ABSTRACT
The Cold War, Mary Kaldor recently noted, has always been a discourse, a conflict of words, “capitalism” versus “socialism” (Kaldor, 1990). Noting how Eastern Europeans always emphasize the power of words, Kaldor adds that the way we describe the world, the words we use, shape how we see the world and how we decide to act. Descriptions of the world involve geographical knowledge and Cold War discourse has had a regularized set of geographical descriptions by which it represented international politics in the post-war period. The simple story of a great struggle between a democratic “West” against a formidable and expansionist East has been the most influential and durable geopolitical script of this period. This story, which today appears outdated, was a story which played itself out not in Central Europe but in exotic “ThirdWorld” locations, from the sands of the Ogaden in the Horn of Africa, to the mountains of El Salvador, the jungles of Vietnam and the valleys of Afghanistan. Of course, the plot was not always a simple one. It has been complex and nuanced, making the post-war world a dynamic, dramatic and sometimes ironic one-ironies such as Cuban troops guarding Gulf Oil facilities against black UNITA forces supported by a racist South African government. Yet the story was a compelling one which brought huge militaryindustrial complexes into existence on both sides of the “East-West” divide and rigidly disciplined the possibilities for alternative political practices throughout the world. All regional conflicts, up until very recently, were reduced to its terms and its logic. Now with this story’s unravelling and its geography blurring, it is time to ask how did the Cold War in its geopolitical guise come into existence and work?
