Introduction; 1. The empire of liberty: American ideology and foreign interventions; 2. The empire of justice: Soviet ideology and foreign interventions; 3. The revolutionaries: anti-colonial politics and transformations; 4. Creating the Third World: the United States confronts revolution; 5. The Cuban and Vietnamese challenges; 6. The crisis of decolonization: Southern Africa; 7. The prospects of socialism: Ethiopia and the Horn; 8. The Islamist defiance; 9. The 1980s: the Reagan offensive; 10. The Gorbachev withdrawal and the end of the Cold War; Conclusion: Revolutions, interventions and Great Power collapse.
Prize-winning study of the global conflict waged during the Cold War and its legacy today.
Odd Arne Westad is Director of the Cold War Studies Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His recent publications include Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (2003) and The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003).
'This is a genuinely 'international' history … few genuine research
monographs are so wide ranging chronologically and geographically,
while also trying to absorb insights from sociology and social
anthropology … taken as a whole no historian has dealt with the
links between the Cold War so fully, so broadly and so thoughtfully
as Westad in this new account … a truly seminal work, whose
findings will exercise those researching the Cold War for many
years.' Reviews in History
'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: US 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 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
'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
'For the serious student of our times Odd Arne Westad's The Global
Cold War could provide a serious weapon for their scholastic
arsenal.' Open History: The Journal of the Open University History
Society
'… Westad's work combines sophisticated analysis, insight into the
motivations and behaviours of non-Western actors, historical
perspective, fair-mindedness and a sympathy for the victims on all
sides. Westad's pioneering work in Soviet archives means that his
book illuminates better than any other work I have read in English
the thinking and motivations of the Soviet leadership and its
advisers when it came to the Third World.' London Review of
Books
'… Westad presents a finely crafted and immaculately researched
study that presents some of the findings from the archives of the
former Soviet Union and its communist allies alongside the more
familiar American and western sources.' International Affairs
'There are already a number of books on the Cold War, and more are
likely as more information becomes available. This work will remain
important, however, for shifting the focus away from Europe and
North Korea, to the wider world in which the superpower struggle
took place. It is well written and draws on a wide range of
materials. Many will not agree with all the arguments, but it is a
major contribution to our understanding of how the world became as
it is.' Asian Affairs
'Westad's brilliant, bitter account, based on prodigious research,
is an indictment of the superpowers. They treated the Third World
as their playground and left it devastated.' Martin McCauley
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