The white male ushers with africanamerican staff, also while in washington, she led an effort to raise funds to create a memorial for victims of the titanic, but her greatest legacy was bringing thousands of japanese Cherry Blossom trees to the nations capital. Helen taft, this sunday night on cspans original series first ladies, influence and image. Their influence on the presidency. From Martha Washington to michelle obama. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. On cspan3. Up next, masuda hamiju, author of cold war crucible, the curkorean conflict and the post world. National university of singapore history professor hamiju argues that the cold war was not only a global conflict between the u. S. And soviet union but also led many countries in the west and east to crack down on perceived threats within. The Wilson Center hosted this 90minute event. Welcome to the Wilson Center. My name is charles krauss, and im a Program Associate with the Centers History and Public Policy program working with the wellknown Cold War International history project. Im very pleased to have our speakers here today for a discussion of cold war crucible, the korean conflict and the postwar world. Before i introduce our main speaker, dr. Masuda hamiju, let me get in a quick word about the Centers History and Public Policy program. The history and Public Policy program focuses on the relationship between history and policy making and seeks to foster open, informed, and nonpartisan dialogue on historically relevant issues. The program is a hub for a wide network of scholars, journalists, policymakers, archivists and teachers focused on the uses and lessons of history in decisionmaking. Through informed dialogue, the Program Seeks to explore the advantages as well as the dangers of using historical lessons and making current policy decisions. Our main activity is to obtain and make available historical documentation on contemporary history from international archives. The goal of our work is to further internationalize the study of contemporary history and especially the history of the cold war and to provide Global Perspectives on major historical events and issues. Our digital archive accessible at www. Digitalarchive. Org, contains over 8,000 Historical Records from all over the world. In all of these records, freely available to you from anywhere. So i hope you will take the time to browse the digital archive, digitalarchives. Org for your research or just for fun. A lot of good stuff on there. I say all of this because our mission and our core activity connects well to what professor masuda has accomplished in the new book, cold war crucible. If you read the book, i think youll be absolutely stunned by the amount of research that professor masuda has done around the world. United states, great britain, china, japan, korea, basically you name the country and he has done research there or he has gathered documents from that country. Its quite impressive. And this is very much in line with what we do here at the history and Public Policy program. But more importantly, masuda is using these new archival materials to ask bold questions and to challenge what we think we know about the cold war era. The cold war crucible is an important book which merits discussion and thats what i think well accomplish today. With that, i am pleased to introduce professor masuda, who is a historian who has worked with social and global history of the cold war, and the modern history of east asia. He received his ph. D. From Cornell University in 2012, and is currently an assistant professor in the department of history at the National University of singapore. Where he teaches courses on the modern history of japan, student movements in asia, decolonization and the cold war. In addition to his new book, cold war crucible, dr. Masuda has published a number of articles which is be found in journals such as diplomatic history, the journal official contemporary history, the journal of cold war studies and east asian relations. We have two other speakers who will provide comment on professor masudas presentation and his new book. But i will introduce them directly prior to their speaking. I strongly encourage all of our speakers to stick to the designated time limit so we have enough time for q a. But with that, i will turn the floor over to you. Okay. Thank you for your very, very kind introduction. So this is my take here at the Wilson Center. I think when i first came here in 2008, i was a student. I have been hoping to come up here to do research or to give a talk, something. I am very, very pleased to be here this morning to talk about my book. So first, i appreciate jack up here, for setting up this talk. I thank you. Thank you very much. And of course, thank you, all, for coming to this talk. So early this morning. Okay. So, this is my first book, and i just realized last week, how difficult it is to talk about ones own book in such a short amount of time. So here, let me talk about just the main questions and the main arguments of my book. We focus on why it looks at why my book looks at the curkorean period and the examination of the korean war, change, challenge and change our conception, our understanding of the cold war. So, now the korean war is important for understanding, for the war, and i think it is. When i say this, i usually am misundersto misunderstood. Yes, thats right. The korean war changed the course of the cold war. Military started, and it spread it all over the world. So, korean war, indeed of the cold war. So this is first off, right . And the other is more like this. No, no, no. The tension between the soviet union and the United States is how it began, already, the events due to the decisive events in europe. Lo look, for instance. So what the korean war did was inspiration, what it presented was an escalation of an existing threat. Nothing is particularly new. So in other words, people assume that im entering these questioquestio questions on the cold war and talking about how important the korean war was in the construction, in the making