Let us all praise the National Security Archive

True as few are to the ideal of a truly open society, they're relentless in their mission to gain access (for all of us) to secret government documents, especially those dealing with national security issues. This week, they've posted new documents on the Rosenberg case and on the U.S. involvement with the 1973 coup d'etat in Chile. Still a major resource for Cold War historians, the Archive's range of activities has long reached well beyond the old East-West conflict. They not only deserve many visits to their website, they also deserve our monetary support. Finally, they need other organizations to join them in their efforts to counter tendencies among those in power to keep secret from the rest of us much more than would be warranted by national security concerns.

PMVC news

Oscar is paying the price for allowing work to interfere with his life; Michele is currently in Belgium, also out of shape; Eric continues his recovery, and it appears his return to the Sunday ride cannot happen soon enough. For more PMVC news, click here.

Count your blessings

This is important, especially if all kinds of stuff either goes wrong, or takes longer to resolve than should be necessary. So here goes: the weather could not have been better, yesterday and today, for my first commutes into Amsterdam prior to my nine a.m. classes. Dry (not a given AT ALL in this country), not very windy, mostly sunny, and even at seven in the morning pretty mild. The route is just marvelous; today I didn't have to stop once between pushing off in Nederhorst den Berg and my building in downtown Amsterdam. The shower in the health club in the building is warm, and so far they have left my bike alone. The green/yellow Trek stands out a little amid all the classic Amsterdam city bikes, although you see other decent and more modern bikes in our basement. Even though I try to keep the stuff I bring to a minimum, between the street shoes I'm still bringing, a book and some papers, lock and cable, lunch, clothes, etc., there's still too much in my pack for all of it to be comfortably on the seatpost rack (as I discoverd yesterday). So today I divided the weight between the rack and a backpack, which worked much better. Another "blessing": tomorrow they will break open the street in front of our house to repair the cable. With a little luck we will be able to put that headache behind us also. A good thing, because having met most of my students now, there will be lots of work--the two Master's seminars seem to have excellent people. To use Robert Bork's phrase (he used it at the wrong time): it will be an intellectual feast!

Echternacher Procession

Those, if I remember, go two steps forward and then one step backwards. That's how I feel about this move. We did get a lot done this past week, and I've done two rides on the fine Colnago since the movers came, but now our modem quit again, and we're without internet access and without our land phone line. Meanwhile, the semester is underway but I can't communicate with anyone, also because my UvA username and password are now failing for some reason. Blogging is the least of my concerns right now, but if there are any students out there reading this: I'm sorry, it's not my fault.

Drilling, or something else?

Just a couple of articles in today's Volkskrant (Dutch paper--traditionally Catholic, long time ago, now somewhat left of center, though not as far as twenty years ago): the release of a big study done on behalf of the government on how to prepare this country (one third of it below sea level) for rising sea levels due to climate change. There will be some big projects in the next decade or two, very big, but potentially we're talking about an increase of several feet in the next half century. Then there was a piece on how members of parliament want improve their carbon-neutral travel program and have it work only with credible projects. There has been this program (to offset the production of greenhouse gasses when members of parliament travel on business) since 2005. I certainly had never heard of it. I don't think Congress has one. The example the article gave was of a windmill project in Turkey that's going to receive support whenever a Dutch parliamentarian travels on business. The Dutch, another article reported, are also becoming more open to revisiting nuclear energy as an alternative to oil and gas. Even the left Socialists don't want to rule it out. Of course, Holland is in Europe, and Europe has made itself a little too dependent on the mobsters in Moscow for their energy needs. Still, it was interesting to read this stuff while listening to radio reports on the Republican convention. Energy policy for them, it seems, is still mostly synonymous with finding new places to dig for coal and drill for oil and gas. If these are party leaders, they're not doing their followers a service.

First teaching day and four new bikes

Yes, sometimes the Cold War and cycling do go together (if you try a little): yesterday the Global Cold War and the Making of our Times class managed to meet after running into a double booking of its lecture hall. We had to improvise, but with the help of several kind people, we found an empty room nearby. The students were great sports, and it should be a good semester with them. We will soon add Blackboard to our conversations. How does cycling come into it? I rode in on my brother's city bike, missing all the showers on the way (though on the 10-15 minute ride to the history building after class I got pretty wet in my shirtsleeves), and I also stayed dry on the way home into the wind. They have a health club in our building which I joined for 200 Euros a year so that I can shower upon arrival from now on. I plan to go in three or four days a week when school is in session, so it should break down to a little over one Euro per shower). Do have to carry my clothes in a backpack, but that will just make me join the small army of people riding to work that way every day (even though on the bike paths they're still few and far between). I'll soon resemble them also because I'll be riding an old racing bike. Today our stuff finally came, including four bikes: the girl's bike, the old tractor, the Colnago, and the old Trek. The last one I plan to ride into the city from now on--if it survived the move inside its travel bag. Haven't taken the time to look yet because it's been non-stop boxes since the movers came this morning. But our three months of moving are almost at an end. It's about time.

Georgia and the "new" Cold War history

So I thought I'd do something a little different with my Cold War course. I thought I would have my approach reflect recent developments in the field of Cold War history, especially the redefinition of the Cold War as a genuinely global conflict, one in which the Southern hemisphere (the "Third World") figured just about as large as the "North." I picked a text that essentially argues that the Cold War was about the Third World, and tried to learn about countries and regions that for a U.S./Germany/Soviet specialist were rather obscure. (Zanzibar, anyone?) If "globalization" is the defining (albeit vague) characteristic of our time, a global Cold War should go further in helping to explain its characteristics. I still think this global view is instructive for us today, as I continue to believe that one of the more interesting aspects of the post-World War II era is the many ways the East-West conflict on the one hand, and the break-up of the old, mostly European colonial empires, on the other hand, influenced each other. In the meantime, however, just as I got to my new academic home, Russia has invaded a neighboring country. The West is indignant but virtually helpless; and other countries in Russia's traditional sphere of influence worry they're next. This of course is very reminiscent of the "old" Cold War, which was mostly about Russian (Soviet) expansionism and Western efforts to oppose it. As many people have pointed out, the differences may be more significant than the similarities (a more apt analogy may be 19th century power politics, with only a small dose of ideology), but that we're back in the "North" is hard to dispute. Back in the North certainly when you observe transatlantic debates on how to deal with the new situation in Georgia (and Ukraine), but back in the North also because just like Stalin (although not in identical ways) Putin acts out of a mixture of great power aspirations and hostility toward Western ideas. It becomes global again if you realize that Russia is both a European and an Asian power, and that Putin has a seat on the security council of the U.N.--a forum where he can make great mischief, because the U.N. has many member-governments which, just like he, find Western ideas threatening to the way they run their own countries.