Lost in conceptualization: Reading the “new Cold War” with critical geopolitics

Focusing on the debates on energy security in Germany, this paper analyzes the structure, logic, and circulation of the “new Cold War” as a geopolitical narrative. We use the literature in critical geopolitics to analyze the conceptual implications of an apparent dissociation between the media and governmental stance toward the new Cold War and its embedded geopolitical logic. The relationship between the “kind” of geopolitics inherent in the new Cold War and the different “forms” in which it circulates suggests a blurring of boundaries between all such geopolitical forms, through multiple crossings-over between institutions, textual genres, and circulating actors. The media presence of the New Cold War also highlights the ambiguity of the “popular” in popular geopolitics, which is further refracted on other geopolitical forms which share its characteristics. This not only makes imperative the more precise formulation of key conceptual categories such as popular or banal geopolitics, but also calls into question the link between the state and particular geopolitical logics, as well as the relationship between the mass media and geopolitics.     

Ethnicity and Identity in the Cold War: The Carinthian Border Dispute, 1945–1949

In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the British, German and Ottoman armies sought to exploit the chaos within the southern borderlands of the old Tsarist Empire. The Ottomans primarily sought to recover lands lost in the nineteenth century while for Germany, expansion into the Black Sea littoral not only broke the Allied Naval Blockade, but also offered the possibility of menacing British India via the Central Asiatic or Transcaspian Railway. Britain's involvement in Transcaucasia during the final months of the Great War has received relatively little scholarly attention, being seen as little more than a bargaining chip to be used at the Paris Peace Conference. This article suggests that the true aim of Lord Curzon's Transcaucasian policy was the incorporation of Persia into Britain's informal empire, a task that he doggedly pursued all the way down to the 1923 Lausanne Conference.     

The Alliance for Progress and President João Goulart’s Three-Year Plan: the deterioration of U.S.-Brazilian Relations in Cold War Brazil (1962)

This paper analyses U.S.-Brazilian relations during the elaboration of João Goulart’s Three-Year Plan in late 1962, which sought to tackle Brazil’s severe economic imbalances without compromising growth and through the implementation of distributive reforms. Although the plan followed the principles of John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, Washington did not offer adequate assistance because of Goulart’s threats to increase links with the Soviet bloc. The United States hardened its position, seeking to change the orientation of the Brazilian government. This led to the abandonment of the Three-Year Plan, and contributed to social and political destabilisation that resulted in Brazil’s March 1964 military coup.     

The Sandinista revolution and the limits of the Cold War in Latin America: the dilemma of non-intervention during the Nicaraguan crisis, 1977–78

This paper seeks to understand the construction of a broad alliance between the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a socialist inspired guerrilla group, and various Latin American liberal and authoritarian governments, mainly Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama and Cuba, between 1977 and 1979. I will seek to understand the construction of this unusual partnership, as well as the deep conflicts and mistrust that existed between the parties during the revolutionary upheaval in Nicaragua. This process will be examined by analysing the way Cold War politics and Latin American regional tensions shaped the events leading to the Sandinista revolution.     

The exiles of the Risorgimento: Italian volunteers in the Portuguese Civil War (1832–34)

Abstract

Between 1832 and 1834 during the civil war against the partisans of absolutism in Portugal about a hundred Italians fought as volunteers in the Portuguese liberal army. These Italians were motivated to participate by a Romantic culture of war that was strongly rooted in the liberal nationalism of the Italian Risorgimento, but above all, the decision to fight as a volunteer abroad was the result of an international movement of political solidarity with Portuguese liberalism in the early 1830s with which the Italian liberals came into contact during their political exile in France and in Belgium. For the Italian, fighting as volunteers in Portugal proved to be a decisive political experience which deeply shaped their own political ideas of the nation that the volunteers would subsequently draw on in their different political and professional roles in Italy where they became ministers, diplomats and generals of the Kingdom of Italy.     

