The Global Cold War

Online Description

The Cold War shaped the world we live in today - its politics, economics, and military affairs. This book shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the last century created the foundations for most of the key conflicts we see today, including the War on Terror. It focuses on how the Third World policies of the two twentieth-century superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union - gave rise to resentments and resistance that in the end helped topple one superpower and still seriously challenge the other. Ranging from China to Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua, it provides a truly global perspective on the Cold War. And by exploring both the development of interventionist ideologies and the revolutionary movements that confronted interventions, the book links the past with the present in ways that no other major work on the Cold War era has succeeded in doing.

🔫 Author Background

Odd Arne Westad is a Norwegian historian of modern international history and one of the leading scholars of the global Cold War. At the time of this book he was Director of the Cold War Studies Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and had written or edited ten books, including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 and (with Jussi Hanhimäki) The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. 

He draws on newly opened archives across the First, Second, and Third Worlds and positions this synthesis to bridge disciplinary literatures that often “speak past each other.” 

🔍 Author’s Main Issue / Thesis

Westad argues that the defining dynamics of the Cold War unfolded in the Global South: interventions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—not Europe—shaped international order and domestic politics from 1945 to 1991. 

Both superpowers were driven by universalist ideologies—American “freedom” and Soviet “social justice”—to transform other societies, and they treated the Third World as the proving ground of modernity. 

These interventions often reproduced late-colonial patterns of domination, devastated peasant societies, and, ultimately, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet project while entangling U.S. power in enduring dilemmas.

🧭 One-Paragraph Overview

The Global Cold War is a thematic and case-driven history that first reconstructs the ideological roots of U.S. and Soviet interventionism (Chs. 1–2) and the evolution of anticolonial revolutionary movements (Ch. 3). It then follows how U.S. global strategy and economic architectures helped “create” the Third World as a political category (Ch. 4) and how Cuba and Vietnam catalyzed revolutionary internationalism (Ch. 5). The core case studies cover Southern Africa/Angola (Ch. 6), Ethiopia and the Horn (Ch. 7), and Iran–Afghanistan (Ch. 8). The final chapters analyze the Reagan-era offensive (Ch. 9) and Gorbachev’s withdrawal (Ch. 10), culminating in a conclusion that reframes the Cold War as a late phase of pan‑European global control with catastrophic consequences for many societies in the South. 

🔑 Top Takeaways

• The Cold War’s center of gravity was the Global South; the superpowers tested and enacted their ideologies there. 

• U.S. and Soviet projects were modernizing and universalist, more about control and improvement than classical extraction, yet they reproduced imperial logics and violence. 

• Third World elites were not passive: they sought superpower patronage, pursued state‑building, and often fought their own peasantries in high‑modernist projects. 

• U.S. economic power (Bretton Woods, IMF/World Bank, market ideology) structured development paths and solidarities that fed both resistance and radicalization.

• The 1970s–80s debt shocks and commodity price swings reconfigured alliances and undercut collectivist models, paving the way for Reagan-era rollback and Gorbachev’s retreat. 

• Peasant societies bore the brunt of Cold War wars; “winning” often meant hunger, displacement, and cultural devastation. 

📒 Sections

Introduction

Summary: Westad defines terms (“Cold War,” “Third World,” “global,” “intervention”) and sets the argument: the Cold War system (c. 1945–1991) was a global contest to universalize rival modernities; its decisive episodes occurred in the South. He treats the Cold War in the South as a late stage of European global control, with U.S. and Soviet interventions resembling the “new imperialism” of the late colonial era. The book’s structure moves from ideological origins (U.S., Soviet, anticolonial) to case studies and the dénouement under Reagan and Gorbachev. He emphasizes agency among postcolonial elites and the methodological payoff from archive openings across blocs. The focus is especially on the 1970s–early 1980s, when interventions peaked and Third World developments most shaped the wider conflict.

Key Points:

• Operational definitions and scope; centrality of South to Cold War analysis. 

• Continuities with late colonialism; interventions as “civilizing” missions of rival modernities. 

• Third World elites negotiated, invited, and leveraged superpower involvement. 

• Emphasis on 1970s–80s peak intensity. 

• Interdisciplinary synthesis enabled by new archives. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Colonial continuities; ideology as driver; local agency; the developmental/modernist template.

