Cold War and New Cold War Narratives: Special Issue Editor’s Introduction

The historic Cold War, although formally concluded by 1991, continues to widely and to deeply influence, even shape the contours of, the way we think and talk about geopolitics and geoeconomics in the present time. Foreign policy professionals, journalists, scholars, and producers and consumers of popular culture readily turn to tropes, frames, and mental models derived sometimes very literally from this grand-historic episode. Thus, we tend to understand developments in Sino-US relations today, in the first instance at least, through comparisons with the intense superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the bipolar world of the Cold War. By referring to the articles in this special issue on narrating cold wars, its guest editor describes how such frames, models, and mentalities, as they are realized in and conveyed through narratives, can be challenged in a variety of ways.