Understanding the Cold War

Elspeth O’Riordan is a Visiting Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, in the UK. She studied at the London School of Economics and has held lectureships at the Universities of St Andrews and Dundee in Scotland. Her research focuses on twentieth-century British and international history.  She has published widely on British foreign policy in the interwar and post-war periods, including the book, Britain and the Ruhr Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).     

1. Introduction.- Part I.- 2. Historical Background:  World War II and Tensions in the Wartime Alliance.- 3. The Origins of the Cold War in Europe:  from World War II to the Berlin Blockade.- 4. Studying the Cold War: core themes and concepts. Is there a new international history of the Cold War?.- 5. The Early Development of the Cold War in Europe: the division of Germany, the formation of NATO and European Integration.- 6. The Origins of the Cold War in East Asia: the emergence of communist China, Japan and the Korean War.- Part II.- 7. The Superpowers and the Cold War in the 1950s.- 8. Crises 1958-1962.- 9. The Vietnam War.- 10. The Cold War and the Third World: Latin America.- 11. The Middle East and the Cold War.- 12. Waging the Cold War.- Part III.- 13. Détente.- 14. The Travails of Détente.- 15. Beyond Geopolitics: economics, culture and the transnational Cold War.- 16. The Superpowers and the end of the Cold War.- 17. Regional Finales.