The Cold War: A World History

by Odd Arne Westad

From a Bancroft Prize-winning scholar, a new global history of the Cold War and its ongoing impact around the world

We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world.

In The Cold War, Westad offers a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battle transformed every corner of our globe. From Soweto to Hollywood, Hanoi, and Hamburg, young men and women felt they were fighting for the future of the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where nearly every community had to choose sides. And these choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world.

Today, many regions are plagued with environmental threats, social divides, and ethnic conflicts that stem from this era. Its ideologies influence China, Russia, and the United States; Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by the faith in purely military solutions that emerged from the Cold War.

Stunning in its breadth and revelatory in its perspective, this book expands our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, and offers an engaging new history of how today’s world was created.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, World History, Audiobook, War, Russia

710 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2017

About the author

Odd Arne Westad, FBA, is a Norwegian historian specializing in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. He is currently the ST Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at Harvard University, teaching in the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

The twentieth century Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is a formidable subject to study. There are multiple reasons for that.

First, it is because the two superpowers managed to avoid the ultimate faceoff. Tracing the contours of a shadowy and indirect conflict is difficult. Unlike World War II, there are no clear fronts to be found for the Cold War, no obvious measure of success or failure. Historians are still debating which side “won” it. Arguments about the origin of the conflict vary too.

The second reason which adds to the difficulty is that the Cold War wasn’t just the USSR vis-à-vis the USA. As Westad argues, it was a global conflict waged between two international systems; between two ideologies that competed with each other and tried to spread the reach of their systems. This internationality made it impossible for other countries to ignore it. All political leaders in the world had to deal with it. They had to think in terms of the raging Cold War, so they could navigate their countries in an increasingly complex international scene.

Westad is a historian at Yale who has studied the Cold War and the Sino-Soviet history in his early career and this book is written with the intention of introducing the reader to the Cold War.

The tone of the book can seem educational. More important than that however, The Cold War is not an in-depth study or a revisionist one. Westad naturally offers his own views in the narrative but for the majority of the book, he’s just telling what happened and how the Cold War came to be, how it developed and to what extent it influenced local, regional and continental politics. This is a work of synthesis, relying for the most part on secondary sources. Westad doesn’t break fresh ground nor is the book strongly argued. Except for a few chapters, the bulk of the book can be categorized as a synopsis of the superpowers conflict.

As for the origin of the Cold War, Westad has chosen the Great War (with good reason) with the Russian Revolution at its core:

The Great War jump-started the destinies of the two future Cold War Superpowers. It made the United States the global embodiment of capitalism and it made Russia a Soviet Union, a permanent challenge to the capitalist world.

But after World War I, neither the United States nor the newly established Soviet Union were superpowers. Soviet Union was barely surviving and it needed two decades (and three stages of ruthless and disastrous/modernizing-to-some-extent five year plans) to find a semblance of stability. The Great Depression of the 1930s damaged the credibility of the capitalist system and made the Soviet-style economy a possible alternative. Some of the leaders and political figures in Europe and around the world saw the USSR the way they wanted to, not what it really was. But it wasn’t just a matter of economy. The significant consequence was that nationalist and anti-colonial movements saw the USSR example as a way towards liberation from European domination.

The United States wasn’t really stable itself in the interwar years. Franklin Roosevelt was hard at work convincing his people of the merits of the New Deal. But FDR was also a visionary, and generally a friend of nationalist and anti-colonial movements which made him very different from some post-World War II US leaders who were trapped in the Cold War mentality and fearful of the Red Menace (at least that was usually the justification offered for pursuing hawkish policies). FDR allowed Mexicans to nationalize their oil industry in the spirit of the (revised-under-Hoover) Good Neighbor Policy. But the United States under FDR wasn’t exactly an out and out anti-colonial crusader and even tolerated brutal dictators in Latin America, like Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo.

But still Roosevelt’s attitude contrasts sharply with what laid ahead.

In 1939 Hitler (with the go-ahead signal from Stalin) plunged Europe into the most destructive war ever to be waged. Japan’s invasion of the United States in 1941, made the war truly global. Westad is clear eyed in his view of the Soviet Union as a brutal totalitarian system, and he shuns any notion that the alliance between the west and the USSR could have remained intact after the end of hostilities:

[T]he question often asked—why was there later a Cold War when the United States and the USSR could be allies in World War II?—is the wrong question. The two were accidental allies in a global war brought on by their mutual enemies.

