Odd Arne Westad

Arne Westad is a historian of contemporary international affairs who has a particular interest in strategy and decision-making. His work has explored the Cold War in the global South (The Global Cold War, 2005) and the establishment of China’s Communist government (Decisive Encounters, 2003).  He has also written broader surveys for a general readership. Restless Empire (2012) provides an overview of China’s international affairs since 1750. The History of the World (6th ed., 2013) attempts to outline major trends in human development and show historical processes that keep affecting us today.

Arne Westad was born in Ålesund on the Norwegian coast in 1960. He studied history, philosophy and modern languages at the University of Oslo and received his PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990. Professor Westad has taught at the University of North Carolina and at Johns Hopkins University, and served for eight years as Director of Research at the Nobel Institute in Oslo. From 1998 to 2015 he taught in the Department of International History at the LSE, where he also served for several years as head of department and and as director of LSE IDEAS, a interdisciplinary center for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. From 2015 to 2019 he was the S.T. Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at Harvard University.

Professor Westad has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University, the University of Florence, and New York University, and has been the recipient of major grants from the John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. In the 1990s he served as the international coordinator of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Advisory Group on Declassification and Archival Access and has advised several other governments on such issues. From 2013 to 2016, Professor Westad also served as a visiting research professor at Hong Kong University, and from 2016 he is a guest professor in the History Department at Peking University.

Professor Westad is currently working on two research projects.  One is a history of empire and imperialisms in the mid-19th century.  The other deals with Sino-American relations since the end of the Cold War.

The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History. Macmillan, 2026

The Cold War: A World History. Basic Books/Penguin, 2017.

With J.M. Roberts. The History of the World.  6th ed.  Published in the UK as The Penguin History of the World.  Penguin/Oxford University Press, 2013.

Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. Basic Books, 2012.

The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. Stanford University Press, 2003.

Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1963. Stanford University Press, 1999.

Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War, 1944-1946. Columbia University Press; reprint edition 1993.

With M P. Leffler (eds.). The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

With Quinn-Judge, S. The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-79. Routledge, 2006.

With Hanhimaki, J. The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory. Frank Cass, 2000.

With Chen J; Tonnesson, S; Nguyen Vu Tung; and Hershberg, J. 77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Indochina War, 1964-1977. Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998.

With Lundestad, G. Beyond the Cold War: New Dimensions in International Relations. Scandinavian University Press, 1993.

With Holtsmark, S G, and Neumann, I B. The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945-89. Palgrave Macmillan, 1994.

With Moon, C Y and Kang, G H. Ending the Cold War in Korea: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives. Yonsei University Press, 2001