This public history project is creating a new research agenda about Africa’s entanglements with the American war in Vietnam by convening hitherto siloed American, Africanist and Vietnamese scholars. As one of the twentieth century’s defining geopolitical events, this war shaped a generation and transformed Cold War statecraft, military struggles, protest movements and everyday political ideas across the world.

The world is experiencing a resurgence of mercantilism. On the one hand, China has been so successful as a developmental state that the USA, as the liberal hegemon, is defaulting to mercantilist strategies to fortify its structural advantage. On the other hand, the USA has been so successful in weaponizing interdependence that other states are adjusting their own strategies. Both tendencies threaten to disrupt the international political economy and engulf the international system in relentless great power competition.