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The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Paperback – October 26, 2011

by Odd Westad (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 160 ratings
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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.
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  1. Print length
    498 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Cambridge University Press
  4. Publication date
    October 26, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    5.98 x 1.13 x 8.98 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    052170314X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0521703147
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

"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

"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

"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

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

"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

"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

"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

About the Author

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).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 32711th edition (October 26, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 498 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 052170314X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521703147
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.76 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.98 x 1.13 x 8.98 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 160 ratings

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Odd Arne Westad

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
160 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dr René Codoni
5.0 out of 5 stars Early global
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2012
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Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, 2005)

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. -Publisher's Book Description

"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

Europe, where I - like the author - grew up during the Cold War, is hardly ever mentioned in this book except at the very beginning. Europe is where it all started, after World War II, but it is actually going back to the German-Russian Sonderfrieden of Brest-Litovsk in 1917. Europe, with a land boundary going through its geographic middle, however, would have been the territory where an atomic land war would have been fought, the Soviets entering by the Fulda Gap in Germany ...

While this kept us scared well enough, the interventions and the confrontations, starting with the Soviet-triggered Berlin Blockade in 1948, while geographically localized, went global: Korea, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Vietnam, The Congo, Somalia, Angola to name but a few of the major ones, not forgetting Afghanistan and Irak. Interventions typically made a mess of things locally, hardly ever achieving anything positive in and for the countries it was meant to keep or get into one's orbit.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has ended the Cold War. We have had enough experience since to doubt that what emerges is very promising: To me, accelerated global migration on an unpreceded scale, militant Islam and China are the three major question marks.

obus6 - Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War - 1/8/2012
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Constant Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Important and surprisingly readable new account of our times
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2007
Verified Purchase
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.
27 people found this helpful
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WH
4.0 out of 5 stars Turgid prose but fascinating
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2019
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Westas has a simple argument to make and plenty of fascinating historical material with which to make it - that the two Cold War superpowers basically ruined the Third World through their heavy handed and amoral (if not immoral) machinations. Taking a tour from Central America through Africa and Asia, he factually illustrates each sequence of events by which ideological and practical considerations collapsed a society (or kept it in a collapsed state). Excellent factually.

That said, the prose is turgid and the argument doesn’t come out until the very end of the book so while it wins a Bancroft prize for its tale for practitioners, it lacks the story telling that make it an entertaining read for others.
4 people found this helpful
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1.
5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting thesis
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2006
Verified Purchase
From reading Westad's book it appears that the American loss in Vietnam actually led to the Soviets losing the Cold War. After the American defeat in Vietnam, the Soviets believed that they could ignore the popular front strategy that they used in Spain during the thirties and continued in Egypt and Indonesia, and replace it with a more revolutionary strategy that would abandon the popular front phase. This was the main reason they supported the revolutionary governments in Angola and Ethiopia. However wars in these African countries and Central America drained the Soviet economy. Finally the Soviets believed that they could prevent Afghanastan from falling to the competing revolutionary ideology of Islamic fundamentalism. Ths further led to financial and human losses for the Soviet Union and finally its collaspse. It is ironic after the Soviet loss in the Cold War the Americans find themselves blinded by triumphalism and committing serious mistakes in the Middle East and Latin America.
14 people found this helpful
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Jade G
3.0 out of 5 stars This book is very dense. In small quantities it's ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2015
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This book is very dense. In small quantities it's extremely informative but I found it difficult to just sit down and read more a couple dozen pages at a time. It does truly cover all of the cold war and focuses on areas I wouldn't have really associated with the cold war previous to this. If you're able to get through the whole thing it will give you a lot more knowledge about the cold war on a global scale.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Xyz
5.0 out of 5 stars A different view on the Cold War
Reviewed in Italy on September 24, 2014
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This book offers a different and well-documented view on the Cold War. While the Western-centered perspective has dipctied the Cold War as purely dyadic confrontation fought in Europe between the two superpower, Westad described the importance of the pheriphery in shaping the Us/USSR conflict, providing a different perspective on the Cold War as a whole and on relevance of smaller actors in bringing on their side the reluctant superpowers.
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Mr. Christopher M. T. Bowden
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2013
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Great book, Love reading this for my International Flashpoint's Module @ University . well written and researched by the author.
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Marco Mangini
3.0 out of 5 stars Marco Mangini
Reviewed in Italy on March 13, 2018
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Libro molto interessante ma, da laico, ho sofferto la carenza di linearità spaziale. Avrei apprezzato di più una narrazione suddivisa per paesi
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DANIEL L FRENCH
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2014
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Arrived promptly and as advertised.
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Sha
4.0 out of 5 stars Modern history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2018
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Well written historical information
One person found this helpful
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