Brewing Relations: Coffee, East Germany, and Laos

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Andrew Kloiber

This investigation contributes to studies of post-1945 Europe and the Cold War by examining the culture, economics, and politics surrounding the consumption of a single commodity in East Germany, coffee. Coffee was associated with many cultural values and traditions that became tied to the GDR's official image of socialism. When the regime's ability to supply this good was jeopardized in 1975–77, the government sought out new sources of coffee in the developing, so-called Third World. East Germany entered into long-term trade and development projects with countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Laos, and Vietnam to secure sufficient beans to supply its own population – this article singles out the GDR's relationship with Laos for discussion. These trade deals connected East Germany to a much broader, globalizing economy, and led to certain lasting effects on the world coffee trade.

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kalter

AbstractIn the second half of the twentieth century, the transnational ‘Third World’ concept defined how people all over the globe perceived the world. This article explains the concept’s extraordinary traction by looking at the interplay of local uses and global contexts through which it emerged. Focusing on the particularly relevant setting of France, it examines the term’s invention in the context of the Cold War, development thinking, and decolonization. It then analyses the reviewPartisans(founded in 1961), which galvanized a new radical left in France and provided a platform for a communication about, but also with, the Third World. Finally, it shows how the association Cedetim (founded in 1967) addressed migrant workers in France as ‘the Third World at home’. In tracing the Third World’s local–global dynamics, this article suggests a praxis-oriented approach that goes beyond famous thinkers and texts and incorporates ‘lesser’ intellectuals and non-textual aspects into a global conceptual history in action.


Author(s):  
Beverley Hooper

From the early 1970s, the US-China relationship was central to diplomatic reporting, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s visit to Peking in October 1971, President Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972, and the establishment the following year of small liaison offices in Peking and Washington. Following each of Kissinger’s further visits in 1973 and 1974, senior diplomats virtually queued up at the liaison office to find out what progress, if any, had been made towards the normalization of US-China relations. Peking’s diplomats, like some of their colleagues elsewhere in the world, did not always see eye-to-eye with their foreign ministries. There was little chance of their becoming overly attached to Communist China, as the Japanologists and Arabists were sometimes accused of doing for Japan and Arab countries. At the same time, living and breathing the PRC led some diplomats to regard Chinese Communism as being rather more nuanced—and the government somewhat less belligerent—than the Cold War images portrayed in the West, particularly the United States.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002252662110314
Author(s):  
Pavel Mücke

The long-term First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and later also President of the Republic, Antonín Novotný (1904–75), was popularly known as “Nice Tony”. As a communist politician and statesman, Novotný was well known as a great disciple and follower of Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, famous for his personal and very contact-oriented diplomacy. The main contours of several of Novotný's official visits have already been analysed from political and diplomatic history perspectives. Based on archival research and available memoirs, this article tries to reconstruct the still non-visible and unknown view of transport history and, consequently, traveling and tourism history. It outlines the general contours and several aspects of V.I.P. communists’ international travels on the cases of several trips abroad which took place during the 1950s and 1960s of the Cold War era.


Afrika Focus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 93-115
Author(s):  
Stephanie Vervaet

African warlords, reinforcement or undermining of the historical capitalism? With the end of the Cold War, global economic and political changes made African leaders rearrange their patrimonial politics towards warlord strategies. The aim of this paper is to find out what the influences are of these evolutions for the capitalist world-system. Is warlordism nothing more than a way of surviving for third world countries or does it affect historical capitalism? Is the upsurge of warlords an expression of the crisis of the modem world-economy or is it on the contrary capitalism pur sang? This paper does not provide a conclusive answer to these questions. It is only an attempt to consider warlords in the world-system from diverse perspectives.


Author(s):  
Gregg A. Brazinsky

Even as the PRC sought to win over radical and neutralist Afro-Asian states through diplomacy, it also sought to gain prestige in the Third World by becoming a leader of revolutionary forces. The PRC befriended a diverse group of Afro-Asian and insurgents guerilla that espoused Maoist doctrines during the 1960s. They believed that doing so would help to spread Mao Zedong thought throughout the world, raising the status of both the PRC and its leader. America’s fear that insurgent victories in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Congo would enhance Chinese prestige and legitimate Maoism played a key role in precipitating some of the most dramatic and costly instances of U.S. intervention of the Cold War.


Facing West ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
David R. Swartz

Evangelical activism took international shape at the height of the Cold War. Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, arrived in Seoul to save Korean souls from hell and the world from communism. World Vision coupled evangelistic efforts with substantial relief efforts on behalf of orphans. Based on interviews conducted in Seoul, this chapter describes American evangelical Cold War activism in third-world sites contested by capitalistic Western and Marxist spheres. Most significantly, it argues that Pierce and World Vision borrowed heavily from Korean pastor Kyung-Chik Han. Nearly absent from American evangelical memory, Han should be considered the cofounder of World Vision.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
V. T. Yungblud

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.


Author(s):  
Noor Mohammad Osmani ◽  
Tawfique Al-Mubarak

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) claimed that there would be seven eight civilizations ruling over the world in the coming centuries, thus resulting a possible clash among them. The West faces the greatest challenge from the Islamic civilization, as he claimed. Beginning from the Cold-War, the Western civilization became dominant in reality over other cultures creating an invisible division between the West and the rest. The main purpose of this research is to examine the perceived clash between the Western and Islamic Civilization and the criteria that lead a civilization to precede others. The research would conduct a comprehensive review of available literatures from both Islamic and Western perspectives, analyze historical facts and data and provide a critical evaluation. This paper argues that there is no such a strong reason that should lead to any clash between the West and Islam; rather, there are many good reasons that may lead to a peaceful coexistence and cultural tolerance among civilizations


This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.


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