Federico Romero

Cold War historiography at the crossroads

How is the Cold War understood in an expanding and diversifying historiographical field? Conceptual precision and specificity seem to be giving way to a looser understanding of the Cold War as an era that encompassed different although interconnected conflicts and transformations. Some scholars ask for specificity and consistency while current centrifugal trends point to multiple approaches and centres of interest. Diversity is galvanising the field, but historians need to (re)define their object of inquiry and strive for at least a minimum of conceptual clarity. In particular, we should aim at a broad cultural understanding of the Cold War, contextualise it in larger processes of historical change without confusing the two dimensions, and reassess relations between Europe and other Cold War contexts.

Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War. Issues, interpretations, periodizations

The history of the Cold War is being re-written according to the newly available sources. But first and foremost it needs to be re-conceptualized and framed within the broader historical context that transformed the Cold War from the 1960s onwards, altered the very dynamics of bipolarism, and eventually brought it to its end. The long duration and the unexpectedly peaceful ending of the Cold War call for new views that transcend the established paradigms about its inception. Thus the habitual diplomatic and security themes must be enjoined with economic, ideological, technological and cultural ones. Here a distinguished group of international history specialists discusses the complex relationship between Cold War dynamics, the globalizing of capitalism, and the demise of Soviet Communism. Their controversial and conflicting views, as well as their multidisciplinary approaches, highlight the various factors that constituted (and did not constitute) the Cold War. Thus they help to redefine the concept itself, to map its values and limitations, and to propel historical debate onto new grounds.

European Socialist regimes facing globalisation and European co-operation: dilemmas and responses – introduction

So far, historians working on the two sides of what used to be a divided Europe have had considerable contacts but they have operated – at least in the realm of international history and the history of European integration – with largely separate agendas and networks. The authors of this special-issue introduction have both come to work on the increasing interaction between East and West in the framework of détente, and feel that the time is ripe for a scholarly analysis of the concepts, strategies and approaches of the Socialist regimes to pan-European co-operation in the long 1970s. Through a collaborative research effort, specialists on specific Socialist countries and historians of Western Europe (and particularly of its integrative experience) are brought together in this special issue of the European Review of History to bridge the existing gap between two parallel strands of scholarship. Their close collaboration is the key to the conceptual development of a broader view of pan-European co-operation against the background of global economic trends.

Rethinking Italy’s Shrinking Place in the International Arena

Abstract Italy’s foreign policy is still shackled by two features inherited from its modern history: an obsessive focus on rank and prestige, and a no less delusional faith in the redemptive character of the EU and other multilateral arrangements it belongs to. The ‘middle power’ foreign policy model elaborated in the 1980s had a rationale of its own but it can hardly be adapted to the globalised world, nor can it be sustained by a deteriorated economic and societal domestic fabric. Italy has to rethink its basic national interests, adapt its foreign policy tools to new concepts of relevance and influence, and focus on a long-term, concerted effort at domestic regeneration if it is to withstand the challenges of the globalised world we live in.

The United States, Italy and the Cold War : interpreting and periodising a contradictory and complicated relationship

The essay discusses the policies pursued by the USA in Italy and the bilateral relationship between the countries during the Cold War. It defines the main objectives of the post-1945 US administrations in Italy, the various strategies deployed to achieve them, and the impact of the evolution of the Cold War on the particular Italian context. By defining the variables and constants which informed US policies with regard to Italy, the chapter proposes a tripartite periodisation and a general interpretative framework. The periodisation is defined by the identification of two crucial turning-points—the first in the early to mid-1960s, and the second in the mid-to late 1970s—which subdivide the conventional 1945–1989 chronology of the Cold War. This interpretation rejects unilateral and quasi-imperial readings of the asymmetric relationship between the USA and its junior Italian partner, emphasising the agency of the actors involved and examining the multiple dynamics which defined the forms and nature of US actions in Italy. Lastly, the chapter emphasises a paradox which scholars are now required to reflect upon, that is, how the post-1970s gradual waning of the Cold War and the declining interest of Washington in Italian matters coincided with greater curtailment of Italy’s sovereignty and freedom of action.

Transnational Labor Politics in the Global Cold War

The historiography on international labor politics in the Cold War era, and particularly on the AFL-CIO’s global projection, seems to be advancing in leaps and bounds. It started out at the height of America’s domestic conflict about Vietnam and empire with polarized, antagonistic accounts, which lambasted the AFL’s submission to the US government’s imperial designs1 or praised its independent international campaign for free trade unionism.2 After a lull of almost 15 years, it reemerged in the late 1980s when a new crop of scholars, mostly based in Europe, addressed new issues, and some of the old ones, from a different perspective. They produced archive-based works focused not only on the nature and intent of American labor unions’ foreign policy but also on its impact and effectiveness.3 These historians framed their main questions within the contemporary debates about the political economy of Western Europe’s reconstruction and its intricate relationships with US hegemony.4