of the cold war. But however, in my book, i question what i question in this book, cold war crucible, is actually assumption that we usually share or take for granted. Over the cold war, the u. S. , the confrontation. Well, indeed, the cold war was a war in the first war period, thats right. However, however, when i say that it korean war was a crucible of the cold war, i mean that we should broaden our understanding of it. The moment of the korean war is important and the war of examining, not just because of the intensification of the existing threat, but we can see metamorphos metamorphosis, transformation of the cold war. So to begin from my conclusion, i have argued in my book that at the time of the korean war, the cold war transformed from a discourse among policymakers to a war among ordinary people. And from a diplomatic standoff in europe to a gigantic social mechanism that operated in many parts of the war the situation through ending conflict. So here, here, i would like to talk about the metamorphosis of the cold war by focusing on three characteristics. Just three of them. Which i think make up the essence of the cold war. But these, imagined global war, real social warfare on the ground, and ordinary peoples war. So, first, let me talk about this point. The first point, the cold war is imagined global war. So here, the korean war played Important Role. However, to be more precise, it was not the korean war itself, but the perception, popular perception of it. Today, we might see the korean war as a limited war in korea. But in 1950, the particularly following chinas entry into the world in 1950, many people viewed it as the beginning of world war iii. Carefully laid a scheme by moscow. So it was widely rumored that north korea and chinas entry into the korean war would cut into the order of stalin, and that there could be or must be similar and larger attack in europe. So in short, korea the operation. But looking back, the view is quite your ocentric from the out set. There was a logical leap, leading to studies including my own book, show that it was not the korean war and the local leaders had their own considerations. So, nevertheless, something became clear, more evident, only in hindsight. Was not considered particularly persuasive in 1950. So why not . Let me provide a quick answer. So first, the timing. It was significant, world war ii ending only five years earlier. For many people at the time, world war ii was not a merry event. It was rather an image of the future which could bring the ways in which people observed their future of the war. Simply put, to put it simply, memories of the war drove many people to interpret the korean war as the beginning of world war iii. And this specific belief, the moment was at the moratorium, a transitional period before the event of world war iii. The era of the cold war. So in part, this was reality in quotation marks of the cold war obtained its highest level in europe, east asia, and the United States. That is area that were involved in the world war ii. But it didnt seem such a degree of plausibility, the other area, at least at this point. In places like africa or latin america. Which are not relatively speaking not pleased over world war iii. In short, popular image over the global cold war was based on the fear of world war iii, which was constructed in the shuttle of world war ii. So therefore, the reality of the cold war as a global confrontation, not just as a diplomatic stumble for europe, but the cold war as a global confrontation was a local understanding of the war. However shared wide ly. We also cannot ignore the issue of preconception. Prejudice, at the time, about asia, particularly, about the chinese. Of being helpless, superstitious, for one. But after all, north korea and china entreinto the war was seen as based on their own decisions, the logical world war iii couldnt be maintained. However, because of this common preconception, their entry, chinas entry in particular, couldnt be seen as being made under their own decisions. Instead, a common logic of the time maintained like this, there must have been a significant push from outside, mainly, the communist soviet union. And yet, this kind of image, this kind of narrative, whether its actually true or not, was used to power an illusion. Once us imagine, it became commonsense knowledge of the war. So in this way, the global cold war was imagined reality, product of social construction based on the local preconception. And the korean war played an Important Role in providing a logic, the logic of the fantasy that the cold war was built. What is more interesting, what is more interesting in the cold wars transformation in this period is underneath the cold war logic, underneath such a cold war logic, it had grown warfare on the ground. This is my second point. This is my second point. That the cold war as a social warfare. For instance, lets think about mccarthyism. We usually, we usually think of mccarthyism as an anticommunist politic in cold war america. But these very, very unusual period of doubt and of fear under extreme fear over the cold war, right . However, in looking at this, actually we miss variety of other local and or social separation that are involved, for instance, racial, labor, in america. In part, victims of the socalled mccarthy period included not just the communists, the compnist sympathizers, but like africanamericans, civil rights activists, labor activists, feminist activists, working women, over various programs such as Public Housing progras s and other programs. So what this group represented was not really necessarily communist ideology. But social change, embodiment of a social change in large through the experiences of the greater depression and world war ii. So therefore, taking a social point of view, we can force the following hypothesis, true nature over the mccarthyism, true nature over mccarthyism, which is considered a corridor of reform but the waves of the grassroots back lash, under the name of communism, which it functions to pacify social upheaval in first world