US Cold War Research Articles

Locating Women’s Political Engagement: Democracy in Early Cold War US and Japanese Women’s Magazines, 1945–1955

Locating Women’s Political Engagement: Democracy in Early Cold War US and Japanese Women’s Magazines, 1945–1955

Temporary Thais: Circular Thai–US Migration in the 1960s

Abstract Few published histories examine Thai Americans and Thai–US migration. This essay addresses that paucity and explores Thai–US migration in the 1960s. A narrative of trauma exists around Southeast Asian US migration history, wherein the United States is positioned as a final destination of hope and settlement. Thai-US migration in the 1960s does not fit into this narrative. This is a case study of Thai students in American universities and Thai employees of the Peace Corps. Thais came to the United States voluntarily, as university students, as professionals, and as tourists. Their journeys to the United States were circular by design. Thai and US Cold War concerns created legal pathways for Thai student migration to the United States to achieve these objectives. These same mechanisms created economic and social incentives to return home: high-paying jobs in a burgeoning economy and the social prestige of international travel. Cold War geo-politics circumvented hostile US immigration policies and permitted Thai students’ entry into the United States, but their pre-existing elite status, potential for personal profit, and civic duties induced them to return. These factors shaped Thai–US migration as temporary and circular.

Turkey’s Candidature to the UN Security Council Seat in 1948: Why the West’s ‘Favorite’ Candidate Lost

Abstract Following the Second World War, Turkey vigorously pursued a policy of effective participation in international institutions. As part of this policy, Turkish diplomats campaigned for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council in the year 1948. This article aims to provide descriptive information about this campaign and explain why Turkey lost the election in the UN General Assembly for the seat reserved for the Near East region. In doing so, the article primarily uses historical documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (frus) series because they provide very detailed information about backstage diplomacy, motivations of candidate countries, and opinions of the US diplomats about candidates. The article concludes that it was the US Cold War policies that influenced the outcome of the 1948 election. Although it was publicly known that the US supported Turkey in this election, a closer examination of the American diplomatic documents reveals that the US voted for Egypt in order to keep it in the Western camp.

“I'm on My Way to a Heav'nly Lan’”:Porgy and Bessas American Religious Export to the USSR

AbstractScholars have explored the use of Breen-Davis'sPorgy and Bessand its stellar ensemble cast to counter Soviet criticism of US race relations during the Cold War—but an equally prominent theme in contemporary coverage of the production is spirituality. Onstage as well as off, the Soviet tour ofPorgy and Bessreflected both American and Soviet ideas about religion's role in international diplomacy in the mid-1950s. This article explores religiosity in the Breen-Davis production as well as the reception of the 1955–56 Soviet tour both in the United States, where the production represented a hopeful vision of the nation's racial tolerance and religious pluralism, and in the USSR, where the tour's twin messages of American spiritual superiority and racial equality were challenged by Soviet authorities. Drawing on materials from the Robert Breen Archives housed in the Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University, this article considers Breen-Davis'sPorgy and Bessas a religious export to the USSR, enriching our understanding of US cultural diplomacy and Cold War–era musical exchange with broader implications for American–Soviet history, religious studies, and opera analysis.

Preemptive Strikes: Women Strike for Peace, Antinuclear Pacifism, and the Movement for a Biological Democracy, 1961–1963

AbstractThis article examines the social, political, and environmental features of the Women Strike for Peace (WSP) movement from its inception in 1961 to the passage of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. I offer the analytical framework of “biological democracy” as a conceptual bridge between environmental and sociopolitical approaches to WSP. The movement’s gendered critiques of US foreign policymaking, its organizational structure, and its participation in the production and distribution of scientific knowledge demonstrate how progressive women used maternalist discourse to oppose US Cold War policies in the early‐1960s. WSP participants leveraged their social proximity to the biological condition of the family as “givers and guardians” of life to dissent against the nuclear arms race, heighten female voices within Cold War geopolitics, and increase public awareness of the hazards of radioactive fallout caused by ongoing atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. By coopting conventions of maternalism and domesticity as justification for their cause, WSP women effectively mollified patriarchal and anti‐communist attacks as they organized against Cold War militarism and nuclear irradiation. In so doing, they offered a vision of US democracy that responded to individualized, feminine activism and prioritized public health over nuclear armament.

