The Cold War in Asia

The Cold War was a global conflict that also had a tremendous effect in Asia. The Chinese Civil War, Japanese-American cooperation, the division of Korea that determines the security issues within the region until today, as well as anti-American, anti-colonial, or anti-Soviet "nation building" processes in Vietnam, Indonesia, or Afghanistan, are consequences of the global conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. The course therefore covers a wider range of national histories, to combine them in a transnational approach towards the Cold War and its impact on the Asian continent. Starting with a conceptualization of the Cold War as a global conflict, the general problems of post-WWII Asian contexts are discussed before several theory-based approaches - nationalism, post-colonialism, anti-imperialism, Asian communism - that help to determine the important factors of Asian interst within the global Cold War, will be discussed. By highlighting the genocides in Cambodia or East Timor the course will also consider problems and consequences of religion or cultural diversity during the Cold War era in Asia