Chapter 1: The empire of liberty — American ideology and foreign interventions

Summary: The chapter traces a line from the early republic’s expansionist ethos and liberty‑centered identity to a global ideology fusing freedom, markets, technology, and security. It shows how “theory” (republican liberty) and “tastes” (commerce/expansion) entwined, making intervention seem both necessary and virtuous. By the 20th century, America’s self‑image as the vanguard of modernity generalized into a teleological belief that what the U.S. is today, the world will be tomorrow. The chapter follows continental conquest, overseas empire, Wilsonianism, and Cold War modernization, arguing that anti-Communist interventions were framed as “interventions for reform” to remake societies for development.

Key Points:

• Fusion of liberty, markets, technology, and security into a universalist mission. 

• Continental and overseas expansion as precedent for later Third World interventions.

• Modernization teleology and belief in open markets as foreign policy ideology. 

• Early Cold War documents (e.g., NSC‑68) cast the U.S. as responsible for global order. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Ideology–policy feedback; modernization as security; market order as moral order.

Chapter 2: The empire of justice — Soviet ideology and foreign interventions

Summary: Westad presents the Soviet project as a universalist, ideational state inheriting an expansionist empire and committed to a collectivist modernity. Leninist practice prioritized revolutionary security over national sovereignty, leading to a doctrine of aiding revolutions and deterring “imperialist” intervention. Post‑Stalin leaders sought a world safe for revolution without global war, treating Third World transformations as strategically and ideologically central. The chapter foregrounds tensions between Marxist universalism and empire‑state legacies.

Key Points:

• Soviet universalism and civilizational mission; continuities with imperial Russia. 

• Leninist subordination of sovereignty to revolutionary security. 

• Post‑Stalin goal: make the world safe for revolution, without general war. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Revolutionary raison d’état; justice vs. sovereignty; empire‑to‑ideology continuity.

Chapter 3: The revolutionaries — anticolonial politics and transformations

Summary: This chapter maps anticolonial currents, distinguishing (crudely) “Marxist” and “nativist” strands that frequently overlapped in practice. World War I and its aftermath catalyzed anti‑imperial mobilization; figures like M.N. Roy and Nehru embodied divergent pathways toward modernity. European “orientalist” constructions of tradition were reappropriated for mobilization; revolutionary struggle often seemed the only exit from humiliation and state violence. The Cold War intersected with and amplified these trajectories; by the 1970s many post‑independence elites turned toward Marxism for its structured, “scientific” promise.

Key Points:

• Anticolonial thought blended Marxist and nativist elements. 

• Post‑WWI shocks and broken promises radicalized elites. 

• Cold War provided patrons and ideational frames for local revolutions. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Hybridity of ideologies; circulation of models; local grievance meets global patrons.

Chapter 4: Creating the Third World — the United States confronts revolution

Summary: After 1945 Washington repeatedly intervened across the South to block leftist movements and to install or sustain pro‑U.S. regimes, embedding development within an anti‑Communist security frame. U.S. economic predominance and control of Bretton Woods institutions structured incentives, often favoring market‑oriented allies and constraining alternatives. NSC‑68‑style thinking cast America as guarantor of global order, linking “development” to political change on U.S. terms. Debt, trade asymmetries, and oil politics (notably after 1973) hardened the landscape and catalyzed radicalization.

Key Points:

• “Interventions for reform” aimed to change domestic orders before development. 

• IMF/World Bank leverage and post‑Bretton Woods shifts shaped outcomes. 

• OPEC shock and easy credit fueled a 1970s borrowing boom with long shadows. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Security–development nexus; economic order as power; unintended radicalization.

Chapter 5: The Cuban and Vietnamese challenges

Summary: Cuba and Vietnam contested both U.S. hegemony and Soviet orthodoxy, championing revolutionary internationalism and more activist strategies. Their symbolic power far exceeded direct policy emulation, inspiring creative (mis)readings among Third World movements. The Sino‑Soviet split widened tactical space, allowing Marxists to claim ideological legitimacy outside Moscow’s line. Westad highlights how these revolutions energized transnational networks and set new templates for guerrilla strategies and state‑building. 

Key Points:

• Revolutionary models inspired action beyond their contexts (“creative misunderstandings”). 

• Sino‑Soviet split legitimated left criticism of Moscow and opened maneuvering room. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Diffusion of revolution; ideological pluralization within socialism.

