NOTES
1. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4.
2. Westad, The Global Cold War, 3.
3. Westad, The Global Cold War, 2.
4. Westad, The Global Cold War, 2.
Module 6
Secondary Ideas
Key Points
Westad used case studies to show how superpower* interventions* in the Third World* during the Cold War* created longstanding instability.
Westad’s case studies examine interventions in Afghanistan,* Angola,* Cuba,* Iran,* and Vietnam.*
Each case study reveals a direct link between the superpowers’ interventions and political instability today.
Other Ideas
Odd Arne Westad relied on a series of case studies in The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times to illustrate his argument that much of the instability in the Third World was created by US and Soviet* overt and covert interventions during the Cold War. He examined events in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and Iran, revealing a direct link between past interventions and current political instability in each country.
Perhaps the clearest link can be seen in Westad’s case study of Afghanistan, where US and Soviet interventions during the 1980s completely destabilized the country. That climate of instability persisted into the 1990s, giving rise to the Taliban,* the Islamic fundamentalist group that turned Afghanistan into a safe haven for militant Islamist organizations, including Al-Qaeda, and prompting yet more US-led interventions in the early 2000s.
Westad weaves social, economic, and political threads into a narrative that portrays the Cold War as a battle for global influence between two superpowers keen on exporting their respective ideologies to the Third World.
“The forming of anti-colonial revolutionary movements and of new Third World states is inextricably linked in time to the Cold War conflict and to Cold War ideologies. Though the processes of decolonization and of superpower conflict may be seen as having separate origins, the history of the late Twentieth Century cannot be understood without exploring the ties that bind them together.”
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times
Exploring the Ideas
Westad devotes several chapters of The Global Cold War to examining the various ways in which the superpowers intervened in the Third World.
In the fourth chapter, he plots the evolution of US foreign policy during the Cold War, exposing American struggles to understand the nature of anti-colonial revolutionary movements. According to Westad, the United States often misinterpreted the resistance of indigenous nationalists* toward Western colonial* powers as Soviet-inspired. He gives examples of such miscalculations in Africa, East Asia and Latin America.
In the fifth chapter, Westad explores how Cuban and Vietnamese resistance to US and Soviet overtures inspired revolutionary movements worldwide. “Cuba and Vietnam challenged not only Washington in defense of their revolutions; they also challenged the course set by the Soviet Union for the development of socialism* and for Communist* interventions abroad,”1 he writes.
Westad goes on to detail episodes—in Afghanistan, Angola (Southern Africa), Ethiopia and Iran—where the superpowers’ intervention during late stages of the Cold War actually resulted in revolution. For the territories in Africa’s south, Westad provides “an overview of the international aspects of the struggle against Apartheid* and colonialism in Southern Africa, while focusing on the Angolan Civil War* and the Cold War interventions that accompanied it.”2
The sixth chapter examines the links between the revolution in Ethiopia in 1974* and the subsequent interventions of both the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1977–78 Ethiopian-Somali War.* These interventions not only crippled the prospects for socialism in the Horn of Africa, but also brought about the collapse of a brief détente*—easing of tensions—in the greater Cold War.3
In the seventh chapter, Westad again turns to Afghanistan and Iran to examine both superpowers’ challenges in the competition for influence in the Islamic world. Westad charts the spread of Islam in both Iran and Afghanistan, showing how the religion contributed to the failure of US and Soviet modernization programs. The Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 was seen as an effort to create a modern, socialist regime in the capital, Kabul.4
The final two chapters of The Global Cold War link the 1980s interventions of both superpowers to recent global events. In the ninth chapter Westad details the aggressive, ultimately successful offensive by US President Ronald Reagan* to derail Soviet-inspired revolutionaries in Afghanistan, Angola and Central America. In the tenth chapter, Westad shows how the failure of the Soviet Union to build a viable world order resulted in the empire’s decision in the late 1980s to pull back from the Third World.
Westad concludes that, in the end, “interventionism weakened both the Soviet Union and the United States.” The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, bringing the Cold War to an end. The United States remained on its feet, yet Westad contends the superpower’s ongoing interventionism across the Third World “continues to bedevil US foreign policy ideology today.”5
Overlooked
Westad swiftly recognized that in one book he could not analyze every instance in which the United States and the Soviet Union intervened in the Third World during the Cold War. In fact, he addresses the limited scope of his research in the book’s introduction: “In a study that aims both at discussing the origins and the course of Third World revolutions and the superpower interventions that accompanied them some hard choices obviously had to be made in order to avoid the text spilling over into two or three volumes.”6
Westad focused, therefore, on events he believed were driven by regional dynamics, such as the Arab-Israeli* and Indo-Pakistani wars.* The wars were less the subject of in-depth study, and more the means through which Westad made his case.