america. So, when i first noted this point, i realized that it was not only a matter of American History. Not only that, this was a moment when a wave of domestic parties left. For instance, separation with the revolutionaries in china, in taiwan, in japan, in the philippines. Anticommunists and antileftist movements in western societies, in the uk, and of course, mccarthyism in the u. S. Yeah, so if anyone is interested in the research, im happy to talk about it later. I will not talk about it here. Anyway, so conventionally, this event, these events how they are examined separately, issues, with good reason, of course, however, however, through my examination of each instance over several years, i have come to view them all as a silealtaneous global sentiment. To be sure, of course, that the real views differ widely and each had a different context, of course, but there are a number of commonalities. First, all of these varieties experienced world war ii and went through a profound social changes that unleashed a number of changes, social, political, and cultural conflicts. And second, the outbreak of the korean war, evoked many peoples memories of world war ii, producing fear over world war iii, which in time created war time fear in their societies. And the third and finally, cold war logic, the logic of cold war provided, proved the futility in tamping down social and political conflict. In the name of public security. So, thus, therefore, taken together, the waves of domestic parties in the korean war can be seen as a global phenomena with backlash full of social conservatism that operated to contain and silence this agreement in first world societies. This connects to my third point, the cold war equals war. So here, what became what becomes clear, i think, in the actuality of local conflict and the nature of global cold war, the social need to overcome a war at home. So thats why i have argued in this book that the actual divide over the cold war that clearly merged the end of the korean war, less bickering in the east, within each society, which we reached in term, requiring continuation over the cold war, to maintain harmony, harmony as order at home. So from this angle, from this angle, each instance of localan instance or local question was not so much and result of the cold war but of itself part of an engine, like a component of the cold war that contributed to the making and maintenance of a gigantic imagined reality in the post world war. So in each instance thing a ticks and response in this reality were not only power ffu policy makers but also millions of ordinary people who engaged in the maintenance of the social order and the fewfication of the society. So in this sense the crux of the cold war was not just so much about east west confrontation or balance of power but of local struggles within society in many parts of the world. Thats why it was an ordinary peoples war. So before finishing my talk. Let me come back to the original questions here. So why focus on korean war period . Why is there a reexamination of this era. Why for our understanding of the cold war . My simple answer is that the cold war obtained new characteristics during the korean war with a change in its stage actors and issues in dispute. So when we say for instance that berlin was the crucible of the cold war, that itself was the stage, a pie kro come of the cold war over which powerful policymakers as actors engaged in diplomatic bargaining, maneuvering confrontation so the audience outside of berlin had to tremble in suspense. But what we can see during and after the korean war was different. The audience no longer quietly sat and watched policymakers they were now participating and making cold war dramas of their own with multitude of locally specific realities. The stage was not just korea itself. The entire auditorium, i mean the world outside korea now became a stage for the development of the fantasy cold war world. So looking back at exiting literature, is during the cold war, the large majority of literature developed with or gins, questions at its core. So the main focus, of course, involved questions about when it began and who was responsible. Of course thats the important questions. And in the past decade or so after the end of the cold war, in the past two decades or so, we have seen a surge in various approaches to the cold war. Namely like social, cultural approaches so with the development of the sociocultural approach, we have learned quite a lot about the impact of the cold war on society and cultures. As we realized cold wars impacts on labor, race, gender relations. Especially in the cases of the United States. At the same time, with progress of the international approach, we have learned quite a lot about stories of the other side of the war with specific focus on policy making and on the leadership. And with the development of the international approach we also learned that socalled small states were not necessarily simply puppets or victims over the cold war, but they often took advantage of superpowers rivalry. And with the logical extension of this international approach we have learned more about local contexts in other societies, whether their aspiration for dekohlization, development, needs for nation building and so on and so on which have often concealed underneath the cold war narrative. So these recent studies have indirectly challenged our common sincing of the cold war and opened up ways to see the cold war from a Long Duration perspective instead as a peculiar postwar phenomenon. So in this way we have learned to see the cold war in a more pluralistic and diversified manner and yet very few have tried to make connections between these new approaches and new insights and i dont think there is work concentrating on the roles played by ordinary people in the making of the cold war. Here i add hastily that we do have stud studies that looks at ordinary peoples lives under the cold war, during the cold war. And we also have studies of people who are victims of the cold war. But we still dont have a study concentratin