Chapter 6: The crisis of decolonization — Southern Africa

Summary: The fall of Portugal’s empire (1974) and the scramble over Angola produced a dense interventionary field: the MPLA, UNITA, FNLA, South Africa, Cuba, the USSR, and the U.S. all entered. Soviet‑Cuban alignment in Angola marked a new pattern of intervention; Pretoria’s incursions and Washington’s covert aid failed to prevent MPLA consolidation. Westad situates these wars within regional decolonization and apartheid’s external strategy, showing how superpower competition intersected with local rivalries and liberation politics.

Key Points:

• Carnation Revolution enabled independence cascades; Angola became a proxy crucible. 

• Soviet‑Cuban military coordination in late 1975 signaled deeper commitment. 

• South African decision‑making and U.S. covert efforts proved decisive yet insufficient. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Post‑imperial vacuums; regional hegemons; proxy war logics.

Chapter 7: The prospects of socialism — Ethiopia and the Horn

Summary: Ethiopia’s 1974 revolution brought the Derg to power, radicalizing amid civil war, nationalities conflicts, and the Ogaden War with Somalia. Soviet and Cuban support deepened after Angola’s outcome, aligning with Addis Ababa’s Marxist rhetoric; yet high‑modernist social engineering (and Red Terror) ravaged society and undercut legitimacy. Westad details how ideological affinity and regional security imperatives drew Moscow further in, only to confront limits of state‑building against a diverse, mobilized countryside.

Key Points:

• Post‑1974 state radicalization and repression met multi‑front insurgency. 

• Soviet/Cuban confidence post‑Angola encouraged deeper Horn commitments. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: High modernism vs. peasantry; nationalities and the socialist state; limits of external templates.

Chapter 8: The Islamist defiance — Iran and Afghanistan

Summary: In Iran, the Shah’s modernization and U.S. backing produced mounting discontent channelled by Islamist networks; revolution toppled a key American pillar. In Afghanistan, PDPA modernization by fiat provoked societal revolt; the Soviet invasion (1979) tried to reset the project, instead stoking transnational jihad and bleeding Moscow. Westad places Islamism’s rise within Cold War structures while stressing its independent ideological appeal and organizational capacity. 

Key Points:

• Islamist mobilization capitalized on the failures of secular modernization. 

• The 1979 Soviet invasion became the emblem of Third World overreach and blowback. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Religion as counter‑modernity; revolutionary legitimacy beyond Left/Right binaries.

Chapter 9: The 1980s — the Reagan offensive

Summary: Reagan reframed U.S. policy as an ideological counteroffensive, backing insurgents (Afghan mujahidin, Contras, UNITA) while pushing a liberalizing global economic agenda (the emerging “Washington Consensus”). Third World solidarities fractured; NIEO demands gave way to diverging development paths, dramatic terms‑of‑trade deterioration, and debt crises. Westad links economic shocks and political rollback, highlighting how U.S. activism and market orthodoxy constricted the space for socialist experiments and pressured Soviet positions.

Key Points:

• Ideological assertiveness plus reliance on proxies marked Reagan’s method. 

• Debt/commodity shocks devastated many Southern economies. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Economic structure as strategy; proxy warfare; fragmentation of “Third World.”

Chapter 10: The Gorbachev withdrawal and the end of the Cold War

Summary: Gorbachev initially sought to salvage Third World alliances through reformist pragmatism, but Afghanistan’s intractability and domestic reform priorities forced a strategic retrenchment. Politburo debates concluded the war was unwinnable and politically ruinous; the 1988–89 withdrawal symbolized the eclipse of Soviet Third World ambitions. U.S. troubles (e.g., Iran–Contra) and European diplomacy shaped timing and terms but did not reverse the fundamental Soviet decision to exit.

Key Points:

• Political logic, not military calculus, drove the Afghan withdrawal timeline. 

• Exit undercut Soviet ideological legitimacy across the South. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Reform vs. empire; reputational collapse; the limits of ideology.

Conclusion: Revolutions, interventions, and great power collapse

Summary: Westad argues the Cold War in the South extended colonial domination “through slightly different means,” centering on control and ideological modernization projects with catastrophic social costs. He stresses the devastation visited on peasant societies, the rise of identitarian (ethnic/religious) politics in the ruins of failed high‑modernist experiments, and the asymmetric trajectories of the superpowers—Soviet collapse vs. U.S. hyperpower. He warns that unilateral interventionism fails; only pluralism, interaction, and multilateralism can mitigate conflict in an ideologically diverse world.

