It was long assumed that the Soviet Union dictated Warsaw Pact policy in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America (known as the 'Third World' during the Cold War). Although the post-1991 opening of archives has demonstrated this to be untrue, there has still been no holistic volume examining the topic in detail. Such a comprehensive and nuanced treatment is virtually impossible for the individual scholar thanks to the linguistic and practical difficulties in satisfactorily covering all of the so-called 'junior members' of the Warsaw Pact. This important book fills that void and examines the agency of these states - Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania - and their international interactions during the 'discovery' of the 'Third World' from the 1950s to the 1970s. Building upon recent scholarship and working from a diverse range of new archival sources, contributors study the diplomacy of the eastern and central European communist states to reveal their myriad motivations and goals (importantly often in direct conflict with Soviet directives). This work, the first revisionist review of the role of the junior members as a whole, will be of interest to all scholars of the Cold War, whatever their geographical focus.

This book analyzes the last phase of the Warsaw Pact based on unusually large-scale archival research conducted in many countries. Focusing on the changes in the organization’s functioning after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, the author examines the role played by the Warsaw Pact in the final stages of the Cold War, as well as exploring the deepening conflicts between individual member states which resulted from the changing international situation and Gorbachev’s initiatives to reform the East European state-socialist dictatorships. The book argues that the causes of the rapid dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s were due to many complicated factors, not simply the collapse of communist power in Eastern Europe, factors such as the loss from early in the second half of the 1980s of important internal ties and the failure to create new ties, disputes between individual member states, and the questioning of the overall legitimacy of the organization, which was indispensable for its effective functioning. The book also highlights the impact of external pressures and developments on the international scene. Overall, the book reveals how an apparently robust and solid multilateral organization can so quickly and unexpectedly disappear.

A capacious history of decolonization, from the decline of empires to the era of globalization Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations. Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history.

This book explores the global history of anti-apartheid and international solidarity with southern African freedom struggles from the 1960s. It examines the institutions, campaigns and ideological frameworks that defined the globalization of anti-apartheid, the ways in which the concept of solidarity was mediated by individuals, organizations and states, and considers the multiplicity of actors and interactions involved in generating and sustaining anti-apartheid around the world. It includes detailed accounts of key case studies from Europe, Asia, and Latin America, which illustrate the complex relationships between local and global agendas, as well as the diverse political cultures embodied in anti-apartheid. Taken together, these examples reveal the tensions and synergies, transnational webs and local contingencies that helped to create the sense of ‘being global’ that united worldwide anti-apartheid campaigns.

Contributions to this volume summarize and discuss the theoretical foundations of the Collaborative Research Centre at Leipzig University which address the relationship between processes of (re-)spatialization on the one hand and the establishment and characteristics of spatial formats on the other hand. Under the global condition spatial formats are products of collective negotiations on the most effective and widely acceptable balance between the claim for sovereignty and the need for interconnectedness.

This edited volume firmly places African history into global history by highlighting connections between African and East German actors and institutions during the Cold War. With a special focus on negotiations and African influences on East Germany (and vice versa), the volume sheds light on personal and institutional agency, cultural cross-fertilization, migration, development, and solidarity.

Europe has undergone quite profound changes since the end of the Cold War. Having been a highly militarised, conflict-ridden and war-ridden region, the core of Europe today constitutes a security community where armed conflicts among the constituent states has become inconceivable. This comprehensive book offers a theoretically founded and thoroughly documented analysis of European security, with a special emphasis on the role played by the United Nations and the various regional and sub-regional organisations, especially the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the European Union. When it comes to explaining peace in Europe opinions differ widely. Some argue that it was only because the West refused to give in to Soviet threats that the latter eventually gave up; or that the 'long peace' in Europe was due to the combination of a bipolar alliance structure, pitting the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) against the Warsaw Pact, with the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides. Others point instead to the extraordinarily dense network of international institutions and organisations in Europe, offering a wide panoply of fora in which to handle disputes peacefully; or to the web of interdependence in economic and other affairs, tying together all states in Europe in relations which militate strongly against war. Still others believe that the external peace between the states in Europe is simply a reflection of a convergence of cultures, democracies with marked economies that are open towards the world market. These questions are the focal point of this book, which concentrates on security, albeit not in the sense of being a treatise on military matters, but security obtainable by much more indirect and non-military means. It will be required reading for all students and scholars of European security and the organisations which underpin it.