Keylor Publishes on the Cold War
William Keylor, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University has contributed a chapter to a just-published book titled “The Regional Cold Wars in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East” from Stanford University Press.
“My chapter focuses on the deployment of a new generation of intermediate-range nuclear weapons on the Continent and heightened anxieties in both camps about the prospects of a nuclear confrontation,” said Keylor. “It shows that the threats to Soviet control of Eastern Europe during the Polish crisis of 1980-81, the rise of Euro-communism in Western Europe where Communist parties rejected Moscow’s domination, and the acute criticism of human rights abuses in the Communist bloc by the formerly anti-American, pro-Soviet intelligentsia in Western Europe, collectively posed an existential threat to the Soviet Union’s sense of security in Europe at a time that China was challenging its position in Asia.”
Edited by of McGill University, the book includes chapters by eminent historians on the major regions of the world that were drawn into the East-West conflict. Professor Keylor’s 26-page chapter, titled “The Second Cold War in Europe: The Paradoxes of a Dangerous Time,” provides an in-depth examination of the years 1978 to 1983. After the collapse of détente (during which tensions between the Communist bloc and the West had eased in the previous five years), Europe was plunged into what Keylor calls “The Second Cold War.”
The volume covers Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East in the crucial periods of the Cold War. Contributions are based on documents from China, India, the Arab Middle East, Serbia, the former Soviet Union, former East Germany, former Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and its contributors include many of the leading scholars in international Cold War history. Their work reveals the agency of smaller powers in the development and end of the Cold War, including Third World powers Egypt, Iraq, and Vietnam.
Keylor claims that this resurgence of East-West tension in Europe, punctuated by a succession of war scares (such as the downing of a South Korean commercial airliner by Soviet defenses and the “Able Archer” simulated launch of nuclear weapons by NATO in 1983) represented the most serious threat to world peace since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
“The Regional Cold Wars in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East” is available now directly from Stanford University Press and will be available on Amazon on July 8.
Keylor has been a Guggenheim, Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, Earhart, and Whiting Fellow. Learn more about him here.