The United States, China, and the Politics of Hegemonic Ordering in East Asia

Abstract China's rise has raised important questions about the durability of US hegemony in East Asia. Much of the debate, however, has generally been cast in fairly simplistic terms, suggesting the durability or end of US regional hegemony. Such framings nevertheless fail to fully capture regional dynamics and complexity. Advancing an English School conception of hegemony, this paper examines the politics, contestation, and renegotiation of the post–Cold War US hegemonic order in East Asia. It maps out four logics of hegemonic ordering in the existing literature, outlines their shortfalls and advances a twofold argument. First, although regional order will not disintegrate into binary “order versus disorder” or “US versus Chinese hegemony” scenarios, the politics of hegemonic ordering—the interactive discourses, processes, relations, and practices that underpin hegemony—will intensify as the United States and China continue to both cooperate and compete for power, position, and influence in East Asia. Second, I argue that the East Asian regional order will evolve in ways that resemble hybrid forms of hegemony in a complex hierarchy. Specifically, I develop a new logic—“coalitional and collaborative hegemonies in a complex hierarchy”—that is anchored in assertiveness, fluidity, and compartmentalization. It demonstrates that Washington and Beijing will not only form coalitional hegemonies, seeking legitimation from multiple and often overlapping constituencies, but also engage in a collaborative hegemony on shared interests. This better reflects evolving regional dynamics and yields theoretical insights into examining hegemonic transitions less as clearly delineated transitions from one distinct hegemonic order to the next, and more as partial and hybrid ones.

The "Sisterhood Arrangement": Postcolonial Dreams, Cold War Racial Politics, and US Involvement in the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur

This essay examines the 1950s State Department–brokered "sisterhood arrangement," or "sisterhood relationship," between the University of Illinois and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I bring the archives of the "sisterhood" into conversation with historical scholarship on the importance of racial image-management to US Cold War strategy. In doing so, my analysis spotlights the imbrications of race and education within the crosscutting forces of Indian postcolonial nation-building and US Cold War empire-building as they clashed and converged in the 1950s. I illuminate the interconnected operations of new educational projects and old racial systems at this key historical juncture of US and Indian political trajectories by (1) demonstrating the centrality of international education partnerships to US strategic plans for Third World alignment; (2) revealing the presence of racial image-management activities embedded in the sisterhood relationship; and (3) discussing the role of racialized gender in structuring the daily operations of the sisterhood relationship. Overall, this analysis spotlights the "sisterhood" as an illuminating prism for examining the entanglements of race, geopolitics, and education in a Cold War world.

Символ детства и конструирование образа «врага номер один» в советском и американском кинематографе холодной войны

The paper analyses, based on the Soviet and US Cold War films, the role of the childhood symbol as a resource of forming the image of the enemy. The scientific relevance of the problem stems from the need to study 1) the reasons for and the forms of politicizing the childhood images, 2) the ways of constructing the image of the enemy and the means of deconstructing it, and 3) the cinematic images of the Cold War enemy, since they remain a factor in the contemporary relations between Russia and the United States. The author points out that the interest that symbolic politics actors show in the childhood symbol is explained by its ability to trigger strong emotional response. The Cold War cinematic representations of childhood served as an efficient tool for constructing the image of an enemy. Such an image had a number of functions: maintaining collective identity, mobilisation, justification of violence, legitimation of power, and predicting the victory. Unlike adult characters, children’s characters — even the negative ones — were pictured by both Soviet and US filmmakers not as enemies, but rather as victims of the unnatural and unjust social system of the “enemy number one”. In general, the Soviet and US films feature similar roles of “their” (i. e., Soviet and American, respectively) children and similar treatment of children — whether “their” or not — by adult characters. The cinematic images of children convincingly show that, despite the fact that both superpowers presented each other as antipodes, the basic values of the USSR and the US were much closer than it may seem. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the Cold War cinema employed the childhood symbol for the deconstruction of the image of the “enemy number one” and for rehumanisation of the opponent in the period of the detente.