Stalin knew that his regime was very lucky to receive foreign aid…Not only had his pact with Hitler helped unleash World War II, but—shielded by the pact—his forces had invaded eastern Poland, occupied the Baltic states, and attacked Finland. European memories of the peak of Soviet terror in the 1930s were still fresh, as was intelligence information about Soviet supplies of fuel and oil to the Germans in 1939 and 1940. In 1941 there was ample reason not only for conservatives, but for liberals and Social Democrats as well, to see Hitler and Stalin as two thieves in the same market, two dictators leading cruel regimes, which were the deadly enemies not only of free market capitalism but of independent workers’ organizations and of representative democracy.

Westad is understandably and justifiably scornful of Stalin but he is also fair. He is not here to argue which side started the Cold War. And he is careful to distinguish between different periods and leaders on both sides. For example, when it comes to the leadership of Brezhnev and Gorbachev, he’s more of the opinion that US foreign policy was the myopic one.

In short, the end of World War II saw the rise of both the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status. And this is when the Cold War kickstarted in earnest. Westad starts by recounting the results of the Potsdam Conference that took place after the fall of Berlin. Boiled down to its essence, the results can be shortened to ‘not one step back for the Red Army’ (which now that I think about it is actually the same as Stalin’s Order No. 227 for his troops; did anyone ever said that diplomacy is an extension of war? In your face Carl von Clausewitz!). The areas that were occupied by the Red Army, fell under the control of the USSR. Also, Vietnam was supposed to be partitioned along the 16th parallel.

The Cold War has an academic tone but because Westad writes clearly and with good structure and because the book is written for students new to Cold War, it’s accessible and not heavily detailed. The chapters dealing with postwar Europe are a case in point; he talks about how NATO was founded and how Europe was divided along the ‘Iron Curtain’. Compared with Tony Judt’s Postwar, it’s almost a piece of cake (the late lamented Judt dealt heavily with economic details for example). But Westad is telling it from a global perspective, so obviously he has to be concise. It is noted that the European integration was an integral part of the postwar economic recovery, the brightest example being the Germany’s economic miracle (or Wirtschaftswunder; you are dead wrong if you thought the Germans didn’t have a word for that).

The first postwar event that shocked Europe and solidified the division in Europe, was the Soviet-backed coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 which established the power of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as the sole contender for power in the country. Fear clenched the western European leaders’s minds and hearts and also that of the Truman administration. The communist parties west of the Iron Curtain (especially in France) suffered and the event enabled pro-American leaders to marginalize the left-wingers. In some cases where the communist parties were dependent on Moscow, the lack of coherent directions from Stalin also crippled them. Stalin didn’t want escalation (even if he didn’t compromise) and it seems that he was licking his wounds a bit in the postwar years but also because he didn’t like what he couldn’t control. He couldn’t direct Chinese and Yugoslavian communism and therefore he didn’t see much reason to support them, at least initially.

Soviet troops that had occupied Northern Iran during the war didn’t withdraw until 1946 and when they finally did, it was mostly because of US pressure. The satellite communist parties that were set up in Northern regions of Iran, were destroyed by the government and some its leaders were executed. (This is a case that Abrahamian who is a left-wing historian of modern Iran, tends to whitewash. Soviet Union and Stalin could’ve cared less about preserving the sovereignty and stability of Iran.)

The terms of the Marshall Plan are also discussed which the war-torn Europeans badly needed and which the Soviets came to view as a threat almost immediately. No Soviet Republic was allowed to be recipient of the aid: “American assistance would be regarded as an anti-Soviet act”.

Westad also briefly discusses the developing US foreign policy and strategic plannings directed at containing the Soviet influence and dealing with possible invasions. NSC-68 for example argued for major increase in defense expenditure and better psychological readiness for war; it also recommended covert operations against the communists. The paper wouldn’t have been treated that seriously if the Korean War hadn’t broken out three months after its publication. Suddenly, the paper seemed prophetic.

