The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times [Hardcover]

Odd Arne Westad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0521853648 | ISBN-13: 978-0521853644

The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States indelibly shaped the world we live in today--especially international politics, economics, and military affairs. This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's key international conflicts, including the "war on terror." Odd Arne Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that drove the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. towards interventionism. He focuses on how these interventions gave rise to resentments and resistance that, in the end, helped to topple one and to seriously challenge the other superpower. In addition, he demonstrates how these worldwide interventions determined the international and domestic framework within which political, social and cultural changes took place in such countries as China, Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua. According to Westad, these changes, plus the ideologies, movements and states that interventionism stirred up, constitute the real legacy of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2004 he was named head of department and co-director of the new LSE Cold War Studies Centre. Professor Westad is the author, or editor, of ten books on contemporary international history including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (2003) and, with Jussi Hanhimaki, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003). In addition, he is a founding editor of the journal Cold War History.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Based on prodigious research, this ambitious and wide-ranging book presents the most important account to date of the Cold War in the Third World. Westad's study represents broad-based, international history at its best. He deftly weaves together the tale of world politics writ large with stories about variegated processes of revolution and social change across the Third World. This should prove an indispensable work for anyone interested in the history of the twentieth-century."
-Robert J. McMahon, University of Florida

"The Global Cold War is a powerful account of the way in which the third world moved to the center of international politics in the closing decades of the 20th century. Drawing on a stunning multiplicity of archival material, Odd Arne Westad integrates perspectives and disciplines which have, until now, remained separate: U.S. and Soviet ideologies, their politics and the interventions that flowed from both; insurrection, rebellion, revolution and the power of competing models of development, systems of support or subversion (sometimes synonymous) that in part determined their outcome. Westad writes with the combination of clarity, wit and passion that have always characterized his work. This time the canvas is large enough to do full justice to his scholarship and his humanity."
-Marilyn B. Young, New York University

"Odd Arne Westad's new book is an extremely important contribution to the historiography of the Cold War. With broad erudition, amazing geographical range, and inventive research in archives around the globe, Westad tells the tragic story of the United States and Soviet Union's involvement in what became called the 'Third World.' The newly emerging nations of the 'South' - of Africa, Asia, and Latin America - barely emerged from their humiliating subservience to European colonialism before being dragged by Cold War rivalries into ideologically-inspired upheavals that ended up bankrupting their countries and devastating their peoples. Westad's study enables his readers to integrate the Third World into the history of the Cold War and confronts them with the meaning of intervention in the past for the international system today."
-Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University

"In a reinterpretation of the Cold War that is as thorough as it is important, Westad places Soviet and American interventions in the Third World at the center of their struggle. Driven by ideology and the need to affirm the rightness of their principles, both superpowers felt compelled to contest with the other in areas of little intrinsic importance. The results were almost uniformly failures, and in the process brought much sorrow and destruction to the Third World. The picture is not a pretty one, but Westad shows that studying it reveals much about the Cold War, and about the current world scene."
-Robert Jervis, Columbia University

"Westad's account is sharply observed and deeply researched...this book is superb: few scholars could match Westad's mastery of the sources."
-Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006

"The Global Cold War is remarkable for its geographical and historical breath"
-Robert A. Goldberg, University of Utah, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This study is a comprehensive, well-documented, and well-written history of the Cold War in the Third World. Westad has done a superb job of explaining how the world of today, both at home and abroad, is largely a product of the Cold War era. His book belongs on the shelf of every serious student of recent world history."
-Ronald Powaski, The Historian

"This particularly impressive and clearly written account of the Cold War is especially valuable because of its global perspective, and its focus on the worldwide impact of superpower confrontation...an impressive work that deserves attention."
-Jeremy Black, University of Exeter, The Journal of Military History

Book Description

This is a compelling and controversial reexamination of the global conflict waged by the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War and the part it played in shaping Africa, Asia and Latin America today. Arne Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that drove the United States and Soviet Union towards interventionism. He argues that the real lasting legacy of the Cold War are the ideologies, movements and states which interventionism has fuelled and which increasingly dominate international affairs today.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 498 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (October 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521853648
• ISBN-13: 978-0521853644
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important and surprisingly readable new account of our times, April 1, 2007

By 

Constant Reader (Gloucester MA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Paperback)

