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Danny and Derek speak with historian Alfred McCoy about how the Cold War operated as a global conflict influenced by decolonization, covert action, and geopolitical strategy. They discuss the role of individual intelligence operatives as “men on the spot”; Cold War rivalry and the collapse of European empires; how conflicts across Asia, Africa, and Latin America produced much of the war’s violence; the development of U.S. containment strategy and covert action institutions; and Iran as flashpoint in Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitics, and how Alfred interprets these conflicts through a lens of imperial decline and strategic chokepoints like the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz.

Buy Alfred’s book Cold War on Five Continents!

Reading recommendation: The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace by Paul Thomas Chamberlin.

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