Alfred McCoy: Cold War on 5 Continents, Global History of Empire & Espionage

Feb 12, 2026

Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History and author on the CIA and Cold War, sketches how covert operatives shaped global events. He discusses CIA links to the drug trade, the rise of clandestine warfare in lieu of nuclear conflict, Eurasia containment and base strategy, and how imperial surveillance tactics are returning to the U.S. scene.

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ANECDOTE

CIA Pressure On A Publisher

Cord Meyer Jr. intervened with McCoy's publisher to try to suppress Politics of Heroin, revealing CIA influence in publishing.
McCoy discovered how deeply the CIA covertly mobilized America's creative classes during the Cold War.

ANECDOTE

Meeting A Covert Mastermind

McCoy met French covert officer Roger Trinquier in Paris and found the encounter psychologically overwhelming.
The meeting revealed how individual operatives could exert outsized influence on tactics like torture and strategic hamlets.

INSIGHT

Cultural Cold War Was Engineered At Home

The CIA covertly mobilized writers, journalists, students and artists because overt mobilization conflicted with American ideology.
This created deep, often hidden ties between U.S. cultural institutions and intelligence operations.

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Dr. Alfred McCoy provides a sweeping historical analysis of the Cold War, focusing on how individual covert operatives (“men on the spot”) shaped world events. McCoy explains how his early work on the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking during the Vietnam War evolved into a broader study of covert operations and their impact on world history. He characterizes the era as a golden age of intelligence, where the threat of nuclear catastrophe forced superpowers to compete through indirect, clandestine operations. McCoy describes his personal experiences with CIA surveillance and his research into the global drug trade, illustrating how the agency penetrated American civil society and media. He argues that the geopolitical strategies developed during this period, particularly the containment of Eurasia, remain central to understanding modern power dynamics. Finally, the discussion explores the decline of American hegemony, contrasting past interventionist models with current shifts toward a multi-polar world order, noting how historical tactics of surveillance and control are increasingly being applied within the domestic United States.

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About Dr. Alfred W. McCoy

Alfred W. McCoy holds the Harrington chair in history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is the author of The Politics of Heroin, the classic study of global drug trafficking that the CIA attempted to suppress. Among his two dozen published books, the most recent are In the Shadows of the American Century, To Govern the Globe, and Cold War on Five Continents.

*Podcast intro music used with permission is from the song “The Queens Jig” by the fantastic “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Alfred McCoy: Cold War on 5 Continents, Global History of Empire & Espionage

CIA Pressure On A Publisher

Meeting A Covert Mastermind

Cultural Cold War Was Engineered At Home

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About Dr. Alfred W. McCoy