The Chinese Civil War is one of first cases where the shadow war between the USSR and the United States loomed large. First Americans gave substantial aid to the Kuomintang regime led by Chiang but later on the situation became increasingly hopeless for the Nationalists and the Communists under the leadership of Mao were on the ascendent. In the latter stages, Stalin started sending aid and instructors to help the Communists wrap up the fight.

There was also the matter of A-bombs. The testing of the hydrogen bomb “Mike” by the US in 1952 and by the USSR in 1953 (in northern Kazakhstan), made the nuclear arms race the most threating manifestation of the Cold War. The Tsar Bomba of 1961 was still in the future.

“Then, on 5 March [1953], the news came that changed everything. Stalin had died”. This always makes me smile.

The chapters devoted to the Korean War and Vietnam are too short to be really interesting but Westad has opted to include them anyway. His shifts between regional and global trends are not always smooth and enjoyable. But it’s also a function of me knowing a bit more about Vietnam and Korea compared to other conflicts. In the case of the Korean War, the origins are laid out, then he explains how the war went on and finally there is the MacArthur’s insistence that the United States should go over to the offensive against the Chinese, in full force; Joint Chiefs considering the use of nuclear bombs against China and finally Truman having enough of it and firing MacArthur (who Truman later called a dumb son of a bitch according to a 1973 Times issue, which is just fascinating).

The Polish uprisings in 1956 and the Hungarian Revolution in the same year are covered as well. The region was deemed too Red for United States to even contemplate intervention. After the crushing of the uprising in Hungary, Eastern Europeans resigned to the dominance of Moscow and the communist parties in the western side of Europe suffered dearly and lost the faith of their people. Khrushchev, who had replaced Stalin as first secretary and was bent on easing Stalin’s excesses, drew the lesson that it was not possible to reform the Soviet system without breaking it (he was no Gorbachev and it was not 1980s yet). He still thought that he could de-Stalinize and re-Leninize even if without reform, whatever the hell that meant.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the nearest-death-experience of the world. As if the Cold War needed more drama (the world didn’t end though I should add, for the use of future historians who might try to figure out if we were perished by climate-change-induced heat waves or hydrogen bomb heat waves plus radioactive burns and decay).

It bears to mention that Westad is no story-teller (at least not in this book) and he is interested only in results and consequences. The area that the book covers is so vast that in 700 pages (including the meagre footnotes), he can only touch on different conflicts and movements that were influenced by the Cold War. But I think his coverage of the Sino-Soviet split which started in 1960 and continued apace until the death of Mao, is of better quality (probably because this is a subject that he has done primary research about in his early career). I also didn’t know about the 1962 Chinese-Indian border war. Honestly, I really enjoyed his chapters on China. I don’t know if he’s presenting anything new here or he’s offering standard history though. China tested its own nuclear weapon in 1964 and Mao increasingly detested Soviet influence and pushed the ‘antirevisionist’ narrative against the USSR to a ridiculous extent:

Even China’s closest allies, North Vietnam and North Korea, had had enough of the chaos. They summarily arrested Chinese advisers who organized pro–Cultural Revolution marches in their countries and shipped them back to China. After one especially egregious incident in Pyongyang, in which Chinese students had criticized Kim Il-sung for not studying Mao’s works well enough, the North Koreans exploded.

The rise of China as a global player in 1960s laid the groundwork for Nixon and Kissinger’s diplomacy which was aimed at breaking the duality of the Cold War and dealing more honestly with the Soviets. Westad offers a positive picture of the attempt of Nixon at détente with the USSR. Nixon considered the USSR as an equal to the United States in his diplomacy and it actually helped breaking the ice. A decade later, the Reagan administration reversed gear and Westad puts the blame mostly on US policy making:

Ultimately, though, détente was defeated by politics in the United States. Nixon and Kissinger had gone further in attempting to manage the Cold War together with the Soviet Union than most Americans were willing to accept. After Watergate the American distrust of its government, all government, reached fever pitch. Détente was a victim of this process, although it seems likely that rapprochement would have come to a standstill at some point even without Nixon’s disgrace. Most Americans were simply not willing to tolerate that the United States could have an equal in international affairs, in the 1970s or ever. And they elected Ronald Reagan president to make sure that such a devaluation of the American purpose would not happen again.

