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CFP: “The Middle East during the Global Cold War” preliminary panel [WOCMES 2010]
| Location: | Spain |
| Call for Papers Deadline: | 2010-02-26 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2010-02-12 |
| Announcement ID: |
174065 |
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The Panel would like to bring together scholars who will focus on the interplay between diplomacy, politics and economics which shaped the international relations of the Middle East from the mid-1950s to the 1980s: of particular interests will be contributions dealing with the changes in the patterns of diplomatic dealings, the political salience of the transfer of technology and know-how as well as of models of industrial development and institutional reform. The Cold War rivalry had never been merely a conflict between two superpowers with competing geopolitical ambitions: the US and the USSR carried the flag of capitalist and socialist paths to modernity and the two alternative ideological systems soon translated into geopolitical realities. The end of colonial empires, the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the birth of the Non Aligned Movement (NLM) contributed to set the framework for a global, bipolar competition: the main issues at stake for establishing a new standard of conduct in international relations were political independence and economic development. Both concepts were structurally embedded within the notion of modernity because the sovereign, fast-growing nation-state was to be the basic unit for political action and economic organization. The need for change in the so called Third World was first emphasized by the rising postcolonial elites who were generally aware of the opportunities as well as of the risks: they could exploit the competition to extract the best possible offers, but their national priorities could well be undermined by the politics of the bipolar conflict. If the NLM tried to set up a common framework, such issues translated differently in every single region: in the post-colonial Middle East, security mainly involved central state consolidation over centrifugal forces and defense against external interventions, while development primarily meant industrialization as a strategy for national production and social reproduction.
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