The conference brought into conversation two overlapping but distinct fields of inquiry – Cold War studies and the history of internationalism – to ask how the superpower confrontation and international organizations shaped one another. Borrowing Ilya V. Gaiduk’s provocative phrase “divided together” – though punctuated with a question mark to indicate ambiguity – the organizers sought papers that considered how both division and collaboration were baked into the Cold War system.

The papers that were selected charted the many contours of the relationship between the Cold War and international organizations. They also reflected on other divisions in the international order, namely the division between the Global North and South, that were always imbricated in the Cold War. The 20th-century world was divided along many different lines. But various organizations, alliances, sites, and moments brought the world, or at least parts of the world, “together” too. In this vein, several papers focused on the ties that bound Austria and the United States throughout the Cold War period and on how Vienna itself became an internationalist hub that attracted people from around the planet to participate in the many organizations, institutes, and conferences that the city has hosted. This thematic focus reflects the generous funding that the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies provided to the conference.

The organizers Sandrine Kott, Elisabeth Roehrlich and Eva-Maria Muschik should be commended for the thoughtfulness with which they put together the conference. According to the organizers’ instructions, panelists were to precirculate short versions of their papers and then, during the panel, they had ten minutes to introduce, contextualize, and elaborate on their papers. That concision opened up a lot more time for feedback and broader discussions (as the pandemic had kept us from attending in-person conferences for so long, we all had lots to say). Future conferences would be well-served by adopting a similar format.

The keynote speaker TRUDY HUSKAMP PETERSON opened the conference with a surprising history of the archives of the UN’s International Refugee Organization (IRO), the predecessor of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The records of the IRO are not housed in Geneva, New York, or some other UN host-city; rather, they are found in the national archives of a single member-state, France. Why? Probably because of the Cold War, Peterson claimed. Western UN officials sought to keep sensitive information about refugees out of the hands of the Soviet Union. Peterson’s presentation as well as her participation throughout the conference drew our attention to the very important fact that archives themselves have histories.

The first panel considered the humanitarian activities of international organizations. LUKAS SCHEMPER (Berlin) juxtaposed the general consensus among national governments in the 1990s that disaster relief should be multilateralized with the longstanding belief among the superpowers during the Cold War that it should be conducted through bilateral arrangements. The Cold War structure, Schemper argued, prevented that 1990s consensus from occurring earlier. AGNIESZKA SOBONCINSKA (London) presented on the Food and Agriculture Organization’s “Freedom from Hunger” campaign, exploring how it played out in both the Global North and South. While everyday Australians mobilized to promote and fundraise for the campaign, the campaign’s actual projects in countries such as Indonesia tended to be top-down and excluded community input.

The next panel focused on neutral cities and organizations in those cities as sites of bridge-building. LUCILE DREIDEMY (Vienna) presented on the Vienna Institute for Development, an institute founded in 1964 that fostered the international integration through elite networks. Despite its location in Vienna, however, the Institute’s conceptualization of cooperation ran between the Global North and South, but not between East and West – a fact that annoyed many of its Global South members. LIZA SOUTSCHEK (Aachen) discussed the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which is also based in Vienna, as an example of Vienna’s policy of active neutrality, bringing together scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain. But, Soutschek argued, its appeal and funding faded as the Cold War ended. Finally, BARBARA HOF (Zurich) presented on the US-European-Soviet collaborations at CERN in Geneva, arguing that it was not only a scientific “trading zone,” but also a “window” onto the West for the Soviet scientists involved. Hof also made the case for thinking about it as a “third space,” a term that many conference participants subsequently experimented with in their own presentations.

Panel 3.1 considered histories of international organizations that involved countries other than the United States. LJUBICA SPASKOVSKA (Exeter) examined the rise and eventual unraveling of the Global North-South consensus on the New International Economic Order in the 1970s and 1980s. As the consensus on the NIEO came undone, it gave way to alternative visions of economic relations and governance that sometimes cut across ideological divides. MICHEL CHRISTIAN (Geneva) provided a geographic analysis of the Paris Centre internationale d’ènfance’s activities. Showing that the Centre’s activities were concentrated in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and former French colonies, but not in the US, the USSR, nor most of Asia, Christian argued that the Centre shared the geographic interests of De Gaulle’s foreign policy. MAREK EBY (New York) examined how the Moscow-based E. I. Martsinovskii Institute for Parasitic Diseases and Tropical Medicine – which was not an international organization itself – became integrated into the World Health Organisation’s institutional networks and epistemic frameworks. Eby reminded us that bridges between East and West were built not only in Western and Central Europe but also in the Soviet Union itself.