The world saw a rise in American militarism and jingoism during the Reagan’s presidency in 1980s. Brief sections of the book cover the US involvement in Latin America and especially the support given to the Contras (and the infamous Iran-Contra affair during the Iran–Iraq War). Reagan’s foreign policy reasserted US global hegemony coupled with a disgusting support of brutal dictatorships.

Westad also covers the Middle-East and Latin America in two chapters. There is also a chapter on India. He is careful not to neglect internal politics and conflicts, which naturally wouldn’t have stopped even if there was no superpower contest. In the case of Vietnam and Afghanistan, it is easy to see (in no unclear terms) the effects of the Cold War; not so much in low-profile conflicts and internal upheavals. Westad argues that “although the Cold War between capitalism and socialism influenced most things in the twentieth century, it did not decide everything”.

Westad has a tendency to include lofty proclamations from different political leaders without analyzing or substantiating them. It's a bad practice because some of them were mixtures of propaganda and wishful thinking at best and there is no way to know if they were made in good faith and backed-up by real policies or not because there is no scrutinization offered. The book has no bibliography either, which is essential for a general work like this.

These low-profile conflicts that were marginally influenced by the Cold War, require much further study for me. Because the challenge is to figure out to what extent did the Cold War mentality of superpowers and their actions affected realities on the ground. But I try to remind myself that the Cold War — in spite of its indirect nature in a lot of cases — did influence the actions of local politicians. Because these politicans had to think and decide while the Cold War was looming large and menacing; they had to try and guess the reactions of the superpowers; when they failed to pacify the two Polar giant opposites, it led to dire circumstances. Equally or more, when the US and Soviet leaders chose to doggedly adhere to Cold War paradigms, they were led astray as well. To what extent and how much? This book answers that only in the broadest terms.

After Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika failed to deliver the intended results, the Soviet system started to creak. The Chernobyl incident also tarnished the infallibility of the Soviet Union and finally in 1991 the USSR disintegrated and the Cold War officially ended.

If the United States won the Cold War, as I think it did, then the Soviet Union, or rather Russia, lost it, and lost it big. The main reason this happened was that its political leaders, in the Communist Party, did not give its own population a political, economic, or social system that was fit for purpose...The ability to believe in improvement under Soviet rule, which would also be the pinnacle of Russian achievement, kept doubts away for the majority, even for those who ought to have known better. The crimes of the Soviet state were ignored by rulers and ruled alike, in a mutual conspiracy of silence.

Put together, by choosing to talk about everything, Westad ends up (somewhat) talking about nothing. I basically wrote a confused summary of a book that is itself an overview of the Cold War. Some chapters are more insightful, some are dull rehashing of age-old facts. But in setting the backdrop of the Cold War and giving a feeling of how it proceeded chronologically and what the major focal points were, Westad succeeds. Not in an enchanting way but with a smooth educational writing style which makes the book a fast read. I didn’t get much out of it, but it provided context and filled the gaps in my full-of-holes knowledge.

[Hadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a general history, and it delivers what the title promises. While it does cover the United States and the Soviet Union, they don't take up the entire book. This gives a useful overview of developments and trends across much of the world. While much of the book is about the "High Cold War" between 1947 and 1989, Westad provides some short background in chapters about the late 19th century and the two World Wars. Ideologies had their roots in the 19th century.

Westad also describes these ideologies in personal terms - ideologies limit personal choices and possibilities. He compares it to wanting to buy a car that was a little Volvo and a little Ford, but that was not possible. These belief systems were, from his perspective, totalizing. Countries that tried to break away - see the hopes of the Third World or non-aligned nations movement had to make decisions in response to the dealings of the two superpowers. He views India as an example of this.

What most interests me about Westad's perspective is the constant suggestion that economic, political, or social events from so many different settings can provide useful context to the dual struggle. There are broad chapters about Lain America, Africa, and he even makes the suggestion that a major turning point in the war was the end of the Estado Novo regime Portugal and its transition to democracy - which presaged a further wave of decolonization and a turn away from authoritarian states more generally. He suggests that the dimensions of the Cold War - a turn towards and then away from relaxed relations - was because of broad changes elsewhere, with the rise of East Asia and a resurgence of religious fundamentalism in West Asia. The facts are clear enough for the general reader, but even someone who has read more would be interested in the connections that he approaches.