Ginsberg on the Road

Ginsberg on the Road Maria Damon (bio) World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller David S. Wills Beatdom Books www.beatdom.com/product/world-citizen-allenginsberg-as-traveller/ 177 Pages; Print, $14.00 David S. Wills's World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller offers a pleasant, thoroughly researched and convincing account of the poet's travels and their relevance to his writing. The book is informative and weaves insights into Ginsberg's personal drive to visit multiple countries, to experience both their high-cultural institutions and their demi-mondes, and to meet and network with international poets and writers—it also offers a possible window into, but does not pursue, questions such as how the phenomenon of Cold War US ideology shaped views of the meaning of travel for young "men of letters." While one might wonder why such a volume is necessary, however, while the author admits with refreshing candor (the latter word being a favorite of Ginsberg's) that the book was catalyzed by his own love of travel but also his recognition that a book of his own travels would have limited appeal to a wider readership—an admission that both charms and raises apprehensions in equal measures—and that "most readers familiar with Allen Ginsberg's life will find little in this book that is ground-breaking," a truthful assessment, the book itself provides an excellent, concise, and eminently readable guide to this aspect of the life of one of the twentieth century's most famous poets. Indeed, the casual and decidedly nonacademic nature of the book's paratextual elements combined with the clearly careful and responsible research turn out to contribute to an inviting and enjoyable if unchallenging re-contextualization of Ginsberg's life and work under the rubric of travel. In its eschewal of standard academic apparatus, the book corresponds well to the "beat" ethos that inflected Ginsberg's life—an ethos the poet certainly was instrumental in creating, publicizing, and popularizing. These attributes of informed, conversational engagement, and independence from typical structures of scholarly dissemination are further underscored by the nature of the publisher: Beatdom Books is Wills's own imprint. "Aha, vanity press!" one might think. Or, alternately and more appropriately, "Aha! DIY will never die!" The spirit of not only creating one's own work, but also taking responsibility for reproducing and distributing it, has a time-honored place in countercultural and subcultural movements. This book instantiates that legacy, and for the most part does well by it. Organized into four parts, World Citizen is, as one would expect, chronologically structured to start with Ginsberg's earliest travels (in the Merchant Marine) as well as his youthful fascination with East Asia, especially China, and extends through his maturity, his rise in international stature, his evolution from an eager young traveler mad for experience of the world to a revered and/or notorious public figure and poet traveling to reading and speaking engagements, distinguished teaching appointments and the like—yet still mad for experience of the world. What stayed constant throughout his life was his passion for art museums and the cultural masterpieces of every place he encountered, his desire to explore the hidden underworlds of his host countries and cities, his gregarious nature, and his ability to bond with strangers easily. The book is most successful and compelling when it shows the relationship between specific travels and certain poems, whether it be the influence, during his 1962-63 trip to India, of a "female lama" whose advises that his investment in hallucinations and visions is superficial and illusory—leading to his shedding a pursuit of "effects" and going for a closer, more concise attention to "words. Language: the prime material itself"—or the influence of his 1954 Mexican sojourn on the "COMPOUND Imagism" on his masterpiece "Howl" (i.e. "hydrogen jukebox") but first developed in Xbalba and evinced in the poem "Siesta in Xbalba." Moreover, Ginsberg kept extensive travel journals (the Indian Journals [1970] the most famous of these) and, as many poets do, culled them for poetry throughout his life. This practice makes the researcher's job of linking the poems with the journals, chronologically, imagistically...

Stamping Out the ‘Nation-Ruining Disease’: Anti-Tuberculosis Campaigns in US-Occupied Okinawa

Summary This article examines tuberculosis prevention campaigns in US-occupied Okinawa in the 1950s and 60s. The number of tuberculosis patients in Okinawa increased after World War II due to the influx of repatriates and construction workers. This article highlights both the social and cultural aspects of the Okinawan fight against tuberculosis by focusing on key figures in anti-tuberculosis projects: public health nurses and Kabira Chōshin (1909–98), the chief of the Ryukyu Anti-Tuberculosis Association.1 While the public health nurses promoted tuberculosis prevention by closely supporting tuberculosis patients and educating the population, Kabira tried to connect anti-tuberculosis campaigns with the restoration of Ryukyuan culture. By analysing their anti-tuberculosis efforts, this article argues that the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis under the US occupation constituted a site where people’s calls for a better life became intimately interconnected with US Cold War militarism, on one hand, and with ‘pro-reversion’ sentiment, on the other.

