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Featured Review
| Odd Arne Westad. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 484. $35.00.
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| Odd Arne Westad has presented us with a major revision in the historiography of the Cold War. His book has already generated debate in, for example, the pages of Cold War History. His central claim is that "the most important aspects of the Cold War were neither military nor strategic, nor Europe-centered, but connected to political and social developments in the Third World" (p. 396). This is a position with which many, including the present reviewer, will have a great deal of sympathy. It is, however, a more complicated and problematic proposition than it might, at first sight, seem. |
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The author takes us on a tour through the hot spots of the Cold War. These are largely to be found in the underdeveloped regions of the world. Westad does a marvelous job in integrating a mass of material in many languages dealing with a vast range of conflicts around the Third World. Here is the chief merit of the book and the reason why it is an important landmark in Cold War history. Nowhere else has the intricate story of how and why the superpowers and their allies intervened in Angola, Congo, Yemen, Vietnam, Somalia, Central America, and Iran been told so convincingly and with such command of the sources. |
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But Westad makes larger claims, and these will not all find ready acceptance. Perhaps most importantly, Westad asserts that his interpretation contradicts the notion that the Cold War was a "contest between two superpowers over military power and strategic control, mostly centered on Europe" (p. 396). It is not entirely clear why we are required to choose between these two interpretations, why they are mutually exclusive. Surely the Cold War was simultaneously a strategic confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, both around the defense of Western Europe and around the nuclear confrontation, and also a series of conflicts in the Third World. Westad has done the profession a great service by placing consideration of the interconnections of these various arenas of conflict on the agenda. But it is extreme and unnecessary to assert that "on the contrary" the Cold War was all about the Third World and not in essence about the military-strategic conflict in the North. |
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The design of Westad's book does not allow us to decide the matter. As William Wohlforth has noted in the pages of Cold War History, "Westad's claim about the Third World's relative importance cannot be validated by looking only at the Third World. The only way to assess this is to examine the interconnection between the 'classic' Cold War and the Cold War in the Third World." This Westad does not do; instead he presents a plausible case that the Third World was an important arena of Cold War contention. This is not the same as saying that it was the most important arena of Cold War conflict. |
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To understand why Westad adopts this extreme position, we need to consider his views on ideology. Westad is to be applauded for his attention to what elites actually thought. He is no "realist," operating only with disembodied state "interests." His book starts with chapters on the ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union, arguing that each superpower was committed to the export of a particular model of modernity. Further, he explores in detail the distinctly Chinese view of the world and their role in it, showing how the Sino-Soviet split worked its way out in many Third World countries. Better still, he gives elites in the Third World a central role in his account, elucidating the ways in which their worldviews and experiences either meshed with, or were in tension with, those of the superpower elites. The result is a subtle and intricate account of how various elites positioned themselves vis-à-vis one another in a complex dance of war and diplomacy. In this narrative the Cold War in the Third World takes moves from a minor, Manichean shadow play, distracting attention from the central conflict in the North, to an intricate, many-sided struggle to impose one's goals against the resistance of others. Westad's erudition and attention to detail make this a superb account. Putting ideology at the heart of his analysis pays enormous dividends. |
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