The Hoover History Working Group invites you to a seminar The Historical Role and Legacies of Cold War’s Non-Alignment featuring Jovan Čavoški on Friday, March 8, 2024 from 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm PT.
The book is available for purchase here.
ABOUT THE TALK
During the Cold War decades global non-alignment and the subsequent Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as its institutional expression were one of the major historical occurrences of that era, an alternative undertaking transcending nations, regions, continents, one vociferously speaking on behalf of world’s underrepresented majority, standing right at the crossroads of both East-West and North-South conflicts that largely marked political currents of that period. As it was the case during the previous period, the NAM’s Cold War agenda seems to be as current as before, with the key issues of great power domination, rising profile of new blocs, foreign interference, military interventionism, faltering globalization, radicalism, underdevelopment, inequality, poverty, terrorism, environmental troubles etc. still represent all the major challenges to the unhindered evolution and progress of the developing world or the Global South. In addition, general aspirations of the world’s majority, then largely represented by the NAM, also have not basically changed, with the issues of a more just, egalitarian and democratic world political and economic orders still standing high on the agenda of both individual nations and collective organizations, like the NAM. In fact, many of the results and ideas the NAM achieved or advocated during the Cold War have not outlived their utility, since events in the recent years have once again demonstrated that the world’s majority has become disenchanted with the policies of major world powers, open alignments with any of them are still a troubled choice, while foreign policy independence still remains as their primary orientation, an important legacy of NAM’s Cold War practices. Therefore, in such light, this lecture, relying on different research results, will try to analyse the historical role and lessons of Cold War non-alignment and what still remains quite relevant for the world at large today.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Jovan Čavoški is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Recent History of Serbia in Belgrade. He completed his undergraduate and master studies in history at the Belgrade University, while in 2014 he obtained his PhD in diplomatic history and international relations at the Peking University, School of International Studies. His thesis dealt with China’s policies towards the rising strategy of non-alignment during the 1950s and 1960s (thesis was written and defended in Chinese). His research focuses on the Cold War in the Third World, especially in Asia, as well as on the comparative foreign policies of countries like China, Yugoslavia, India, Myanmar etc., while also analyzing superpower influences in that region, as well as following the rise and evolution of the concept of neutralism and non-alignment in world affairs. He has conducted intensive archival research in Serbia, China, India, Myanmar, Russia, Britain, Germany and the US. More than fifty of his articles, book chapters, and working papers, as well as three monographs, have been published or are in the process of publication in Serbia, China, India, Britain, Russia, Germany, Indonesia, and the US, including his latest book “Non-Aligned Movement Summits: A History” published with Bloomsbury Academic in 2022.
