Cohair of the washington history seminar along with my colleague, christian, of the history and Public Policy program. Seminar for those of you who dont though is a collaborative east of the National History center which is part of the American History association and center for scholars. The traditionally meet on monday afternoons at 4 p. M. , though, today for our fall lunch weve made exception and chosen a beautiful pride afternoon to get this season started. Though, normally we meet on monday afternoons mark it down 4 p. M. If you vpght the goen schedule yet already please pick one up or go to the washington history seminars website, on the National History center to download a copy of all of the tacks for the rest of the fall season. Our programs is exciting mars dont happen like this for themselves and amanda perry of the National History center worked behind scenes to ensure that the seminars come off without a hitch. We also rely upon the generous Financial Support of a number of institutions particularly the society of historian of American Foreign relations which is help to underwrite semimar for a number of years now as well as the George WashingtonUniversity Department of history and a number of anonymous donors whose ranks i koondly invite you to join at your convenience. One quick piece of business your cell phone is not already on, slengt or o vibrate if you could put it in that mode now we would very much appreciate it. Now introduce our speaker this afternoon. Thanks eric. Great to see so many of you despite the wonderful weather lots of familiar faces a lot of had new ones as well so also welcome you and history seminar it is a thrill and privilege and it a household name interNational History profession and beyond intellectual giant in the field of cold war history. Among arnie many books his global cold war third world intervention in making of our times published in 2005 is considered the Gold Standard in the field. And has been translated into 15 along wage and made economic rock star with a global following as todays standing room only crowd attest to as well. Global cold war has most important price, history price given many this country and many other awards. Aron nee served along with marvin coed tore for the past breaking three volume cambridge history of the cold war and of the world mow in the 6th edition his 2012 book china an the world since 1750 exemplify other area of expertise china it won book of art award for 2013. Arnie is the s. T. Lead professor of u. S. Relations at Harvard University teaches at the Kennedy School before coming to harvard in 2015 he was School Professor of interNational History at the l. S. C. There he codirected, corrected sc ideas diplomacy and strategy, of course, for many years prior to that, he was the Research Director of the Norwegian Institute where he hosted a terrific, terrific Fellowship Program that many of us many folks in the room benefited are from with his new book, the cold war World History about which he will speak today arnie returns once more to the conflict that shaped much of the 20th century and still reverberates powerful today. Congratulations arnie its great to have you here. Congratulations on this publication, you have the floor. Thank you. I think i shall speak from up here. [applause] thank you very much Christian Phillip wonderfully generous introduction isnt it . Ladies and gentlemen from sometimes quote when he was introduced in a wonderful fashion at some kind of gathering and said that if his father has been here he would have been very proud and if his mother would have been here she would have been too. So theres something to be said for good introductions so i think it would have made my parents very, very proud. The book by the way is dedicated to my parents so theres a connection here which was even outside the story telling mode. Mow, immaterial to thank the National History center, and the center for inviting me to give this hope. And i want to start up really where the bookends and bookends if acknowledgement. And here i want to start with some especially since were here at the center. So book like this in reality has have many orders, anyone who thinks that he or she could be ultimate judge of what goes on in up here many a very long time period more about that in a second. That i have described as the cold war on the world scale. Would be rather foolish. You have to build, you have to base yourself on the work of others. So this book with a few exceptions is a work of centers and the reason why ive been able to do that is because many people who worked in this field often on the very difficult circumstances in different places around the world made it possible to access the kind of information that most historians of my generation when we started many this profession could only dream about getting access to. And it is a very forefront of that process of two wonderful smiewtions here in washington, d. C. , cold War Institute project here at the Wilson Center and the National Security archive over at dw. Without institutions like that, and let me particularly underline the cold war interNational History project in christian, and history to bring this up i would never have been able to do the book in the form that ive done it now so much of what is most important in terms of research on the korld war of understanding it in a broad sense, its connected enterprise. And one who is brought it together more than anyone else as a collective have been cold war project here and not just grateful but committed to kind of project that this is not just because it collaborative but also because it underlines the need of Public Access to government sources of information that earlier have been closed. Thats the significance of this project and they have done a fantastic job. Let me talk a little bit about the book, and how i constructed it. So i started out thinking about this book maybe about six or seven years ago as as much of what yods it came out of teaches first and foremost so in teaching students first that mow for few years at hazard i started getting certain idea of how i wanted to present this complex topic to a brother audience. I was quite certain that the audience that i wases aiming for would be a general audience. There are lots and lots of books on cold war written for specialists some would say so many, and if i was going to do going to try very last told on this subject it would be for a progeneral deal so that was given, about and i i started struggling with how to get handle on it and i was joking with chris and eric that what was really difficult about this book was to conceptualize to write it where it wasnt about difficulty when i figured out how i was going to do it so how i have tried to conceptualize my approach. This is a history after cold war as logical conflict between capitalism and socialism is goes back more than 100 years in time it starts in the 1890s, with the first Global Market crisis, and the significant parts of the movement both in europe and in north herk, and the expansion of the United States and russia as transcontinentallal empire and it ends with the collapse of the soviet union. In the 1999 0z that covers 100 year span of interNational History. Now, some of you will immediately say, isnt that a little bit audacious . A lot of other things that happened during that hundred year period beside what i have defined as the cold war and they would undoubtedly be right. Two world wars, the great depression, economization european and right of china about a lot of things that happened during this time period and its not my book is not been attempt at trying to assume these developments. Under a framework of an ideological cold war it is rather to try to stipulate cold war within this broader history of the world in the 20th century. Because my contention in the book is that thats had the only way we can really understand the book. If we try to reduce it simply to an interstate system or a framework in which countries interacted with each other, then i think were losing great deal of what made had conflict so important but also made it very terrifying. I think without going deeper into the situation, that the cold war lived with in and created