The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times

ISBN-13: 9780521703147 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 496 str.

Odd Arne Westad (London School of Economics and Political Sc

Opis

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.

Recenzje

'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

Spis treści

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.