Key Points:

• Continuum from colonial rule to Cold War interventionism. 

• Peasantry targeted; wars “won” by hunger and displacement. 

• U.S. emerged as hyperpower, but moral triumphalism obscures Third World tragedies. 

• Normative plea for multilateralism and openness over force. 

  Cross-Cutting Themes: Afterlives of empire; social costs of high modernism; the peril of ideologized power.

🎭 Central Themes

• Ideological Modernities as Imperial Logics: U.S. “freedom” and Soviet “justice” operated as civilizing missions. 

• Third World Agency and Constraint: Local elites instrumentalized superpowers but often turned modernization projects against their own rural populations. 

• Economy as Strategy: Bretton Woods, debt, commodities, and trade regimes structured political possibilities. 

• From Revolution to Identity: Failures of socialist and Americanizing projects fed ethnic and religious mobilizations. 

📖 Historiographical Context

• Challenges Eurocentric, military‑strategic Cold War narratives by relocating causality to the South and to development ideologies. 

• Bridges intervention studies (historians/IR) with revolution and social transformation literatures (sociology/anthropology), exploiting new archival openings. 

• Engages with debates on tiers‑mondisme, modernization theory, dependency/world‑systems, and postcolonial critiques, reframing them through the lens of practice (interventions) rather than abstract models. 

🧩 Frameworks & Methods

• Conceptual: Defines Cold War/Third World/global/intervention in operational terms; reads the Cold War as a late phase of European modernist domination.

• IR/Comparative: Modernization vs. Leninist developmentalism; high modernism as the shared ideological grammar of violent social engineering. 

• Sources: Multilingual archives across blocs and regions, combined with elite interviews and cross‑disciplinary scholarship. 

🤷‍♂️ Actors & Perspectives

U.S. Foreign Policy Elites (Truman → Reagan)

• Role/position: Architects of interventionist policy linking development and security.

• Perspectives: Teleological modernization, market primacy, fear of Communist expansion. 

• Evolution: From postwar consolidation to Vietnam trauma to Reagan’s proxy‑driven offensive. 

• Influence: Set global economic rules; backed anti‑left forces; reshaped Southern political economies. 

Soviet Leadership (Stalin → Gorbachev)

• Role/position: Promoters of socialist modernity; interveners to “make the world safe for revolution.” 

• Perspectives: Collective justice, party‑led transformation, suspicion of imperialist subversion.

• Evolution: From confident Third World gains to Afghan quagmire and strategic retrenchment. 

• Influence: Armed/supported left regimes/movements; catalyzed counter‑coalitions; collapse reshaped global order. 

Revolutionary States (Cuba, Vietnam)

• Role/position: Exemplars of anti‑imperial revolution; exporters of militant internationalism.

• Perspectives: Autonomy from both superpowers; legitimacy of armed struggle; vanguardism.

• Evolution: From national liberation to international support roles (e.g., Angola). 

• Influence: Inspired movements across the South; altered Soviet and U.S. calculations. 

Southern African Actors (MPLA, UNITA, South Africa)

• Role/position: Competing claimants to post‑Portuguese statehood and regional security.

• Perspectives: Liberation legitimacy vs. anti‑Communist containment; apartheid’s external defense.

• Evolution: From civil war to externally sustained proxy battleground. 

• Influence: Drew in Cuba/USSR/US; showcased late‑Cold War proxy dynamics. 

Ethiopian Derg & Insurgents

• Role/position: Revolutionary state builders vs. national/peasant resistances.

• Perspectives: Marxist modernization vs. local autonomy and identity claims.

• Evolution: Radicalization, Red Terror, Ogaden War; eventual exhaustion. 

• Influence: Demonstrated limits of high‑modernist engineering and external patronage. 

Iranian Islamists & Afghan Mujahidin

• Role/position: Religious movements overturning or resisting secular/left regimes.

• Perspectives: Anti‑imperialist, anti‑secular modernism; sovereignty through Islamic legitimacy.

• Evolution: From mobilization to state power (Iran) or protracted insurgency (Afghanistan).

• Influence: Reoriented regional politics; accelerated Soviet crisis and U.S. proxy strategies.