Reading about the Cold War invites a comparison between this and what's happening between the United States and China now. This isn't exactly the case - the world may be more multipolar than in 1947, with regional hegemons carving out their own areas of influence. The United States and China are currently more economically interconnected than the Soviet Union ever was. And while the leadership of the United States is currently impotent in the face of the pandemic and economic stress, the leadership of China may overreach itself too quickly - a possible bad outcome would be that having had no wars with a foreign power since 1979 may lead future generations to think that small wars and interventions may be too quick and easy.

[Dave K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers a broad range of topics while still managing to narrate the entire Cold War, but falls short for me due to the quality of writing. I've been looking for a balanced, in-depth single volume overview of the Cold War that has some academic rigor. First, I read John Lewis Gaddis' "The Cold War: A New History", but found it actually too short, a bit myopic in scope, and a bit too biased toward the West. On first glance, this book by Westad looked like it might fit the bill, and after reading it I found it did fill in many key details and provide a broader perspective on the conflict. However, I ultimately thought this Westad book rather disappointing as well, in part because the academic rigor is watered down by too many explanatory passages with unsupported vague, general statements rather than concise convincing arguments, and especially because much of the organization and writing style is simply poor.

Among this book's stronger parts are its beginning and concluding chapters. It helpfully starts out by summarizing the development and spread of Marxist ideology in the century before the Cold War, and also the rise of the US as a world and imperial power. The book concludes with a critical appraisal of key trends that developed out of the Cold War, such as how US support for Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet invasion eventually contributed to the creation of al Qaeda and then of course the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the post-Soviet slide of Russia from impoverished new democracy to today's autocracy under Putin. So the book looks at about a century and a half of history, around 4 times longer than the actual Cold War, which is invaluable for explaining both how the conflict arose and what effect it still has on current events.

The vast bulk of the book, over 500 pages, is narrative and analysis of the Cold War itself. I found the level of detail about ideal for an undergrad introductory overview. The choice of what’s covered and what’s left out seems reasonable, as I didn’t notice any serious omissions. (I do think the author could have skipped a few of the nostalgic personal stories about his home country of Norway, simply because not much of great Cold War importance happened there.) The narrative of what happened is a good bit stronger than the analysis of why, however. Major decisions by top leadership are explained fairly briefly. These explanations would benefit from expansion, perhaps by looking at why alternatives were rejected, and they especially need better supporting documentation (quotes from speeches and documents, and pointers to key related scholarship). There is somewhat better coverage of political and socio-economic trends (such as the widening gap in living standards between West and East later in the conflict), and weaker coverage of military aspects (the nuclear arms race, the numerous small and large “hot wars” that flared), diplomatic matters such as how the major treaties were negotiated, and the espionage war between spy services.

The book’s overall balance seems fair, when evaluating the moral and human consequences of each sides' policy decisions. It depicts but doesn’t dwell on Communist cruelty such as Stalin's purges and deliberate famine in the Ukraine, Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward, and the lack of political freedom and eventual economic stagnation in the Eastern bloc. Meanwhile it criticizes US support for right-wing dictatorships, but also highlights the popular appeal of the freedom and greater prosperity of the West. Toward the end, thankfully it does not lionize Reagan (as the Gaddis book does); as a result, right-wing anti-Communist hawks will likely disapprove. Meanwhile, left-leaning readers may be dismayed to note that the book touches only lightly on anti-imperialist and neo-colonialist critiques of the Western powers.

The strongest aspect of the book overall is its depiction and analysis of the global impact of the Cold War. (This is to be expected, since the author is an expert in this area.) The Non-Aligned Movement, especially major players Nehru of India and Nasser of Egypt, are discussed at considerable length. Regions that were more peripheral to the conflict (compared to Europe and Asia), such as Africa, also receive plenty of attention. Frustratingly, like the Gaddis book, coverage of the main events of the Vietnam War is brief and muddled--it gets a chapter of its own, but a third of that is taken up with matters elsewhere, and the conclusion of the war waits in a later chapter. Therefore it’s hard to see the progression of how the U.S. blundered into the quagmire, and eventually retreated out. On the other hand the chapters that cover how the Eastern bloc and shortly after the USSR itself unravelled are done well. Gorbachev gets his due as the key figure in all this, and is depicted partly tragically, as he loses control of his reforms and ultimately even the Soviet state.