A radical reinterpretation of The Global Cold War is highly unlikely: Westad offers relatively simple assumptions, and backs them up with robust detail. His most controversial argument, moreover, could be seen as among his most farsighted.
Many have challenged Westad’s conclusion that there is a direct link between current events and previous Cold War interventions.7 However, the string of Third World conflicts since 1991—the US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq,* the civil wars in Democratic Republic of the Congo* and Syria,* and the international actions against Iran and North Korea* over nuclear weapons programs— seems to vindicate Westad’s claim that Cold War legacies have carried over into the twenty-first century.
NOTES
1. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),158.
2. Westad, Global Cold War, 6.
3. Westad, Global Cold War, 6.
4. Westad, Global Cold War, 6.
5. Westad, Global Cold War, 7.
6. Westad, Global Cold War, 3–4.
7. Thomas Maddux, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 3.
Module 7
Achievement
Key Points
The Global Cold War brought about a major shift in Cold War* studies toward the Third World,* and away from Europe.
The availability of previously inaccessible archival documents has allowed Westad (and others) to examine the Cold War from a new perspective.
The full potential of Westad’s work will be realized, over time, by other scholars.
Assessing the Argument
Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times spurred a global shift in Cold War studies. In 2006 the book was awarded the distinguished Bancroft Prize for works of history by Columbia University. By early 2015 the book had been cited in more
than 725 academic publications. As historian William Hitchcock* writes: “The Global Cold War is the most original and path-breaking work of Cold War history to have been published since the end of the Cold War itself.”1
Westad’s multidisciplinary, multi-archival approach has been especially influential in the research of history professor Gilbert Joseph* and historian Daniela Spenser* into the role of the Cold War in Latin America.2 Tanya Harmer,* a lecturer in Latin American international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science, has acknowledged the debt she and other scholars owe to Westad’s model,3 which also was adopted by Russian historian Artemy Kalinovsky* in his research into Soviet intervention* in Afghanistan* in the 1980s.4
“What impresses most about his latest work is the way that it exploits not only a broad array of published documents, memoirs, doctoral theses and other secondary sources, but also a range of archives, from the Russian Federation, China, Serbia and Montenegro, Germany, Italy, the United States and South Africa, often with several archives visited in each. The mix of sources in the endnotes is rich and eclectic.”
John Young, Reviews in History
Achievement in Context
When Westad was writing The Global Cold War in the early 2000s, the world was in a turbulent place. On September 11, 2001, a shadowy terrorist network, Al-Qaeda,* staged a series of attacks in the United States that left nearly 3,000 people dead. In the aftermath of 9/11* (as it became known) the United States embarked on military campaigns it claimed were intended to counter the threat of international terrorism. In October 2001 the United States—the only remaining superpower*—invaded Afghanistan. In March 2003 the United States invaded Iraq.* Both conflicts can be traced to US-Soviet interventions during the Cold War.
Westad’s case study on Afghanistan shows how the 1979 Soviet intervention, which spurred covert US support in the 1980s for Mujahideen* guerrillas who fought the Soviet army, laid the groundwork for the rise of Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on US soil.5
Westad’s case study on Iran* shows how diplomacy and covert intervention aimed at curbing the country’s nuclear ambitions is rooted, in fact, in US Cold War support for the former Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,* whose brutal treatment of Iranians sowed the seeds of the Islamic revolution that ousted him from power in 1979.6
In both case studies, Westad’s The Global Cold War directly traces current instability in Afghanistan and Iran to the destabilizing influence of interventions by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The Global Cold War has also retained its relevance as a source of valuable historical background on ongoing Third World conflicts in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Libya, North Korea and Syria. Could it be that such conflicts, even in today’s political landscape, are merely extensions of the Cold War?
Westad writes: “The new and rampant interventionism we have seen after the Islamist attacks on America in September 2001 is not an aberration but a continuation—in a slightly more extreme form—of US policy during the Cold War. The main difference is, of course, that now there is no other global power to keep US intentions in check, just as the Soviet Union did in at least a few cases.”7
Limitations
Because The Global Cold War deals primarily with the very conflict in its title, its influence is somewhat limited when it comes to other fields of study. However, by inspiring Cold War scholars to broaden the scope of their research, Westad has spurred an “internationalization” of research into the Cold War that has significantly improved understanding of the complex conflict.