Study on the Model Construction of Power Transfer Movement from the Perspective of China`s International Relations

Power plays a fundamental role in the system in the international relations. Basie on Game Theory, and by the assumption that the total amount of power is relatively constant in a short period of time, this paper makes a modelling analysis of the "take-and-give" movement of power among rational countries. Based on building the curve of power taken and the curve of power given, the power balance mechanism model and the power movement track model are constructed. We also make an analysis and by the examples. In the current situation, this paper agrees with the view of most scholars. China and the United States have opened a "cold war" different from the United States and the Soviet Union. With the coordination between the PRC-US relations, it is concluded that a stable international power mechanism requires the active cooperation of all countries, which could promote the power operation to reach the equilibrium point. The analysis method of power movement can explain the cause, progress, and trend of Sino US cold war to a certain extent.

The Red Machine: The Dehumanization of the Communist Enemy in American Cold War Cinema

This article deals with the US Cold War cinematographic construction of the Soviet enemy. The researcher focuses on the means of dehumanising the communist enemy, external and internal, by equating it to a machine. The author applies Nick Haslam’s dual model of dehumanization (2006), according to which dehumanization is visible in two main forms: animalistic, by associating members of the out-group with animals, and mechanistic, by associating them with a soulless machine. The materials used consist of US films from the “Long Fifties”, in which Hollywood, equating the enemy to machines, developed three plots: the robotic existence of individuals in a totalitarian society; the transformation of Americans into zombies by communists by means of Soviet science; and the body snatching of Americans by an alien mind, an allegory of a future communist occupation of the USA. The article demonstrates that dehumanization was implemented by directly labeling the representatives of the communist world as robots and by attributing to them a lack of emotions, consciousness, will, individuality, initiative, warmth, love, friendship, creative abilities, and even the ability to smile. Such an image of the enemy implied a moral exclusion, treating them as an inanimate object unworthy of empathy, including in the event of their destruction. The author points out that the use of mechanistic dehumanization was very effective. Essentialization of the differences between “us” and “them” occurred: the symbolic border between them is presented as a boundary between living and nonliving. The image of mortal danger was created: the “Red Machine” is strong and merciless, it cannot be moved to pity, and so it is permissible to destroy it. This image contributed to the legitimation of power: the political opponents of the authorities are represented as internal enemies who are anxious to turn Americans into obedient executors of someone else’s will and to deprive them of humanity. At the same time, the machine also has weaknesses, and it is possible to defeat it: since it is devoid of human creativity, it is clearly inferior to the free human spirit embodied in America.

Bipolar Rivalry in the Early Digital Age

Abstract The year 2019 saw the curtain rise on a US–China bipolar rivalry quite different from the Cold War US–Soviet bipolarity. The fundamental difference between the current bipolar rivalry and that during the Cold War is that ideology is no longer the main engine driving international competition, but rather the new digital dimension of strategic competition that is emerging between the United States and China. Technological advancement over the past 15 years has led world history’s entry into the early digital age. The development of digital technology has created new ways of protecting national security, of accumulating national wealth, and of obtaining international support. Cybersecurity is becoming the core of national security and the share of digital economy in major powers’ gross domestic product dramatically increases. For the leading powers, strategic competition in cyberspace in this early digital age outstrips to a crucial extent that within physical geographic boundaries. This article observes that Cold War mentality and digital mentality will have mixed impact on foreign policy-making in the digital age, and that interactions between the nations whose foreign policy is simultaneously influenced by both mentalities will shape the emerging international order into one of uneasy peace, where there is no direct war and few proxy wars. It will rather be a scenario reflecting the dark side of globalization and downside of global governance, evident in the violation of agreements, double dealing, cyber-attacks, and technology decoupling between states. Although further digital advancement will indeed change international politics in ever more aspects, US–China bipolar configuration will nevertheless remain in place for at least for two decades, or perhaps longer.

The Economic Strategies of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy during the Nixon-Ford Years

Abstract Much of international relations scholarship attributes the United States’ commitment to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons as the outcome of US national security interests. Yet, US nonproliferation policy comprises a compelling set of economic goals and strategies, beyond economic sanctions. Without incorporating economic factors and actors, and their convergence with the Cold War US national security state, the understanding of US nonproliferation policy remains incomplete. The 1970s challenged US postwar economic preeminence through the “Nixon shock,” the end of dollar convertibility to gold of the Bretton Woods system, and the 1973 oil price shock. Concurrently, the United States’ market share in terms of global nuclear reactor sales declined while those of West European suppliers like France and West Germany increased. This essay argues that US nonproliferation efforts, which in the Nixon-Ford era took the form of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) after India's 1974 nuclear explosion, were guided as much by security concerns about proliferation as by Washington's aim to reclaim its market share to protect US nuclear industry against West European competition.