Most of what I’ve said up to now is positive, but the book still has serious problems: it’s poorly organized and stylistically weak, enough to knock its rating down at least a full star. Chapters cover mostly a single subject, often a narrative of a broad trend, or the Cold War history of a major country or region, or the leadership of a major figure such as JFK. The chapters are ordered roughly chronologically by when that trend or country was most significant. This high-level organization usually works, although there is typically a jarring jump backward in time when advancing from one chapter to the next. The big problem is that there is no lower-level organization: there is a near-complete lack of chapter subdivisions, with many abrupt transitions between topics (such as the jump from Indochina to Africa in the middle of the chapter on Vietnam) not marked with a subheading, or in any other way. It’s not even easy to find a suitable place to take a break from reading. Along with this, the index is sparse, so it’s sometimes hard to find where certain topics are covered, and there are very few maps (and no pictures).

Worst of all, a lot of the writing is simply weak. Here is just one brief glaring example: the last paragraph of the chapter on JFK (“Kennedy’s Contingencies”) starts out “Were the Berlin and Cuban crises Cold War watersheds? Some say they were:”. Who says so? Why no footnotes to related scholarship? Why is the rest of the paragraph so vague (and again, without footnotes)? The last sentence asserts “During Kennedy’s time in office, the Cold War was becoming truly global, and the burdens it put on the material and mental resources of its main protagonists increased relentlessly”, after little supporting argument for these points during the preceding chapter. It’s not that the assertion is wrong, it’s just made in a way that doesn’t convince. There are also innumerable awkward turns of phrase, such as “mental resources” here, a sign the book needed much tighter proofreading and editing. The overall effect of this vague and awkward style does not completely cloud the overall meaning, but it does greatly reduce the reader’s enjoyment, turning a long historical journey into a slog.

A final major omission is the complete absence of an annotated biblipgraphy (although there are full biblipgraphic citations in individual footnotes). One pedagogical use of a thick overview book like this is to provide pointers to other sources for deeper dives on specific topics, preferably with some notes from the author about those sources’ strengths and weaknesses. This book almost completely falls down in this regard, so you’ll have to consult another volume if you want to figure out what to read next.

In summary, this book covers reasonably well the key events, trends, and context of the Cold War that I think should be in a single-volume overview, but I wish a more skilled writer had created it.

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the best single volume political history of the Cold War. But for its 600+p length, it would be a shoo-in to replace Gaddis as the standard text for classroom use, as it is in all ways a superior book. Organized in part chronologically but mainly geographically, it is really a global history of how the Cold War affected the politics and conflicts of different regions (rather than a different book, which might have been organized for example thematically, about nuclear strategy, cultural competition, models of development, or so forth). The result is to give a good sense of how the Cold War meant very different things in different parts of the world.

Perhaps the most surprising interpretation in the book is the world-historical centrality it assigns to the Portuguese Revolution of 1974, not a moment normally treated as one of the hinges of history. But, according to Westad, the Portuguese rejection of Salazar had two signal effects.

First, it led directly to the completion of the decolonization of Africa, and to the installation of Soviet-supported regimes in both Mozambique and above all Angola, which reignited the Cold War in the Global South, even as the US was withdrawing from combat in SE Asia. This, he argues, was the coup de grace to détente, which was already effectively dying under Carter even before Reagan delivered its official rejection. (Like many other recent histories, particularly ones regarding deregulation, this emphasizes the continuity rather than discontinuity from Carter to Reagan. Westad also emphasizes how tenuous détente always was, and that it was already dead before Reagan took office, killed by the Marxist-Leninist regime advances in Lusophone Africa in 1974, in SE Asia in 1975, in Ethiopia in 1978, in Afghanistan and Nicaragua in 1979. Carter killed it in 1980, and Reagan got the credit.)

