Lino Camprubi (Berlin): The Cold War Mediterranean
Geophysics and Geopolitics
19.01.2017 16:00 Uhr – 18:00 Uhr
wann: Donnerstag, 19. Januar 2017, 16-18 Uhr
wo: Historicum, Schellingstr. 12, Raum K026
Vortrag im Rahmen des Oberseminars "Perspektiven der Wissenschaftsgeschichte"
"Nuclear powered submarines armed with nuclear warheads recruited the underwater world into a Cold War battlefield. Because an invisible enemy could emerge by surprise from any point of the world-ocean, combatants aspired to global surveillance. For that, they targeted chokepoints. Together with the northern GAP, the Strait of Gibraltar was the most strategic bottleneck for the US Navy to detect Soviet submarines going into the Atlantic. While the Strait’s narrowness presented an opportunity for mounting detection barriers, its depth and complex hydrology posed severe difficulties. These were matched by the political frictions existing around the Rock of Gibraltar - a British outpost bordering Francoist Spain, a non-NATO ally to the US – and North African decolonization. Looking at defense-oriented oceanographic research, I will argue that geophysics and geopolitics reconfigured the geography of the Cold War Mediterranean." - Lino Camprubi