations, military relations. In 1960, the USSR withdrew its specialists from China, which symbolized the deterioration of their economic relations.
In the late 1950s and mid 1960s a fierce ideological polemic broke out between the two allies, which symbolized deterioration of party relations. In 1969 the two allies came into border conflict in Zhenbao/Damanskii island, which symbolized the deterioration of military relations.
How does the economy influence ideology, and security? Or in other words, how do the party's interests interact with national interests, as ideology is related to the interests of CPC and CPSU and economy and security is related to national interests. This seminar will give you a satisfying answer.
IDEAS Conference
18-19 September 2008
United States Foreign Policy Working Group Annual Conference
Co-hosted by the Institute for the Study of the Americas and LSE IDEAS.
IDEAS Seminar
7 October 2008
Churchill's view of Russia - Six phases
Speaker: Professor John Lukacs
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
Professor Lukacs will discuss Churchill's changing view of Russia between 1915 and 1945.
Philippe Roman Chair Public Lecture
8 October 2008
The 'China Challenge' as Myth and Reality
Speaker: Professor Chen Jian (Philippe Roman Chair 2008-2009)
Chair: Professor O.A. Westad
Few countries have experienced changes as dramatic as China in the past 25 years, from ‘revolutionary state’ to ‘status quo power’.
Professor Chen discusses the origins, processes and implications of China's rise from the perspective of a historian of China's international relations, focusing on deconstructing some common myths.
Listen to the lecture.
IDEAS and Democrats Abroad
20 October 2008
The Future of US Foreign Policy and the 2008 Presidential Election
Speakers: Trey Barnes, James Thackara, Bob Singh, Professor Michael Cox
A panel of US Foreign Policy experts will discuss the upcoming presidential election.
Book Launch
21 October 2009
The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War
Speaker: Sergey Radchenko
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
In this provocative study, Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko show how the atomic bomb pushed the United States and the Soviet Union not toward cooperation but toward deep bipolar confrontation.
Both superpowers discerned a new reality of the atomic age: now, cooperation must be total. The dangers posed by the bomb meant that intermediate measures of international cooperation would protect no one.
IDEAS Southern Africa Initiative Seminar
22 October 2008
South Africa and Zimbabwe
Speaker: Professor Jack Spence
Chair: Dr. Sue Onslow
Events in Southern Africa have moved at a bewildering pace this year. Despite the nominal agreement between Robert Mugabe and ZANU (PF) and the MDC, finally agreed in September, the long-running crisis in Zimbabwe continues to poison regional political, economic and social relationships.
Nowhere is this more acute than in South Africa, as the recent violence against migrants has amply demonstrated. Professor Spence will discuss the particular challenges posed by Zimbabwe's recent turmoil to the South African leadership, as South Africa itself is experiencing political upheaval, and facing presidential elections in 2009.
Book Launch
28 October 2008
King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life
Speaker: Nigel Ashton
Chair: Professor David Stevenson
Nigel Ashton's book King Hussein of Jordan is a ground-breaking biography, drawing for the first time on the private papers of a contemporary Arab head of state.
IDEAS Roundtable
4 November 2008
From War to Peace: Northern Ireland and its Lessons for the 21st Century
Speakers: Professor Richard English, Jonathan Powell (Former Chief of Staff, Number 10)
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
IDEAS Roundtable
7 November 2008
Where Now For the United States After the Election?
Speakers: Jessica Mathews, Bob Singh, Professor Michael Cox
The 2008 race for the White House has been the most exciting in recent American history. Will the new Obama presidency make much difference to the United States and the rest of the world?
IDEAS Seminar
11 November 2008
The Financial Crisis From a South East Asian Perspective
Speaker: Dr Munir Majid
How is this crisis, both its cause and effect, viewed within the region? What ideas have been expressed to prevent its recurrence? Why might the Southeast Asian response not be entirely similar to that of developed economies?
IDEAS Public Lecture
19 Novermber 2008
What Next? Surviving the Twenty-first Century
Speaker: Lord Chris Patten (Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle universities)
Chair: Howard Davies
Patten tackles the big questions about our global condition and our collective future with a verve and authority no other current commentator can match.
IDEAS-Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History
25 November 2008
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: Law and Liberty in the Time of War
Speaker: Professor Allen Guelzo, (Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Professor of History at Gettysburg College)
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
President-elect Barack Obama cites Abraham Lincoln's cabinet-building as a key influence, and the leadership qualities of Lincoln are once again animating popular debate. Guelzo unfolds the context of the Proclamation in American law and the 'law of nations' as it existed in 1863, and argues for the essential power of the Proclamation as a document of liberation, and of political prudence.
IDEAS Public Lecture
27 November 2008
Are We Winning the War on Drugs?
Speaker: Antonio Maria Costa ( executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
An examination of the misery, corruption, violence, and instability caused by the drug trade in impoverished countries, evaluating international community efforts in managing the problem and stabilising the most affected regions.
IDEAS Roundtable
2 December 2008
China After the Olympics
Speakers: Martin Jacques, Professor Chen Jian, Jonathan Fenby, and Athar Hussain
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
Listen to the roundatble.
IDEAS/Southern Africa Initiative Seminar
9 December 2008
Africa and the Obama Administration: Perspectives on South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and the DRC/Central Africa
Speakers: William Gumede, Dr Thoko Kaime, Martin Kimani, and Dr Knox Chitiyo
Chair: Dr. Sue Onslow
Four presentations, from a new generation of well- known African analysts, will offer African country and regional perspectives on some of the key issues, hopes and fears which Africans will have for the new Democratic administration's Africa policy.
Join us at a forthcoming IDEAS event.