The Cold War on Distant Fronts: New Geographies the U.S. Anti-Communist Efforts in the Global South

Harrouna Malgouri Announcement
Subject Fields
African History / Studies, American History / Studies, Atlantic History / Studies, Diplomacy and International Relations, Nationalism History / Studies

I am looking for panelists with interests in the US Cold War efforts as they unfolded in
regions and countries which are not well-represented in the scholarship. Currently,the growing
scholarly literature of the Cold War reflects the declassification processes that make US foreign
policy documents available for archival research. The engaging scholarship provides a deeper
insight of US-Soviet confrontations in the world between the end of World War II and the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1991. Despite the valuable information they uncover, however, most
contributions fall into the old geographical patterns of the proxy wars and the sites of political
and military standoff such as Egypt, Germany, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, Angola, Mozambique, the
Congo, and Chile. This continuous attention to the same areas generates a geography of the Cold
War with a considerable amount of blind spots.
It is therefore important to expand the geography of the Cold War to include the less
explored regions of the Global South and analyze the different approaches the United States took
to articulate anti-Communist policies toward the local people and leadership. By challenging the
crisis-focused scholarship, we have the opportunity to look at the decision-making processes in
the Department of State and, more importantly, to get first-hand access to the conversations
between the diplomats posted in these less exposed areas of the world and Washington, DC.
Ultimately, this methodology allows us to highlight the gaps between the concerns of the field
diplomats and the foreign policy bureaucracy back home.

Contact Information

Mr. Harrouna Malgouri
PhD Candidate. University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Department of History
 

Contact Email
harrouna.malgouri@fulbrightmail.org