In Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979, Sabina Widmer analyses Swiss foreign policy in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the late 1960s and 1970s, at the crossroads of the global East-West confrontation and decolonisation. Focusing on the independence wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Angolan War and the Ogaden War as well as regime changes that brought Soviet-allied governments to power, this book sheds new light on Switzerland’s role in the Third World during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research, it exposes the limits of neutrality in North-South relations, reveals the growing marge de manoeuvre of small states during Détente, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the making of foreign policy.
"In Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979, Sabina Widmer analyses Swiss foreign policy in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the late 1960s and 1970s, at the crossroads of the global East-West confrontation and decolonisation. Focusing on the independence wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Angolan War, and the Ogaden War, as well as regime changes that brought Soviet-allied governments to power, this book sheds new light on Switzerland's role in the Third World during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research, it exposes the limits of neutrality in North-South relations, reveals the growing marge de manoeuvre of small states during Détente, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the making of foreign policy"--
This World Bank report is a rich compilation of information on teaching learning materials (TLM) in Africa based on the extensive and multi-faceted experience of the author's work in the education sector in Africa. The study examines a wide range of issues around TLM provision including curriculum, literacy and numeracy, language of instruction policy, procurement and distribution challenges, TLM development and production and their availability, management and usage in schools. It also looks at the role of information and communication technology (ICT) based TLMs and their availability. The study recognizes that improved TLM system management is a critical component in achieving affordable and sustainable TLM provision for all students. This study, which draws from more than 40 Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone, and Arabic-speaking countries will be particularly useful for policymakers, development partners, and other stakeholders attempting to understand the wide range of issues surrounding the complexity of textbook provision in Sub Saharan Africa.
After 1979, Switzerland became increasingly involved in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan as a provider of humanitarian aid and good offices. It delivered aid to the region, hosted Soviet prisoners of war and eventually mediated between the Afghan regime and the mujahideen. What is puzzling about this development is that initially, following the Soviet invasion, both government and parliament refused to become diplomatically involved in Afghanistan on account of Swiss neutrality. The present study investigates how and why this changed between 1979 and 1992. While the practical impact of Switzerland’s good offices was modest, the crisis revealed that Switzerland continued to struggle to balance the competing imperatives of permanent neutrality and international solidarity in an increasingly multilateral world.
The Cold War shaped the world we live in today - its politics, economics, and military affairs. This book shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the last century created the foundations for most of the key conflicts we see today, including the War on Terror. It focuses on how the Third World policies of the two twentieth-century superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union - gave rise to resentments and resistance that in the end helped topple one superpower and still seriously challenge the other. Ranging from China to Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua, it provides a truly global perspective on the Cold War. And by exploring both the development of interventionist ideologies and the revolutionary movements that confronted interventions, the book links the past with the present in ways that no other major work on the Cold War era has succeeded in doing.
The Non-Aligned Movement had an important impact on the history of decolonization, South-South cooperation, the Global Cold War and the North-South conflict. During the 20th century nearly all Asian, African and Latin American countries joined the movement to make their voice heard in global politics. In The Non-Aligned Movement, Jürgen Dinkel examines for the first time the history of the NAM since the interwar period as a special reaction of the “Global South” to changing global orders. The study shows breaks and caesurae as well as continuities in the history of globalization and analyses the history of international relations from a non-western perspective. For this book, empirical research was undertaken in Germany, Great Britain, Indonesia, Russia, Serbia, and the United States.
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
An insightful examination of the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and African Independence on jazz in the 1950s and 60s, Freedom Sounds traces the complex relationships among music, politics, aesthetics, and activism through the lens of the hot button racial and economic issues of the time. Ingrid Monson illustrates how the contentious and soul-searching debates in the Civil Rights, African Independence, and Black Power movements shaped aesthetic debates and exerted a moral pressure on musicians to take action. Throughout, her arguments show how jazz musicians' quest for self-determination as artists and human beings also led to fascinating and far reaching musical explorations and a lasting ethos of social critique and transcendence. Across a broad body of issues of cultural and political relevance, Freedom Sounds considers the discursive, structural, and practical aspects of life in the jazz world in the 1950s and 1960s. In domestic politics, Monson explores the desegregation of the American Federation of Musicians, the politics of playing to segregated performance venues in the 1950s, the participation of jazz musicians in benefit concerts, and strategies of economic empowerment. Issues of transatlantic importance such as the effects of anti-colonialism and African nationalism on the politics and aesthetics of the music are also examined, from Paul Robeson's interest in Africa, to the State Department jazz tours, to the interaction of jazz musicians such Art Blakey and Randy Weston with African and African diasporic aesthetics. Monson deftly explores musicians' aesthetic agency in synthesizing influential forms of musical expression from a multiplicity of stylistic and cultural influences--African American music, popular song, classical music, African diasporic aesthetics, and other world musics--through examples from cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and the avant-garde. By considering the differences between aesthetic and socio-economic mobility, she presents a fresh interpretation of debates over cultural ownership, racism, reverse racism, and authenticity. Freedom Sounds will be avidly read by students and academics in musicology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, popular music, African American Studies, and African diasporic studies, as well as fans of jazz, hip hop, and African American music.
The definitive history of the Cold War and its impact around the world We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. In The Cold War, Westad offers a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battle transformed every corner of our globe. From Soweto to Hollywood, Hanoi, and Hamburg, young men and women felt they were fighting for the future of the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where nearly every community had to choose sides. And these choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world. Today, many regions are plagued with environmental threats, social divides, and ethnic conflicts that stem from this era. Its ideologies influence China, Russia, and the United States; Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by the faith in purely military solutions that emerged from the Cold War. Stunning in its breadth and revelatory in its perspective, this book expands our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, and offers an engaging new history of how today's world was created.
