Current Affairs How the Cold War Changed Everything (w/ Daniel Bessner)
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Feb 28, 2026 
Daniel Bessner, historian and UW professor who edited Cold War Liberalism, joins to unpack how the Cold War reshaped global power. He questions the ācoldā label, spotlights mass violence in the Global South, and debates spheres of influence, nuclear risk, and U.S. strategy toward China and Taiwan. The conversation also traces how liberal elites built the national security state and its lasting ironies.
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Teaching At The Henry M Jackson School Is Ironic
- Daniel Bessner jokes about teaching at the Henry M. Jackson School and how Cold War-era support built area studies and welfare-state elements.
- He contrasts past Cold War investment in universities with today's defunding and lack of expertise on rivals like China.
Cold War May Refer To A Shorter Legitimacy Crisis
- The Cold War is commonly dated 1946/47ā1989 but can be defined more narrowly as a period when one side denied the other's legitimacy.
- Anders Stevenson's view: the classic Cold War ran from the late 1940s to about 1963, ending as the US began to accept the USSR as a diplomatic actor.
The Cold War Was Largely An American Choice
- The Cold War was a choice by the United States rather than an inevitable ideological clash.
- FDR and Stalin had tacit understandings about postwar spheres of influence, but Truman-era universalist liberals rejected that settlement and escalated confrontation.
