What, really, was the Cold War? No declarations nor explosions. Hostility was in the air, but where was the battlefront? What made millions of people worldwide willingly embrace the existence of an invisible war?

Masuda Hajimu's pathbreaking Cold War Crucible is an inquiry into this peculiar nature of the Cold War. It examines not only centers of policymaking, but apparent aftereffects of Cold War politics: social suppressions across the world during the Korean War. Such purges were not merely end results of the Cold War, as Masuda shows, but forces that drove Cold War reality in attempts at restoring tranquility at home. Revealing social construction and popular participation, Cold War Crucible elucidates how a mere discourse turned into an irrefutable reality, how and why ordinary people shaped such a Cold War world, and what the Cold War really was.

Examining historical experiences of the Cold War, Masuda's book ultimately raises questions that are still relevant today: How and for whom are images of threats formed and circulated? How real are the rubrics used to understand global situations? In short, what is reality?

Join the Wilson Center as Masuda Hajimu (National University of Singapore) discusses these questions and introduces Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World. Andrew Rotter (Colgate University) and Ryan Irwin (University at Albany-SUNY) will provide commentary on Masuda's presentation.