This article examines South Africa's position on the nascent Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty against the backdrop of its lucrative uranium trade, increasing international isolation due to its apartheid policies and continued occupation of South West Africa, the growing influence of the vocal Afro-Asian Bloc and a blooming civil nuclear programme. Pretoria criticised the proposed safeguard systems as ambiguous and consistently portrayed the treaty as discriminatory, hypocritical and a threat to the sovereignty of non-nuclear-weapon states. The article argues, however, that this posturing was a diplomatic fa & ccedil;ade at a time when Pretoria sought to preserve strategic flexibility in an increasingly hostile African continent. It therefore adopted a policy of hedging, challenging key aspects of the emerging NPT-centred nuclear order while avoiding commitments that would constrain its future choices.
This article analyses the Uruguayan government's contact with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1955-6, highlighting the factors that both facilitated and hindered this rapprochement. Despite Luis Batlle Berres's efforts to seek commercial agreements and advocate for the PRC's inclusion in the United Nations, the Global Cold War and its influence on Uruguay's domestic politics ultimately thwarted the establishment of formal diplomatic relations. The study draws on primary sources from Uruguay and China to reveal the complex interaction between global and local dynamics, emphasising how tensions and ideological divisions led to missed opportunities for economic cooperation and diplomatic relations.
During the Cold War, contacts were established between the armed movements of the Third World and the countries of the North America and Western Europe which, in turn, led to the forging of political connections. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to explain the origins of the Spanish network of solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution between 1978-80. The analysis focuses on the three roles that citizens of the donor country could play in relationships of this type: internationalists, activists and brigade members.
This article introduces Feiqing yanjiu [Studies of Bandit Communists], a little-used journal produced by Taiwan's intelligence agency during the Cold War, as a valuable source for how the capitalist world interpreted policy shifts within the socialist bloc. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Taiwan's mainland China analysts drew on publicly available Chinese Communist Party (CCP) materials to develop distinctive frameworks for interpreting early reform signals. These assessments were often more ideologically attuned and sceptical than those of their Western counterparts, anticipating many of the critiques now prevalent in contemporary scholarship. As access to sources in the People's Republic of China becomes increasingly restricted, these overlooked materials provide not only rich empirical material but also a timely opportunity to rethink the methodologies used to study reform, ideology and intra-party dynamics under the CCP.
The Asian histories of nation-state building, anticommunist diplomacy, and Chinese diasporic connections became entangled in the Free Villages, two settlements in Saigon for Chinese refugees from northern Vietnam after the Geneva Accords. This article discusses how Taipei and Saigon's intersecting logics of governing their residents gave rise first to a system of joint sovereignty, but later to its abrogation by the latter's nationalism. It highlights how intra-Asian anticommunist cooperation permeated into statecraft and everyday life in the Villages. Finally, ROC officials' governance of the Villages was driven by their diplomatic and political interests, much like their counterpart, the PRC.
Focusing on Austria's treatment of Hungarian refugees (1956) and Czechoslovakia's welcoming of refugees displaced by the Greek Civil War (1946-9), this article explores avenues for a comparison of emerging refugee regimes across the Iron Curtain. Unalike at first glance, both refugee situations happened in a distinct ideological setting that shaped political and public (re)actions: anticommunist and communist solidarities were the competing but comparable motivations. Offering refuge to like-minded refugees became a function of both states' nation-building and nation-branding projects within the bipolar order. But on the local level, humanitarian practices on the ground reveal similarities, thus opening space for discussion.
Sweden established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 1973, but the background of this recognition has largely been unexplored. We show that in the 1960s, the Swedish government faced domestic pressure to recognise North Korea both from left-wing forces and the corporate sector. The government, however, kept rejecting these demands, arguing that recognising North Korea would endanger Sweden's role in the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC). We argue that domestic pressure only became effective after the Cold War turn to d & eacute;tente in the 1970s, which lowered the risk of US and South Korean reprisals for third-party contacts with North Korea.
This paper focuses on transnational connections between Sandinista Nicaragua and female solidarity activists in the West German solidarity movement with Nicaragua against the backdrop of the Cold War. I argue that the Sandinista approach to gender emancipation played an important part in mobilising West German support for the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN). Yet, different understandings of gender politics caused conflicts between female solidarity activists and the FSLN. Tracing the emergence of feminist solidarity activism in West Germany in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the paper illuminates the challenges of building cross-border coalitions between women in the late Cold War, especially in a North-South context.
The Cuban Revolution nurtured its emerging influence in the world through official and unofficial state visits of exiled Spanish Republicans. Private letters, memoirs, press and archival sources show how visitors helped further the cause of left-wing solidarity. This article breaks with the established historiographic approach of analysing Cold War relations between Cuba and Spain through the deeds of Marshall leaders or networks based on regional affinities. Visits of cultural brokers and political refugees reveal how lesser-known figures vied for closer ties to the revolutionary leadership and how exiled Spanish women who visited the island engaged the issue of revolutionary 'womanhood.'
This article explores how the GDR turned solidarity into strategy during Greece's military dictatorship (1967-74), weaving anti-fascist rhetoric, communist kinship, and Cold War rivalry into a campaign for political prisoners. Mobilising party and mass organisations, East Berlin projected itself as the moral, principled, internationalist and just German state. Yet as d & eacute;tente softened ideological divides, this once-vocal activism faded into pragmatism. Drawing on rarely used Greek and German sources, the study reveals how the East German socialist state navigated the tension between conviction and realpolitik, offering new insight into the moral, yet pragmatic, diplomacy of the Cold War's lesser-known fronts.
This article examines growing French-Chilean economic and cultural ties in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on French and Chilean diplomatic sources, it argues that French officials took a flexible, long-term approach to aid in Chile, in contrast to US approaches. It also argues that France sought to profit from Chile's need for capital goods, and that Chilean leaders saw relations with France as increasingly important given dwindling US aid in 1970-3. This article adds to scholarship that decentres the United States to highlight other poles of mutual influence in the Latin American Cold War.
This piece explores North Korea's narrative about the onset of the Korean War, in which Pyongyang portrays itself as a heroic victim repelling the South's aggression. The article uncovers the roots of this myth, suggesting that it originated not as a premediated fabrication but as an impromptu decision by Kim Il-sung. While the main 'Southern Aggression' narrative is top-down, nuanced variations emerge from individuals within DPRK state history institutions. The article also proposes that Western publications, notably I. F. Stone's, may have influenced deviations in the North Korean account, adding layers to this intriguing historical perspective.
This article analyses hundreds of letters that US women wrote to Nikita Khrushchev and Nina Khrushcheva during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The sense of imminent nuclear threat prompted many women to engage with Cold War politics and directly address world leaders. Drawing on their traditional gender roles as mothers and wives, letter-writers were emboldened to confront political leaders about matters of war and peace, advocate for cross-border dialogue and stress Americans' and Soviets' shared humanity. Through the prism of letters, the article explores the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis on US society, the importance of letter-writing in female political activity and women's understanding of the Cold War.
