Petra Goedde. The Politics of Peace

For Cold War historians, invocations of “peace” permeate the historical record, so much that we often take the word for granted. In this insightful and clearly written book, The Politics of Peace, Petra Goedde wants us to treat the word seriously. Drawing on extensive research in the United States and Germany, as well as in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, Goedde shows how concepts of peace transformed the Cold War. In particular, she illuminates how peace activists built durable transnational networks that contributed to détente’s relaxing of East-West tensions in Europe. Goedde begins in the late 1940s, when peace movements struggled to regain their footing after the Second World War. At the time, the Soviet Union leaned heavily on “peace” in their public diplomacy, while US policy makers avoided the word. The Soviets’ lexical monopoly complicated peace activists’ work in the United States and Western Europe. By the early 1950s, Washington realized that peace was too popular a concept to cede to communists. The Eisenhower administration thus launched Atoms for Peace, and John F. Kennedy introduced his Peace Corps. These US efforts benefited from heavy-handed Soviet moves, such as their 1956 invasion of Hungary. Meanwhile, Goedde reminds us, Asian and African leaders at the 1955 Bandung conference held their own postcolonial definition of “peace,” one that emphasized economic development and national self-determination.

Cold war · Diplomacy · Economic history · Monopoly · Peace movement · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies