Winning the Third World: Sino-American Competition during the Cold War

Winning the Third World: Sino-American Competition during the Cold War examines afresh the enduring rivalry between the United States and China during the Cold War. Gregg A. Brazinsky shows how both nations fought vigorously to establish their influence in newly independent African and Asian countries. By playing a leadership role in Asia and Africa, China hoped to regain its status in world affairs, but Americans feared that China’s history as a nonwhite, anticolonial nation would make it an even more dangerous threat in the postcolonial world than the Soviet Union.

Gregg Brazinsky is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University. He is also the author of Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans and the Making of a Democracy. He was a visiting fellow at the Wilson Center in 2010-2011 and is a senior adviser to the History and Public Policy Program's North Korea International Documentation Project and a member of the advisory board of the Asia Program's Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy. The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the George Washington University History Department for their support.