Panel 3.2 covered histories of international organizations in which the United States played an outsized role. CHRIS DIETRICH (New York), in introducing his biographical project on Ralph Bunche, asked “How are pragmatists made?” To answer this question, Dietrich traced Bunche’s intellectual and political trajectory from the 1920s to the 40s, showing how the high-stakes conflict between capitalism and socialism pulled him towards pragmatism. SARAH NELSON (Dallas) presented on how the International Telecommunications Union, which had existed since the 1860s, became a UN specialized agency in the postwar period. In its integration into the UN system, the ITU, Nelson argued, became “a patchwork of imperial pasts, semi-sovereign presents, and postcolonial futures.” HENNING TÜRK (Bonn) presented on the geopolitics of the International Energy Agency (IEA), a topic of serious contemporary relevance. The organization was established in the wake of the oil crisis 1974 to restructure the Global North-South relationship to favor the North; that logic helped pull the politics of energy out of the Cold War calculus, as European members of the IEA looked to the USSR to attain natural gas.

The second day of the conference began with two panels on decolonization. In the first panel, DANIEL GORMAN (Waterloo) focused on a British relief worker named Richard Symonds who worked in India before Partition and then for UN Commission on India and Pakistan. (Ironically, British nationals were useful intermediaries because of the experience of imperialism.) Gorman asked why did British nationals in the postwar era want jobs in the international sphere? What did they learn cycling through different jobs? LYDIA WALKER (Leiden) examined how the Katanga crisis played out in the United States, from the bureaucracy and diplomacy of the UN to the domestic politics of Washington. More broadly, Walker argued that the decolonization historiography has been trapped by the Cold War frame (Walker asked us to think of the go-to book on decolonization in recent years, Odd Arne Westad’s Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, a book that foregrounds the Cold War).

In the second panel on decolonization, CHRISTIAN METHFESSEL (Berlin) traced the history of the territorial integrity norm – the idea that the territory of sovereign states is inviolable – in the postcolonial era. Examining voting records in the General Assembly, Methfessel demonstrated that, while violators of the territorial integrity norm could usually count on one of the two superpowers for support, African and Asian states tended to be the staunchest defenders of the norm, typically opposing annexation and secession.

The next panel examined an array of actors and experts working for international organizations. KATJA CASTRYCK-NAUMANN (Leipzig) adopted a biographical approach to examine how the Cold War shaped the production of knowledge in the UN Secretariat. Castryck-Naumann followed the careers of Polish economists from the 1940s to the 1960s, putting a lot of emphasis on the World War II years in which her actors were hosted by various organizations in England and Sweden, before taking work in different branches of the UN. MIKULÁŠ PEŠTA (Prague) and MATTHIEU GILLABERT (Fribourg) presented their joint project on the history of the International Union of Students (IUS), a Prague-based organization that sought to defend the rights and interests of students worldwide. Pešta and Gillabert explored how the IUS employed “strategies of legitimation” in an attempt to overcome ideological barriers (such as its pro-Soviet bias) and become a universal, respected organization. YI-TANG LIN (Geneva) presented on China’s relationship with the Food and Agriculture Organization after China joined the UN system in 1972. FAO officials sought to learn and borrow from Chinese science and technology as models to be applied in other countries in the Global South. However, the results were limited as China’s science and technology sector were intricately and ideologically a part of the Chinese system and therefore had limited applicability elsewhere.

The final panel looked at international law. Examining the history of the UN Human Rights Commission’s work in Uruguay in the 1970s, DEBBIE SHARNAK (Glassboro) argued that the United Nations’ procedure for addressing human rights complaints allowed for politicization. The UN’s protocols for investigating complaints enabled representatives of the Uruguayan dictatorship to influence the UN Secretary-General’s report, projecting the government’s narrative and shutting out critics. IOANA CÎRSTOCEA (Paris) analyzed the rise of a western, liberal, women’s rights movement that originated in a Cold War context and that was expressed in a series of UN conferences and campaigns from the 1970s to the 1990s. Cîrstocea argued that this framing became hegemonic in the 1990s – a “one-size-fits-all” feminism that made connections with women in the Global South and the former Soviet Bloc without recognizing the contributions that women in those parts of the world had made toward the advancement of women’s interests.

The concluding roundtable reflected on the conference and considered future directions for research. GLENDA SLUGA (Florence) proposed thinking about international organizations as political spaces. Such an approach would enable us to see not only collaboration across international lines but also the politics: who gets what, when, how, to use Harold Lasswell’s definition, of international organizations. MONIKA BAAR (Leiden) asked how the various geographies employed in the conference – Global North/Global South; East/West – interacted with one another (Baar made the intriguing suggestion to think about them three-dimensionally). ELLEN RAVNDAL (Stavanger) questioned organizing our research around “Cold War,” as the periodization of many of the papers stretched back to the interwar era or wrapped up after the Cold War. “What are the alternative terms?,” Ravndal asked, and “what exactly do we gain by using them?” Finally, FEDERICO ROMERO (Florence) urged us to consider the differences between nation-states, especially their relative sizes; for differently sized nation-states have different relations with international organizations. Romero also echoed others’ critiques of the Cold-War framing.