🕰 Timeline of Major Events

• 1955 — Bandung Conference: Non‑Aligned solidarity articulates a “third way,” shaping superpower outreach and Southern agency.

• 1959 — Cuban Revolution: Launches a radical internationalist pole that inspires insurgencies beyond Latin America.

• 1965 — U.S. escalation in Vietnam: Hardens interventionist logics and provokes global backlash.

• 1973 — First Oil Shock (OPEC): Resets global political economy; spurs debt‑led survival strategies in the South. 

• 1974 — Carnation Revolution (Portugal): Opens decolonization in Angola/Mozambique; triggers proxy contests. 

• 1975 — Angola’s civil war & Cuban/Soviet intervention: New pattern of deep external involvement in Southern Africa. 

• 1977–1978 — Ogaden War: Tests Soviet alliances; deepens Horn violence under the Derg. 

• 1979 — Iranian Revolution: Islamist overthrow of a U.S. pillar; reconfigures regional politics. 

• 1979 — Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: Pivotal overreach with domestic and international blowback. 

• 1982 — Mexican debt crisis: Signals systemic constraints and the tightening of IMF conditionality. 

• 1986–1987 — Iran–Contra & Politburo turn toward withdrawal: U.S. scandal; Soviet decision crystallizes. 

• 1988–1989 — Geneva Accords & Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan: Symbolic end of Soviet Third World ambitions. 

🧐 Critical Reflections

Strengths: Global scope with deep case studies; elegant integration of ideology, political economy, and local agency; innovative use of cross‑bloc archives; persuasive reframing of Cold War geographies. 

Weaknesses/Blind Spots: Relative underemphasis on Middle Eastern Arab–Israeli wars and South Asia’s dyads (by design); sometimes over-aggregates “Third World elites”; underplays intra‑U.S. domestic contestations beyond elite consensus in key periods. 

Unresolved Questions: How to parse causality between economic structures (debt/commodities) and ideological shifts? To what extent did non‑aligned states autonomously set agendas independent of superpower framings?

⚔️ Comparative Insights

• Versus traditional Eurocentric Cold War histories: Westad relocates agency and consequence to the South; contrasts with strategic–military narratives centered on Europe. 

• With modernization theory (Rostow) vs. dependency (Wallerstein): He shows how both informed practice but insists on archival grounding of how ideas traveled via interventions and local elites. 

• With James C. Scott: Converges on “high modernism” as a grammar of state violence across ideologies. 

✍️ Key Terms

• Third World: Former (semi)colonies in Africa, Asia, Latin America subject to pan‑European domination; also a political identity of nonalignment and alternative development. 

• Intervention: State‑led efforts to determine another state’s political direction. 

• High Modernism: Technocratic belief in linear progress and rational planning, shared across U.S./Soviet projects, often imposed violently. 

• Washington Consensus: 1980s policy package linking stabilization, liberalization, and privatization to access to credit/relief. 

• NIEO: 1970s push for a New International Economic Order emphasizing producer interests and compensation for colonial damage. 

❓ Open Questions

• Can interventions ever be squared with pluralist modernities, or do they inherently reproduce hierarchical domination?

• How might a fuller inclusion of gendered and environmental histories modify Westad’s conclusions about social costs and state projects?

• What post‑1991 continuities show the afterlife of Cold War interventionism in the Global South?

🗂 Notable Quotes & Thoughts

• “America just had more of everything: power, growth, ideas, modernity… And it created the Third World, by repeated interventions… and—first and foremost—by its vision of development.” (p. 403) 

• “The wars fought in the Third World during the Cold War were despairingly destructive… the best way of winning them was through hunger and thirst rather than through battles and bombing.” (pp. 399–400) 

• “What remains is the ideological quest for freedom, threatening to turn Iraq into a nightmare of unending conflict… as happened so often… during the Cold War.” (p. 405) 

• “The only way of working against increased conflict is by… acting multilaterally to forestall disastrous events.” (pp. 406–407) 

🥰 Who Would Like It?

Graduate students and scholars in IR and global history; policy analysts interested in the limits of interventionism; readers seeking a South‑centered reframing of Cold War causality and consequence.

📚 Related Books

• John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (contrast in Euro‑Atlantic focus)

• Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World‑System (structure and dependency)

• James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (high modernism)

• Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions (Cuba in Africa) 

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