Professor Arne Westad

Arne Westad is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an expert in contemporary international affairs. He is co-director of LSE IDEAS, an editor of the journal Cold War History and general editor of the forthcoming three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. His 2006 book The Global Cold War won the Bancroft Prize, the main history award in the United States, the Harrington Award of the American Political Science Association, and the Akira Iriye International History Award. The book has been translated into nine languages. More »| 

Latest News

• Kiss of the Dragon: How Sweet it is?
  LSE IDEAS East Asia Programme will host a very hot debate on China's Geo-Economic Strategy. We will have four very best Old China Hands on stage on 29th May. In recent years, much has been made of China’s rise to prominence as an economic superpower. But what has been the strategy driving this process, and in an era characterised by economic crisis in the West, what kind of global role does China’s geoeconomic strategy aspire to? A new IDEAS Special Report on China’s Geoeconomic Strategy will be launched at this highly anticipated public lecture.
• Jonathan Fenby: An old China hand with his new book and views on China, a Public Lecture on 24th April
  In Tiger Head, Snake Tails, China Today: How it Got There and Where it is Heading, Jonathan Fenby draws together the political, economic and social aspects of today's China to give a unique overview of the emerging superpower. His book also covers foreign relations, history and its heritage, regional matters, demography, the environment, corruption and the "trust deficit". It concludes with an account of the new leaders who will take over running China from the end of this year and assess the challenges they will face.
• Views from China by three Chevening Fellows at IDEAS on 6th March 2012
  China has become the engine of global growth and represents a major shift in the balance of power. On the one hand, we have continuously focused on the nature of China's rise and its economic relations with the rest of the world. On the other hand, China has observed with great interest Western governance experiences such as the concept of "Big Society" and to analyse its plausibility within the country. This seminar will give fresh views on such topics from perspectives of the Chinese government and the Communist Party.

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Latest Publications

• The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. Stanford University Press, 2003.
• Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1963. Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999.

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