Beyond the field of Cold War studies, Westad’s work also has influenced disciplines such as history, international relations, and politics, as well as related fields such as security, and war studies.
Scholars in other fields have begun to adopt Westad’s multidisciplinary, multi-archival methodology. Andrew Hurrell,* a professor of the history of international relations, has applied Westad’s approach to studies of the concept of “global governance.”8 Similarly, economists Joanna Gowa* and Daniel Berger* have drawn on Westad’s work to flesh out the historical context in their own research.9 An international relations scholar seeking to understand the cause of the Arab Spring*—the series of protests and wars that broke out across the Arab world at the end of 2010—would be well served by adopting Westad’s approach.
NOTES
1. Hitchcock, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 4, accessed March 24, 2015, http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/GlobalColdWar-Roundtable.pdf.
2. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 30–40.
3. See Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2011), IX.
4. Artemy Kalinovsky, A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan (Harvard University Press, 2011), 10–11.
5. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 99–330.
6. See Westad, The Global Cold War, 289–99.
7. Westad, The Global Cold War, 405.
8. Andrew Hurrell, “The Theory and Practice of Global Governance: The Worst of All Possible Worlds?” International Studies Review 13, no. 1 (2011): 144–54.
9. Joanne Gowa, “The Democratic Peace After the Cold War,” Economics and Politics 23, no. 2 (2011): 153–71; Daniel Berger et al., “Do Superpower Interventions have Short and Long Term Consequences for Democracy?” Journal of Comparative Economics 41, no.1 (2013): 22–34.
Module 8
Place in the Author’s Work
Key Points
While Westad’s body of work focuses on the Cold War* in the Third World,* he has a particular interest in Chinese and Soviet* history.
The Global Cold War represents two decades of research and academic debate.
Although The Global Cold War is Westad’s most famous book, his writing on Chinese history has also been praised.
Positioning
Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times was the culmination of more than a decade of research. In the early 1990s, after the Cold War’s abrupt end, Westad wrote articles for academic journals (and helped edit volumes of scholarly works) that contributed to the debate surrounding Cold War history,1 in general, and Chinese and Soviet history,2 in particular.
Westad’s first contribution to the field of Cold War studies was an article in the peer-reviewed* academic journal, Diplomatic History, titled, “A ‘New,’ ‘International’ History of the Cold War”.3 The 1995 article probed the basic understanding of Cold War, and drew on a wide range of documents made available to scholars following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc* countries. Access to these previously inaccessible documents was vital in to Westad, who used the new facts to challenge the interpretation of events put forward by the post-revisionist* and realist* schools of thought.
In 2000 Westad edited Reviewing The Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, a 382-page volume of revised papers from the 107th Nobel Symposium of the Norwegian Nobel Institute*. In his introduction, Westad made the case that archives in Eastern Europe, China and post-Soviet Russia presented remarkable new opportunities for research.4 That same year he published another article in Diplomatic History titled, “The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms.” In the article he argued that the information contained in newly available documents, once subjected to a multidisciplinary approach, could challenge the post-revisionist interpretation of the Cold War.5
“[One] of the author’s great strengths [is] his ability to analyze specific historical events in detail, using the latest document releases from the former Eastern Bloc, challenging
received opinion in the process.”
John Young, Reviews in History
Westad promptly applied his new approach to research on the Chinese Civil War,* the results of which were published in his 2003 book, Decisive Encounters.6 Two years later, in 2005, Westad’s The Global Cold War was released.
Westad has continued to write prolifically. In 2006 he co-edited The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79, and in 2010 he co-edited the comprehensive, three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. In 2012 Westad published his fourth book, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750, which chronicled China’s slow return to global power.7
Integration
In order to better understand the context in which The Global Cold War was written, it is important to take into consideration the arc of Westad’s career. After receiving his doctorate in 1990 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Westad began teaching at Johns Hopkins University, before assuming the role of director of research at the Norwegian Nobel Institute. In 1998 Westad joined the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he and his work have been crucial to the intellectual growth of the institution. In 2001 he co-founded the LSE academic journal, Cold War History.
From 2004 to 2008 Westad served as the head of LSE’s Department of International History, where he demanded of graduate students a multi-archival approach to research. He has supervised some two dozen doctoral candidates, among whom some have gone on to publish excellent works of scholarship on a wide range of aspects of the Cold War.8
The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions And The Making Of Our Times: Volume 129 (The Macat Library) Page 4