‘God'll Send the Bill to You’: The Costs of War and the God Who Counts in W. T. Stead's Pro-Boer Peace Campaign

W. T. Stead's 1899–1900 weekly newspaper, War against War in South Africa, sets out to persuade its readers of the financial, spiritual, and moral costs of war and in doing so urges them to participate in an oppositional ‘peace war’. It conflates the economic and the spiritual in presenting to its readers accounts of the South African war that emphasize the price to be paid for unjust bloodshed. This article examines the ways in which Stead uses the idea of counting in both its senses – of mattering and enumerating – alongside the idea of moral accountability, to make his case against war and for peace as part of a larger narrative of brotherhood and bloodguilt. I argue that his campaign failed to achieve its ends at least in part because, despite the sensationalist power of each item in his account, the final bill, addressed ambiguously to the individual, the government, and the nation, is unimaginably vast and morally unpayable. His newspaper and other anti-war publications offer a graphic account of the wrongs of war, yet their gothically inflected religious imagery of judgement and guilt work in unresolvable tension with their message of rational individual action against the national project of the war.     

‘When the Bull Elephants Fight’: Kwame Nkrumah,Non-Alignment,and Pan-Africanism as an Interventionist Ideology in the Global Cold War (1957–66)

From independence onwards, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana pursued a position of positive neutrality and non-alignment. Historians claim that the Congo crisis and the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 led Nkrumah to question the viability of strict non-alignment. Newly declassified Ghanaian sources and an analysis of the components that make up the pan-African ideology, however, suggest that these events validated Nkrumah's pan-African worldview. Only a combination of continental unification and non-alignment was considered to be an effective strategy to avoid a repetition of the Congo debacle. Ghana's public diplomacy tactics switched from targeting political activists to convincing people through a vociferously anti-colonial propaganda campaign, a modification that cast doubt on the sincerity of Ghanaian neutrality at a moment when non-alignment actually began to affect Ghanaian diplomacy on all levels.     

The Alexei Obrescoff Case: The Levantine Backstage of British Mediation in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74)

In 1954 M. S. Anderson, considering the impediments prohibiting a successful British mediation between Catherine II and Mustafa III, judged that Ambassador John Murray and Whitehall were carried away because they could not see the complex picture of Eastern diplomacy. In this paper, it will be argued that the Ambassador's miscalculated optimism and the hastiness of London were due to a neglected factor: the imprisonment of the Russian Resident at Constantinople, Alexei Obrescoff. The Resident, an in-law of the Abbotts, Factors of the Levant Company and Murray's personal friend, entrusted him with his infant children on the eve of his detainment. This trust was an asset that Murray hoped to exploit in the forthcoming international race to undertake the mediation, if only he could free his friend. London hoped this appeal to the Ottomans would please the Russians, but mediation slipped out of Murray's hands. The Abbotts assisted the Prussians and the Austrians to reunite the Obrescoff family and thus gained them the advantage. Embittered, Murray was dragged into a passionate but unsuccessful clash with the Abbotts which emphasised both the importance of Levantine networks in the exercise of ‘Oriental’ diplomacy and his unsuitability for the particular post.     

“The Country Christ Knew”: New Zealanders' Interactions with Christianity in the Middle East,Greece, and Italy during the Second World War

During the Second World War, New Zealanders of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF) interacted with Christianity throughout the Mediterranean from 1940 to 1945. Stationed in the Middle East, New Zealanders saw the birthplace of Christianity in Egypt and Palestine. In Greece, Crete, and Italy, New Zealanders saw countries where Christianity was deeply ingrained in the landscape and social fabric. This article explores New Zealanders' interaction with Christianity in the Mediterranean during the Second World War on two levels: Firstly, by discussing New Zealanders' visits to Christian religious sites; secondly, by examining New Zealanders' observations on religious practice and the place of religion in society in the Middle East, Greece, and Italy. The article will argue that New Zealanders demonstrated a keen interest in religious tourism during the war, and more broadly, that Christianity was an important lens through which New Zealanders viewed the places in which they served in the Mediterranean.