New book co-authored by Barrett Honors College faculty member Robert Niebuhr focuses on Tito's Yugoslavia

Historians and scholars interested in the Cold War and Yugoslavia’s globalism under the leadership of Joseph Broz Tito have a new source of information and interpretation in “Yugoslavia, Nonalignment and Cold War Globalism: Tito’s International Rise, Celebrity and Fall,” co-authored by Robert Niebuhr, teaching professor in Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University.

This book explores the emergence of Yugoslav globalism and how it was influenced by the early Cold War, the changes once Yugoslavia established itself as a nonaligned leader, and what the decline of Yugoslav globalism reveals about the waning Cold War and the history of internationalist diplomacy.

Niebuhr's co-authors are David Pickus, a former Barrett Honors College faculty member who is now an associate professor at the American University in Vietnam, and Zvonimir Stopić, an assistant professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing, China.

“With a transnational perspective and by combining our diverse areas of expertise and research, we were able to tap into more resources for a robust and interesting book,” Niebuhr said.

The new book, a follow up to Niebuhr’s 2018 monograph, entitled “The Search for a Cold War Legitimacy: Tito’s Yugoslavia, 1945–1975,” looks at the legitimacy of Tito's dictatorship and its foreign policy, globalization, and Yugoslavia’s place on the world stage, Niebuhr said.

“What is global engagement? What is economic globalization? How do states interact in this larger system? How would Yugoslavia, a small, relatively poor, unimportant part of the world that saw contested borders, have risen to any sort of prominence in international affairs?” he explained.

The book further investigates how Yugoslavia navigated Cold War tensions and speculation of nuclear war by its leaders “taking the intentional position to cool that rhetoric down and call for peace,” Niebuhr said.

He said that while the book expounds on Cold War era issues, it has implications for discussions on contemporary aspects of globalism and “bad actors” in politics. Lessons on Yugoslavia’s actions can inform today’s events in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia.

“Powerhouse economies, as they try to engage in diplomacy are squaring off again into what looks like irresponsible politics. But I think there’s room in our contemporary space to imagine some of these politicians acting in the international arena as peacemakers,” as Yugoslavia did in the Cold War era, he said.

Niebuhr said his research interests in Yugoslavia and the Cold War help inform his teaching of The History of Ideas, a Barrett Honors College signature course, as well as upper-level seminars on the Cold War. He has used archival documents from the book in the seminars he teaches and has enjoyed giving students access to documents that they otherwise would not see in any university course.

“A lot of the readings center on the topics of the Cold War dynamic, security studies and war. It’s helpful to get student perspectives to help me, and them, see the big picture and have a better understanding of these issues,” he said.