It might seem odd that so many of the concluding speakers deconstructed the very thematic premise of the conference. But, in actuality, it was the conference’s focus on international organizations that helped enable the participants to rethink the Cold War framing. Future conferences that center international organizations in other key international dynamics, e.g. decolonization, ecological catastrophe, development, are sure to yield similarly productive results and help move the field of international history forward.

Conference overview:

Welcome and introductory remarks

Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva), Elisabeth Roehrlich (University of Vienna), Eva-Maria Muschik (University of Vienna)

Keynote Lecture (sponsored by the the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Relations)

Trudy Huskamp Peterson (archival consultant): “Dangerous Records: A Cold War Story”

Panel 1: International Organizations as Actors: Alleviating Human Suffering

Lukas Schemper (Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung): Disaster and the United Nations during the Cold War

Agnieszka Sobocinska (King's College London): Giving and Resisting Aid: The UN FAO Freedom from Hunger Campaign as an institution and at ground level

Chair and Comments: Elisabeth Roehrlich (University of Vienna)

Panel 2: Vienna in Context: Neutral Cities and International Organizations as Bridge-building Sites (BIAAS-sponsored)

Lucile Dreidemy (University of Vienna): The Vienna Institute for Development and Cooperation: A Case Study on the “NGOisation” of Development and Foreign Policy in the Context of the Cold War

Liza Soutschek (RWTH Aachen University): Arena for Cooperation and Competition in Cold War Science: The Vienna International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and East and West Germany

Barbara Hof (University of Zurich): Window to the East. CERN and the Expansion of Scientific Collaboration across the Iron Curtain

Comments: Glenda Sluga (European University Institute)

Panel 3.1: US Dominance in International Organizations? (BIAAS-sponsored)

Ljubica Spaskovska (University of Exeter): ‘Infrastructure for Co-operation’? – Visions of Internationalism and Development beyond the Cold War Divide

Michel Christian (Geneva University): The Paris “Centre international de l’enfance” between East and West

Marek Eby (New York University): Cold War Form, Internationalist Content? The Martsinovskii Institute in the Transnational Networks of the WHO

Comments: Bogdan Iacob (Romanian Academy)

Panel 3.2: US Dominance in International Organizations? (BIAAS-sponsored)

Chair: Monika Baar (Leiden University)

Chris Dietrich (Fordham University): Ralph Bunche, the Cold War, and the Battle over Trusteeship, 1934-1948

Sarah Nelson (Southern Methodist University): “‘Regenerate, but Unreformed?’ The International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations, and the Making of Technocratic Internationalism(s) in the Early Cold War, 1945-1947”

Henning Türk (Bonn University): International Organizations as Mediators in the Western Camp: The International Energy Agency and the Gas-pipeline Sanctions between 1981 and 1984

Comments: Martin Rempe (University of Konstanz)

Panel 4.1: Negotiating Decolonization

Daniel Gorman (University of Waterloo): Experiments in Conciliation: The UN, Kashmir, and Decolonization

Lydia Walker (Leiden University): The Cold War Trap: The United Nations and the Specter of Katanga

Chair and Comments: Eva-Maria Muschik (University of Vienna)

Panel 4.2: Negotiating Decolonization

Christian Methfessel (Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History IfZ): Territorial Conflicts on the World Stage: International Organizations, the “Third World,” and the Global Cold War

Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (University of Coimbra): Plans for Africa: International and interimperial organizations, development and the Cold War dynamics in the 1950s

Chair and Comments: Marcia Schenck (University of Potsdam)

Panel 5: Actors in International Organizations and the Production of Expertise

Katja Castryck-Naumann (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe): Polish Economists in the UN Secretariat: Expertise, Political Agendas, and Networks (1945-1960s)

Mikuláš Pešta (Charles University Prague), Matthieu Gillabert (University of Fribourg): International Union of Students: Strategies of Legitimization from Prague to the Global Cold War

Yi-Tang Lin (Geneva University): Catch up to Western Science or Export the Chinese Model? Chinese Experts and the United Nations in the 1970s

Chair and Comments: Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva)

Panel 7: International Law: Human and Cultural Rights

Debbie Sharnak (Rowan University): The UN Human Rights Commission and the Case of Uruguay

Ioana Cîrstocea (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique): Before “Gender Mainstreaming”: Cold War Roots of the Global Women’s Rights Agendas

Chair and Comments: Ned Richardson-Little (Erfurt University)

Concluding Discussion

Chair: Dexter Fergie (Northwestern University)

Discussants: Federico Romero (European University Institute), Ellen Ravndal (University of Stavanger), Glenda Sluga (European University Institute), Monika Baar (Leiden University)