Westad's book offers a new interpretation of the second half of the twentieth century, one that focuses on how the conflict between the US and the USSR-- and the division of the world into two halves-- played out in the Third World, and shaped and was shaped by the politics of those regions. The first two chapters are fairly heavy going, as Westad lays out sweeping statements about first the US, then the USSR, arguing that both countries developed around ideas that committed them to an almost evangelical form of statehood, of exporting their way of life. As he moves into the middle of the book, however, the story really takes off; he offers well-informed, fascinating case studies ranging from Angola and Ethiopia to Iran and Afghanistan. In every case, he illuminates the way in which the US and USSR offered only two sides on the playing field, and how people in these Third World countries responded by playing the superpowers off one another. One of the central processes that he brings to light is the way in which this situation eventually encouraged the rise of sectarian movements in many of those countries, including fundamentalist Islam, which appears here as a natural development from a generation who had watched their predecessors cast in with one of the two superpowers, and end up pawns in a global chess game. After finishing this book, I felt that I had an entirely new perspective on American history in the 20th century and better understood current-day issues from the rise of Islam to American support for Israel to the politics of central Africa. Certainly NOT a light read, but an invaluable one.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding overview of a huge topic, January 19, 2008

By 

Michael Magoon "HistoryBuff" (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Paperback)

This is by far the best book available about the Cold War in the Third World. I have been waiting for a good book on this subject for quite some time, and I was not disappointed.
Westad starts out with a broad overview of American and Soviet history with particular emphasis on the importance of ideology and expansionism. He shows that the Cold War was primarily an ideological struggle between two powers that occurred at a time when when many new nations were coming into being due to European decolonialization. The two forces contributed to the radicalization and violence of the Third World in the Cold War.
Westad does an excellent job of providing both wide scope and in-depth analysis of a number of conflicts. He covers Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Somalia, Angola, Iran, Afghanistan and Central America. Unless you are an expert in all these conflicts, you are sure to learn something from this book. I am somewhat familiar with a few of them and found no major inaccuracies. And Westad does a great job of integrating them together into a tight narrative and argument.
My only complaint is that the book ends with an argument against "intervention." After 400 pages of explaining why past interventions were so important to the direction of modern history, it seems a bit of a contradiction to the rest of the book. But this is just a tiny criticism of an otherwise great book.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Overview of a Neglected Topic, October 6, 2007

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Paperback)

This fine book is devoted to a hugely important topic typically neglected in most discussions of the Cold War; the course and impact of the Cold War in the Third World. Most overview monographs on the Cold War concentrate on US-Soviet relations and/or the impact of the Cold War in Europe and Japan. Westad successfully attempts an overview and structural analysis of the Cold War in the Third World. Westad opens with a pair of summary chapters on the USA and Soviet Union leading up to the beginning of the Cold War. He then covers the early decades of the Cold War in the Third World concisely, and devotes much of the book to the last 2 decades of the Cold War, including detailed analyses of the events in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America. Based on a wealth of secondary sources and analysis of primary literature from both US and Soviet archives, the narrative is comprehensive, clear, and punctuated with thoughtful analysis.

There is a lot of surprising information. While many readers will be aware of US interventions in places like Guatemala and Iran, Westad's descriptions of the depth of US interventions in places like Indonesia and Brazil will come as a surprise. Similarly, his description of how the Soviet involvement in the Third World came to be seen as a crucial element of the legitimacy of the Soviet state goes a long way towards explaining why the events in Afghanistan had such importance. With respect to the battleground states of the various Third World countries where US and Soviet interventions took place, this is generally a series of tragic stories, usually involving considerable bloodshed and impoverishment.

Westad goes considerably beyond good narrative. Several well articulated themes run through the narrative. A basic concept is that the Cold War was driven by two competing ideologies about what should be the basis of modern society - American liberal capitalism and Soviet communism. Westad is very good on how ideological considerations consistently drove US and Soviet policy decisions, including the many cases where ideology led to gross misunderstandings of reality. Another important theme is the independent role of local elites in Third World countries. Over and over again, these elites or portions of them sought superpower support to pursue their own ends, often quite different from those of the superpowers. This led, for example, to the depressingly frequent US support of brutal dictatorships and the Soviet support of regimes who suppressed local communist parties. Westad is very good as well at showing how the Cold War involvement of the superpowers was entangled with decolonialization, another important theme. Both the US and Soviet Union presented themselves as, and made serious efforts to act as, modernizers. In a series of particularly ironic developments, both US and Soviet policies often mimicked the development policies of the imperial states they displaced.

My only substantial criticisms of Westad are his treatment of the origins of the Cold War. Westad presents US policies as rooted in a long history of US expansionism and capitalist ideology. There is considerable truth in this position but it ignores some of the specific circumstances of the 1940s. The failure of the post-WWI settlement seemed to demand a dominant international US role after WWII. Similarly, as Westad's own narrative shows, US fears of the Soviet Union were driven in good part by Stalin's aggressive and paranoid behavior.

Westad concludes by highlighting the frequently tragic consequences of US and Soviet intervention in Third World states, often transforming local conflicts into major disasters. The results of US and Soviet interventions in the Third World are among the most important results of the Cold War, and these results have been largely negative.