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War, Peace and the River Basin: Cold War Geopolitics and the Globalization of Large Dams, 1933-1975One of the lasting legacies of Cold War geopolitics, one that is frequently overlooked by scholars and policymakers, is that of the global diffusion of large dams, associated technological knowledge, and the notion of river basin planning. The primary geopolitical aim of these programs undertaken by the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) during the Cold War was straightforward--to contain the spread of communist regimes and ideologies by demonstrating the superiority of Western approaches to governance and economic development--yet the thinking behind and the implementation of this objective represents an enormously complex blend of political calculation, resource planning, and transfers of technology and ideology. Through case studies, Sneddon explores river basin development programs carried out by the USBRin the Middle East (the Litani River basin), East Africa (the Blue Nile basin), and Southeast Asia (the Mekong River basin) as Cold War tensions ebbed and flowed. |
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