Militant Liberty: A Comparative Study of the Scope and Limits of the Aggressive Ideological Strategy during the Early Phase of the Cold War

Using new archival sources ECNU-WWICS Scholar Zhang Yang sheds new light on ideology as a vital policy weapon in the Cold War in her presentation entitled Militant Liberty: A Comparative Study of the Scope and Limits of the Aggressive Ideological Strategy during the Early Phase of the American Cold War.

Widely known are those techniques used by the Socialist bloc, particularly the Soviet Union, to use, train and indoctrinate their own people and then export that communist ideology to the outside world. Yet there is very little scholarship on the strategy adopted by the Western bloc, particularly the United States, to oppose that effort and indeed to prevail with its own ideological warfare. Zhang will examine the Doctrinal Program, the Militant Liberty Program and the Freedom Commission proposal and explores why, in the early stage of the Cold War, there was such widespread public tolerance of an aggressive anti-communist strategy in the US.

Joining Zhang on the panel is John Prados, senior research fellow at the National Security Archive.

James F. Person, Wilson Center senior program associate will chair the event.