Gendering multi-voiced histories of the North American space industry: the GMRD White women

Purpose The authors focus on “writing women into ‘history’” in this study, embracing the notion of cisgender and ethnicity in relation to the “historic turn”. As such, the authors bring forward the stories of the US Pan American Airway’s Guided Missile Range Division (GMRD) and the White women who worked there. The authors ask what has a Cold War US missile division to tell us about present and future gendered relationships in the North American space industry. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply Foucault’s technology of lamination, a form of critical discourse analysis, to both narrative texts and photographic images in the GMRD’s in-house newsletter, the Clipper, dating from 1964 until the end of 1967. They meld an autoethnography to this technique, providing space for the first author to share her experiences within the contemporary space industry in relation to the GMRD White women experiences. Findings The authors surface, in applying this combined methodology, a story about a White women’s historical, present and future cisgender social reality in the North American space industry. They are contributing then to a multi-voiced, cisgender/ethnic “historic turn” that, to date, is focused on White men alone in the US race to the moon. Social implications The social implication of this study lies in challenging perceptions of the masculinist-gendering of the past by bringing forward tales of, and by, women. This study also brings a White woman’s voice forward, within a contemporary North American space industry organization. Originality/value The authors are making a three-fold contribution to this special issue, and to an understandings of gendered/ethnic multi-voiced histories. The authors untangle the mid-Cold War phase from the essentialized Cold War era. They recreate multi-voiced histories of White women within the North American space industry while adding an important contemporary voice. They also present a novel methodology that combines the technology of lamination with autoethnography, to provide a gateway to recognizing the impact of multi-voiced histories onto contemporary and future gendered/ethnic relationships.

MILITARY ASSISTANCE, FOREIGN POLICY, AND NATIONAL SECURITY

From the inauguration of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP) in 1950, until its termination in the early 1960s, Norway was among the main European beneficiaries of military assistance from the United States. Previous research on this subject has mainly seen the MDAP from the perspective of the recipient, analysing what effect the influx of large amounts of equipment had for the shape and development of the Norwegian Armed Forces. This article discusses the motives for US military assistance to Norway, and analyses this activity as an expression of US Cold War objectives concerning Norway and NATO’s northern flank. The article also explores how these objectives influenced policy making relevant to military assistance, and gives particular attention to the role of US representatives in Oslo. These actors played an important role in highlighting the political and strategic benefits of extensive aid to Norway.

Epstein , Catherine Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (review)

