2016 Symposium - The Cold War transcript.pdf

The Cold War with Colonel Allan Millett, USMCR (Retired) and Dr. Richard Kohn

Scholars Colonel Allan Millett and Dr. Richard Kohn discuss the origins of the Cold War and its impact and explore the oft-debated topic on its legitimacy as a war.

This episode was filmed as part of the 2016 ON WAR Military Symposium in November 2016.

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill spoke alongside President Harry Truman at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. There, Churchill delivered one of the most famous speeches of his career where he proclaimed, “An iron curtain has descended” across Europe.

By March 1946, the Cold War was heating up, and from Moscow to Washington, and even in Fulton, Missouri, and people were taking notice.

Today, the Cold War looms large in international relations, perhaps more so now. The relationship between the United States and Russia is one of the major elements of global diplomacy, and one that warrants research and understanding.

The Cold War can appear simple: east versus west, communism versus democracy. Yet it would be unfair to simplify a conflict that pitted the world’s two greatest superpowers against each other for nearly half a century in overt and covert ways, at the risk of sparking global warfare -- The study of the Cold War offers great potential towards understanding our modern world.

DR. ALLAN MILLETT, a retired Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, is an acclaimed military historian, award-winning author, and internationally recognized authority on the Korean War and the United States Marine Corps. He is the Ambrose Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, and is the Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at The Ohio State University. Dr. Millet has earned numerous awards for his writings and his teaching, including the 2008 Pritzker Literature Award, and the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History, which also named its doctoral research fellowship in his honor.

DR. RICHARD KOHN is Professor Emeritus of History and Peace, War and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A specialist in American Military History and civil-military relations, Kohn has written or contributed to some ten volumes in the field. Kohn consults on national security in the defense community and with the media. From 1981 to 1991 he was Chief of Air Force History and Chief Historian for the United States Air Force on the Air Staff in Washington, D.C. He headed the Office of Air Force History, and oversaw the U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency.