E240 - Espionage and Empire in the Cold War w/ Alfred McCoy

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

History, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Subscribe now to skip the ads and get all of our episodes. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to American Prestige.
0:03.2	To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at AmericanPestigepod.com.
0:08.3	Find the link in our show notes.
0:11.2	What I've dedicated my life to is revenge.
0:15.9	A brand new drama based on the best-selling novel.
0:18.7	They think they're better than us.
0:19.7	Who do you think you are?
0:22.6	I'm going to prove to them that they're wrong. She's punishing me.
0:23.6	You destroyed my family.
0:25.6	I will not rest until I've destroyed yours.
0:27.6	A woman of substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.
0:31.6	That's kind of conversation to your soul.
0:55.9	Hello, Prestige Heads and welcome to American Prestige.
0:59.9	I'm Danny Bessner, here as always with my friend and comrade, Derek Davison.
1:03.8	And we are very excited and it is a particular pleasure for me, I might say,
1:06.1	to welcome to the podcast, Alfred McCoy.
1:10.9	Alfred is the Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
1:14.2	and he's also the author of Cold War on Five Contents,
1:16.9	a global history of empire and espionage,
1:22.2	and many other books and really one of the major historians of U.S. foreign relations.
1:25.3	So Professor McCoy, thank you very much for joining us.
1:27.4	Thank you for having me and Donnie as well.
	...

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