ICCWD: L1:

What was the cold war? key features:

Post WW2- 89/91.

• Highly competitive in nature, competing over ideological influence in the word.

• Nuclear war tensions/ arms race dynamic.

  • Technological superiority.

• Cold war took place through proxy wars

  • Decolonisation and local dynamics too -> supporting armed actors to undermine the others influence.

  • No direct conflict.

• Economic dimension: capitalist vs. communist approach.

Intelligence actors as a means to an end or an end in itself?

• Economic dominance/ military dominance

• Or interest in domination intelligence sector.

Is the Cold War still relevant?

• Similarities to modern period -> recognize signs, learn and understand high competition in international politics.

• Some argue that CW cannot be generalised as it was so context specific

• Others argue can draw upon and learn from it today.

• Russians still think it matters -> Peaked politically so want to go back.

  • Still use methods.

  • Politically value to them so matters to us.

What is Decolonization in the Cold war context?

• Decolonization:

  • One side would be back by US/USSR-> become part of CW.

  • Loss of influence and control of territories in the world

  • Independent governance  of states -> competing over alignment of these newly independent states.

    • Instability of new states.

 

• US prevent new states from becoming communist by intervening.

• Reputational dynamic.

  • Order of economies, market access, political and military dynamics.

  • Can become threating if align another way - Cuba 62'

What key moment happened in 1949?

• First Soviet atomic test → enters the nuclear dimension into the Cold War.

• Creation of NATO= counter Eastern european bloc.

Problem of sources?

• inherently secret activities: fractured record (classification, destruction, never officially recorded)

• Certain sources focused on failure/ controversy? 

  • Defectors, memoirs, whistleblowers.

• Certain sources represent an attempt to manage contemporary image?

  • official histories, authorized memoirs.

• Whose voices, perspectives recorded and whose not?

• Need to understand what the sources represent (imperfect knowledge)