An Alternative Exploration of Global Political Relations in Southern Africa during the Cold War: Modularity in the Global Arms Trade Network from 1975 to 1988

Politeia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Burgert Senekal
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Trade Network ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Arms Trade ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, two camps used arms to expand their influence in the Third World. In the present study, I used the concept of modularity (Q), developed within network theory, to study communities within the global arms trade network from 1975 to 1988. Using data provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, I showed that communities within this network had political ties with South America, Asia and Southern Africa. As part of the study I sorted countries based on their arms trade transactions, and in the process I established that China was positioned with the West in the period under study. Not only did my study show that the arms trade network reflected political alliances during this period, but it also indicated that this network highlighted international relations and the alliances of political organisations. Based on the findings of my study I put forward suggestions for future research.

From global to local and back: the ‘Third World’ concept and the new radical left in France

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kalter
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global Dynamics ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
World Concept ◽  
Radical Left

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.

Rethinking the Middle East and North Africa in the Cold War

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Third World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

The new Cold War history has begun to reshape the ways that international historians approach the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the post-1945 era. Rather than treating the region as exceptional, a number of scholars have sought to focus on the historical continuities and transnational connections between the Middle East and other areas of the Third World. This approach is based on the notion that the MENA region was enmeshed in the transnational webs of communication and exchange that characterized the post-1945 global system. Indeed, the region sat not only at the crossroads between Africa and the Eurasian landmass but also at the convergence of key global historical movements of the second half of the 20th century. Without denying cultural, social, and political elements that are indeed unique to the region, this scholarship has drawn attention to the continuities, connections, and parallels between the Middle Eastern experience and the wider world.

Robert W. Cherny, William Issel, and Kieran Walash Taylor, eds.,American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and Post War Political Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. 320 pp. Paper $23.95

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 177-181
Author(s):  
William Mello
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Labor

Would the existing powerlessness of American unions be much different had organized labor not been the focus of cold-war repression in the late 1940s and 1950s? How did workers experience the anticommunist upsurge and reshape their political alliances in light of what some have called America's darkest political hour? American Labor and the Cold War is a collection of smart and challenging essays that examine the impact of cold war politics on organized labor and the labor-left. The authors explore the historical impact of the cold war and the constraints placed on working class political power in the United States immediately following the Second World War. They argue that the cold war on labor reflected a process that was driven by state-organized repressive measures that were sustained by regional political-cultural traditions and in some cases high levels of working-class conservatism. The essays highlight the efforts of conservative labor leaders to take control of left-led unions, purging Communist Party (CP) activists and their allies and the ways in which communists sought to resist the radical right-wing movement in their unions and surrounding communities.

Ending the Cold War in Southern Africa

1990 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn O'Neill ◽  
Barry Munslow
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The Cold War

6. Cold wars at home

2021 ◽  
pp. 102-119
Author(s):  
Robert J. McMahon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Third ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Relations ◽  
At Home

‘Cold wars at home’ highlights the domestic repercussions of the Cold War. The Cold War exerted so profound and so multi-faceted an impact on the structure of international politics and state-to-state relations that it has become customary to label the 1945–90 period ‘the Cold War era’. That designation becomes even more fitting when one considers the powerful mark that the Soviet–American struggle for world dominance and ideological supremacy left within many of the world’s nation-states. The Cold War of course affected the internal constellation of forces in the Third World, Europe, and the United States and impacted the process of decolonization, state formation, and Cold War geopolitics.

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