SEER, 97, 2, APRIL 2019 382 not constitute a substantial body of work capable of detailed scrutiny. Etkind concludes with two counterfactuals: if Wilson had not fallen ill, if Roosevelt had listened to Bullitt in the late 1930s, how much better the world would have been. He also argues for Bullitt’s positive impact: Kennan’s later influence on US Cold War policies arose substantially out of Bullitt’s influence; and he suggests that Jean Monnet ‘followed Bullitt when he brought the European Union into existence’ (p. 240). Such attenuated claims hardly persuade. Department of History Michael F. Hopkins University of Liverpool Epstein, Catherine. Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2010. xv + 451 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £30.00. On 8 October 1939 Adolf Hitler decreed the annexation of areas of western Poland and the Free City of Danzig. Some were attached to the already existing Gaue (provinces) of East Prussia and Silesia (later Upper Silesia). Two new Gaue were constituted, Danzig-West Prussia and the Wartheland, established solely from annexed territory. Initially known as Reichsgau Posen, it was renamed Reichsgau Wartheland (Warthegau) on 29 January 1940, under the leadership of a key active Nazi leader, Arthur Greiser, Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter from 21 and 26 October 1939 respectively. In this authoritatively sourced and minutely examined study of Greiser, formerly President of the Free City of Danzig, and his ruthless management of the Warthegau in the service of the wartime Third Reich, the author aims to rectify what she sees ‘as the neglected story of an important Nazi leader and his brutal Germanization programme in occupied Poland’ (p. 2). That programme was intended to rectify the population makeup of the area in favour of Germans — a paltry 309,000 to begin with, but to be expanded by the forced influx of ethnic Germans from the Old Reich and the Baltic States — as against the resident 322,000 Jews and over three and a half million Poles who needed to be got rid of to make space for the incomers. The vital question was: how could that aim be achieved within the exigencies of wartime Eastern Europe? Given that the Warthegau became notorious for the deliberate mass murder of many thousands of Jews and Poles (the latter, towards whom Greiser adopted ‘vengeful policies’ in accordance with Hitler’s comments to him on 28 September1939,p.129),Epsteinrelatesheraccounttothewiderhistoricaldebate REVIEWS 383 about Nazi genocide and its initiators. Contrary to some interpretations, she argues that attention should be paid to the role of individuals such as Greiser as against the emphasis upon ‘situational’ factors being prime determinants (p. 5). Yet in presenting her ‘integrated [demographic] history of Greiser’s Germanisation programme’ Epstein strikes a completely false note with her ahistorical comment, ‘examining the Holocaust in the context of a more general Germanisation programme may strike some readers as controversial or even loathsome’ (p. 11). Contrariwise, German historian Ulrich Herbert more correctly stated that ‘the process of the mass murder of millions of people […] was not an aberration in the overall administration of the occupation but was a component of German occupation in the East’ (National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies, ed. Ulrich Herbert, New York and Oxford, 2000, p. 32). It could not be otherwise since events elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe and the policy indicators and orders from Berlin guided, if not dictated, policies at local levels in the Warthegau as well. Hitler himself provided such frameworks from 17 October 1939 when he declared that the new Reich territories would witness a hard racial struggle and be purged — i.e. ‘emptied’ — of Jews and Polacks. That followed his appointment on 7 October 1939 of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom, a commission the RFSS pursued with great energy. Nevertheless, desired Nazi ethnographic policies in the Warthegau could not be achieved because interim ‘solutions’ of mass deportations and resettlement for Jews and Poles outside the Gau was not matched by the incoming numbers of Volksdeutsche. Within the Reich’s wider mass murder actions of Jews...

Henry Kissinger and the transition to democracy in Southern Europe

Henry Kissinger approached change in Southern Europe reluctantly as he thought that democratization entailed opportunities for currents of the Left that were deemed incompatible with US Cold War considerations. His influence in the unfolding of democratization, with the exception of Portugal, was limited. It should be taken into account though that US presence in Europe and NATO constituted a framework that influenced the conduct of Western and Southern European politics. It is the perception and the framework of bipolarity within which the success of Kissinger’s policy should be evaluated. In this context, his concerns and actions were not necessarily misplaced.

Translation and the professional selves of Mercer Cook

AbstractThis article explores the ways in which African American Mercer Cook's translation practice reflects complex overlaps between his professional/personal selves and an ideological backdrop that encompasses black internationalism, US race struggles and mid-twentieth-century diplomatic relations with Africa. A first section explores how Cook, a university professor of French, uses what he terms the “close-to-home” value of translation in order to expose his African American students to what has been written about them in French. At the same time, translation is seen by him as essential to building a “shared elsewhere” where his students can reflect on their place within a black world that is neither nation-bound nor monolingual. A second section examines the way in which Cook's translation practice is inflected by his role as US ambassador in francophone West Africa during the 1960s. In this context, the convergence of US civil rights with official US Cold War policy on postcolonial African states is key to understanding Cook's stance as a translator and the way in which he seeks diplomatically to propel his translations of L.S Senghor's texts towards a racially riven US readership.

Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World, by Jason C. Parker

Scholars of modern US international history tend to view the twentieth century as shaped most fundamentally by the Cold War between the Soviet-led Communist bloc and the US-led democratic capitalist sphere. But, for the majority of the world’s peoples who lived in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the period from the 1940s to the 1970s was defined instead in political terms primarily by the struggle for national self-determination and independence from western European colonial rule. The intersection of these two axes of power—East–West and North–South—determined many of the contours of contemporary world affairs. US foreign policy after the Second World War aimed to preserve close ties with Washington’s NATO partners in western Europe while simultaneously winning the allegiance of the newly emerging nations that became known collectively as the Third World. A vast literature now documents the heavy-handed and often unsuccessful military and intelligence interventions by the United States in non-European terrain. Jason Parker’s engaging new book turns our attention instead to official American public diplomacy toward the Third World from 1945 to 1963. This was the effort by the United States Information Agency and its bureaucratic predecessors favourably to impress other peoples with American values and behaviours and thus to woo them to the American side in the Cold War struggle.