Most of the bad things that happened there, they insist – the authoritarian regimes, the civil wars, the human rights abuses – happened because Washington caused them to happen. First, because previous histories of the Cold War in this region have been based so heavily on US sources, they’ve tended to exaggerate, and to be extremely critical of, the role the US has played in that part of the world. My guess is that it will be controversial for a couple of reasons. It is too early to say because the book has just come out.
So we get a truly international view of the Cold War one written, for the first time, as much from the perspective of the Latin Americans as from that of the United States.Īnd how have critics received it in Latin America do they think he has been fair towards them? Hal worked in the archives of ten Latin American countries, as well as those of the United States, Canada, Germany, and, through published or online collections, those of the Soviet Union.
Most books on US-Latin American relations have been written chiefly from US sources, or, if they have used Latin American sources, it’s often been the archives of only one country. Most important are the sources Hal has used. What new ground was he covering to enable him to zoom ahead? Sometimes your own graduate students can zoom way ahead of you. It’s amazing to have a recent PhD write a book of which professors in mid-career and beyond would have been proud. Hal finished his dissertation only last year, and yet the book that has come out of it is the most comprehensive overview of US-Latin American relations from the 1960s to the 1980s that anyone anywhere has yet produced. So what did Hal Brands teach you about Latin America’s Cold War? He was taking a more international perspective with this one wasn’t he? Think how boring it would be to go through life repeating your old lectures. Many professors never accept the influence of their students on their work. That is very generous of you to be so honest. The result is new angles of vision on some old issues, but also the identification of new ones that older scholars have rarely, if ever, written about. It’s also important, though, that the students are of a new generation, and that in itself brings different perspectives from my own. I’m lucky in that there are always new materials for my students to work with in the field of recent international history, not least those that have opened up in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere since the Cold War ended. Usually that comes from how you organise and present the materials yourself, but surprisingly often it originates with students – particularly at the graduate level but sometimes also at the undergraduate level in seminars and senior essays. Part of the fun of being a teacher is that you always learn from teaching. What do you think your students have been able to teach you? Your five books are actually all written by your former students. Beyond that, I wasn’t thinking in any particularly sophisticated way. Getting in on the ground floor of Cold War history seemed like a good bet – it was still going on at the time, and very much on everyone’s mind. A good dissertation, I thought, should have fresh sources, should be on something significant, and should have the potential to become a book that people might still find useful ten or 15 years into the future. I was in graduate school during the late 1960s, when the first American documents on the early Cold War were being declassified. Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we talk about your five book choices I wanted to find out a bit more about what made you so interested in studying the Cold War and international relations?.
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