within, we cannot get, we cannot understand particularly the Younger Generation today cannot understand that kaition dedication that came through the cold war the reason why people are are good will on both sides, intelligent people who take this so seriously and so civil competition that theyre willing to sacrifice themselves and own country and family but possibly whole piewcht world based on what they believed in. Now, one thing thats important to me and this is thing is that helped explain the time perspective that im writing this within is how the cold war was experienced by the people who lived through it. So you have to understand it to some extent generation but that i think helps with getting to this issue of why it mattered so much this so many people in different settings. Across the world so if you were born in 1980s and a lot of people who came to cold war were born around that time, you will and they were born in the world with maybe a couple of exceptions you are bond to have a disit mall use and young adulthood. Right . Things are really not going very well in the early part of the 0th century. First world war the great depression, that was colonialism and anticolonialism lots of things in most countries that seem to go very, very wrong. I think this helps us in understanding why stakes are so high. If you have this kind of background, you were more likely i think to dedicate yourself to big ideals about how yowptsed to set world right. Not everyone during the cold war acted for a reason. But what i ponged and i was working on this book was that the reasonably high number of people did on all sides tharm involved. And that i think generational aspect tries to or attempts to tell us something about why this stakes requester so high. Why they took it so serious. Like all are dedicated to split the time period that im working on up into parts of possible for us to digest whats beginning on historians call it and absolutely dedicated that we avoid it so let me give you a certain sense for the sake of the discussion thats going to have in a minute. Of how i divide the cold war into different eras. So the first one goes roughly from the 1890s up to 1917 u to the Russian Revolution. You know not surprising i guess this is the creation of the ideological confrontation. This is when the framework of the new kinds of states which the United States already was compared to what existed in europe before, and soviet union became after 1917 how they were created ideological and practically. Then Second Period goes from 1917 to 1941 the development of the soviet union as a great power and a depression. The International Economic depression that contributed had in my view very significantly so soviet union ending up as alternative to have decisioned it internationally. Third period goes roughly from 1991 to early 1970s that is perhaps what most people would immediately associate with a cold war right . What i would argue is that this is the time period in which the ideological cold war the framing, the scooping, fundament that ive been talking about became an International System. And i want to talk more about that had in a little bit. And then finally the period from the early 1970s up to the early 1990s which was the slow demise of the cold war as the predominant International System. Which im also going to talk more about in a minute but before that, theres a couple of points about how the cold war figures if you think about very broad interNational History. The interNational History of the it [inaudible conversations] so one of the things thats striking and my Political Science friends have been pointing this out is how relatively rare bipolar International Systems of the cold war kind really are in human history. Most systems are either june polar or multipolar. Either have one great power at the center and china role in eastern asia you know for the two, or o they have a number of countrieses that compete for interest. Think europe, from 1500 up to 20 9 century so only a few examples i think, real examples of International Systems that are a little bit like the cold war. Rome and persia in the First Century bc and First Century ad is a little bit like this. A competition for power that involves most of the met mediterranean that had very strong ideological confrontation at its core. Best clarm is a chinese example conflict between them and United States in the 11th century. Which was states that also had a very strong ideological confrontation to compete for the same territory that did much of the fighting through allies, and then the most used example i guess in a way england and spain from the mid60s to early 17th century which was both just conflict and broad use for conflicts about the future of europe. But except these it is actually quite hard to find bipolar e International Systems that are are long lasting. Thats something that i found quite interest when i start ised working from this from this book. No i i talk about a difference of cold war as a ideological conflict and cold war as International System and it is important in order to understand my argument many this book to separate those two out. They are connected to each other but theyre not identical. Right. So in order to understand how the cold war became a global International System you have to understand where it came from. If you start by thinking about a world the way it look it is in the late 1940s and another historian writing on cold war do you dont get that. You dont understand why the confrontation was so and why ideology so clearly connected to the purpose. On both sides on the other hand you have to also understand the system and i dont think it is really all that hard to explain and as most big changes in history it was a product of some structural that pointed in this direction. Ideology that already pointed out but the access to resources that United States and soviet union had because of the continuous land mass that they controlled over other countries that competed within the International System. So in a way its not surprising that after 1945, its these two countries that are last ones standing in International System. So conflict has been moved through the ideological difference that existed before that didnt in itself produce International System. But when the outcome of the Second World War soviet union and United States became Privilege International powers that i think that ideological point in a clear direction of conflict. What i say in the book is i think that conflict was very likely that it was pushed in a direction that had qowld not be surprising wasnt surprising. I think for anyone who lived through that period but that the Cold War International system as a full fledged order that last for the year, that is perhaps the surprising even perhaps avoidable. And i discussed it at some length in the book that we can talk more about it, more about it later on. Part of the im so preoccupied with the early part of the 20th century try to link that to it later is that i think its necessary and written today with the general audience in mind and students in mind as well in a way to redistrict the soviet union as a real eternity of international that has to do a lot with how cold war end and more about that a little bit later on but it also has to do i think with some fairly trends among historian among social scientist who is worked on this who tend to read cold war backwards we know theout come. We know that United States is did win the cold war, and reading more that counts the soviet union becomes sort of early day of russia today that satisfied power on the outside of the International System that this really been excluded from it. Pushed to edges of it. Which is complainings in frame arework i dont agree with. Soviet union acted throughout the cold war for its own reason. It was not set up as a kind of foil for what was happening in american politic it is had had its own significance, its own anticapitalist logic, which for a very long period of time or it was three generations seem to work reasonably well. Problem ideological perspective of the people who pursued it but i think its important because if we dont get into that understanding, the whole idea about why this con