The Global Cold War

Citation

Westad, O. A. (2005). The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Summary

Westad's book places the conflicts and revolutions of what was then called the Third World at the centre of Cold War history. The publisher's description presents the book as an account of how the globalisation of the superpower contest laid the foundations for many of today's conflicts, including the "war on terror". It examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that pushed the United States and the Soviet Union towards intervention, and how those interventions produced resentment and resistance that eventually helped topple one superpower and challenge the other. The book has an introduction, ten chapters and a conclusion, and its notes take up some sixty pages at the end.

Introduction

The introduction frames the study and its questions about interventions, revolutions and the legacy of the Cold War.

Chapter 1: The Empire of Liberty: American Ideology and Foreign Interventions

The first of two chapters on the superpowers looks at the American ideology behind the United States' foreign interventions.

Chapter 2: The Empire of Justice: Soviet Ideology and Foreign Interventions

The matching chapter treats the Soviet side: the ideology behind Moscow's foreign interventions. Reading Chapters 1 and 3 together shows what each superpower believed it was doing.

Chapters 3–4: The Revolutionaries: Anticolonial Politics and Transformations; Creating the Third World: The United States Confronts Revolution

Chapter 3 turns to anticolonial politics and the transformations the revolutionaries pursued, and Chapter 4, whose title speaks of creating the Third World, follows how the United States confronted revolution.

Chapter 5: The Cuban and Vietnamese Challenges

Cuba and Vietnam are treated together as challenges.

Chapters 6–8: The Crisis of Decolonization: Southern Africa; The Prospects of Socialism: Ethiopia and the Horn; The Islamist Defiance: Iran and Afghanistan

Each of these chapters takes a region and a moment: the crisis in Southern Africa, the prospects of socialism in Ethiopia and the Horn, and the Islamist challenge in Iran and Afghanistan. The publisher's list of countries also includes China, Indonesia, Angola and Nicaragua.

Chapters 9–10: The 1980s: The Reagan Offensive; The Gorbachev Withdrawal and the End of the Cold War

The last two narrative chapters follow the American offensive of the 1980s and the Soviet retreat that ended the Cold War.

Conclusion: Revolutions, Interventions, and Great Power Collapse

The conclusion draws together the book's argument about the effect of interventions on the superpowers and on the countries where they intervened.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapters 1–2

• Interventionism: the shared practice of the two superpowers of acting in other states' affairs, the central subject of the book.
• Competing ideologies of empire: the American "empire of liberty" and the Soviet "empire of justice", each convinced that its model should be spread.

Chapters 3–8

• The Third World: the arena of revolution and superpower competition whose "creation" is the subject of Chapter 4.
• Anticolonial politics: the revolutionary movements to which the interventions responded, the subject of Chapter 3.
• Crisis of decolonization: the turmoil of colonial exit, taken up through Southern Africa in Chapter 6.

Chapters 9–10 and the Conclusion

• Reagan offensive: the American effort of the 1980s to roll back revolutions.
• Gorbachev withdrawal: the Soviet retreat from commitments abroad that accompanied the end of the Cold War.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A different centre of gravity. Where many accounts begin with Europe and the superpowers' bilateral crises, the book is built around revolutions and interventions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The term "global Cold War" is now widely associated with Westad's work.
• Recognition. The book won the 2006 Bancroft Prize, the Michael Harrington Prize of the American Political Science Association and the Akira Iriye International History Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Award.
• Both superpowers in view. Two parallel chapters on American and Soviet ideology put the two on the same footing.
• Documentation. The notes run to over sixty pages, a sign of the scholarship behind the case studies, and the author is a founding editor of the journal Cold War History.

Limitations

• Not a general Cold War history. The title and description put Third World interventions at the centre, so European crises, nuclear strategy and arms control are context rather than subject.
• Selective cases. The case-study chapters cover chosen regions, among them Southern Africa, the Horn, Iran and Afghanistan, and Cuba and Vietnam. A reader after a complete survey of any one region should look elsewhere.
• Chapters mix organising principles. Some chapters are about ideologies, some about regions and some about decades, so the narrative does not run in a single chronological line.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the twentieth-century history course, Westad is the specialised, argumentative work on the Cold War. Robert McMahon's The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction gives the 1945-to-collapse outline that makes a good background for Westad, and is the sensible first read. William Keylor's The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond and William Duiker's Contemporary World History are surveys that provide the wider international and global setting, and Duiker pays balanced attention to Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes covers the whole short twentieth century and is useful for placing Westad's case studies within the century as a whole. Mark Mazower's Dark Continent is the European counterpart: where Mazower asks how democracy, fascism and communism competed in Europe, Westad looks at how the Cold War played out among the peoples outside it.

How to Use This Book

Westad suits readers who already know the outline of the Cold War and of decolonization, such as students who have taken a survey course in modern history or international relations. Start with the introduction, then Chapters 1 and 3 as a pair, since they set up the two superpowers' ideas of their own role. The regional chapters can then be read in any order according to interest: Chapter 5 for Cuba and Vietnam, Chapters 6–8 for Africa and the Middle East.

For a shorter path, read the introduction, Chapters 1–2 and the conclusion. Keep a chronology of the Cold War next to the book, since the chapters move across decades, and use the notes to find the archival and secondary sources behind a chapter you plan to write about. Pairing it with a general survey keeps the European story in view.