The authors contend that the impact of the Cold War on multilateral organizations (especially UNESCO) as well as on the academic programs in Comparative and International Education or Development Studies in Education has been largely understudied. Both world-systems (USA and its allies, Soviet Union and its allies) laid claim on the project of world peace that UNESCO was meant to pursue. Furthermore, the boom in area, language and development studies in the 1960s was closely associated with the international race between the two world-systems over the patronage of those postcolonial countries that were viewed as "non-aligned" or neutralist. The salutary effects upon education policy in the United States are described, along with the portrayal of education as an inferior aspect of the capitalist system, behind the "iron curtain." The authors note the new research field of post-Cold War studies that emerged in U.S. academe over the past decade, and find that such studies are surprisingly scarce in comparative and international education which, by virtue of analyzing other educational systems, was at the center of the dichotomy.