Second, the appearance of an officially pro-Soviet communist party in Portugal brought together some strange bedfellows, including anti-Soviet Eurocommunists, Catholic groups, Social Democrats, and the CIA, who were all bent on deepening European Community integration, a project that would lead to the expansion of the EEC. The huge benefits that the countries in Southern Europe received from joining Europe made the prospect much more tempting to Eastern Europeans who in the 1980s were chaffing under the stagnation of centralized planning.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Cusack
June 24, 2018


The Cold war – a period that is usually dated from 1946 (or 1947) until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 – continues to influence us today. Indeed, with renewed tensions between Russia and the West and the rise to great power status of modern China, it is clear that many of the most pernicious characteristics of that time – rising military expenditures and stereotyping the behavior, and doubting the motives of, “the other side” – are still with us.

As one born in 1943, I remember many things about that time vividly: how in grade school we were instructed that, in the case of a warning siren or sudden flash of light, we were to kneel next to our desks and cover our heads; riding in the family car in the early 1950s and peering closely at a small house we were passing, hoping to get a glimpse of the mysterious person – a “communist” – that my father said lived there; and fearing, one beautiful autumn afternoon in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, that we were on the brink of a nuclear war.

This book reminded me that living through the Cold War, however, is not the same as understanding it. Although I remember most of the key events and national leaders of the period, my knowledge of the causal forces behind them, as well as how they were interrelated, was influenced – and limited – by the emotions and passions of the time.

Westad’s lengthy book (630 pages), representing a staggering amount of research, is dazzling in its breadth of comprehension and clarity of narrative. He reminds us that even though the Cold War is remembered not only as a period of great tension but also as having successfully avoided conflict between East and West (the clash between US and Chinese troops in Korea being the sole exception), there were a number of costly conflicts during these years between smaller states, often complicated when one or more of the rival powers decided to support a particular side.

Westad says the seeds of the Cold War were planted much earlier, in the latter part of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century, when Western nations competed to accumulate colonies in India, Africa, and Asia, China suffered repeated interventions by the West and Japan, and Russia and the United States began to assume greater international prominence.

An arms race between the then-great powers of Germany, Great Britain, France and Russia eventually led to the ghastly human and economic losses of World War I, further contributing to the genesis of the Cold War by unleashing destabilizing forces that battered Europe, such as the collapse of the old Austria-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires, the birth of Soviet Russia, simmering resentment in Germany over its defeat that contributed to the eventual rise of Hitler, and imperial Japan’s hunger for territorial and economic gains in both China and the western Pacific.

Europe’s struggle to achieve post-war stabilization was undermined by the Great Depression, even as Japan’s invasion of Manchuria exposed the powerlessness of the League of Nations. Less than 20 years after the ending of the first, an even more devastating world war created the immediate conditions from which the Cold War began: an exhausted Europe too enfeebled to hang on to its far-flung colonial ventures, the Soviet Union exercising de facto control over much of central and eastern Europe, and the ending of China’s long internal struggle with Mao’s defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Over the next several decades, as tensions between East and West grew, former colonial states won their independence, sometimes peacefully, other times not. Jealous of their newly won independent status, they were wary of the embrace of either rival bloc. For a few years, spurred on by newly independent India’s Prime Minister Nehru, they sought to become a neutral grouping of unaligned states. Economic and political realities, however, soon forced most of them, especially the smaller ones, into the shadow of one camp or the other.

Among the many thoughts triggered by Westad’s narrative, some of the most provocative involve how the Cold War might very well have turned out very differently if only:
• US president FDR had lived into the post-war era so that he could have continued to develop his relationship with Soviet leader Stalin in implementing their wartime agreements;
• FDR’s successor Truman had understood that Stalin had no interest in actually invading western Europe, he might have avoided some of his policy decisions that served to convince Stalin that the US was a threat to his survival;
• Stalin had refused to agree to North Korea’s wish to invade South Korea, what Westad calls “an entirely avoidable war” which “devastated a country and enchained a people” might not have happened;
• The United States had not ignored China’s clear warnings about nearing its border during the Korea war and, instead, had withdrawn its forces south of the original demarcation line, the second, even more violent phase of that war, might never have happened;
• The US had not consistently assumed that all nationalist movements were also communist in nature, it might have avoided those repeated interventions in other nations that so often resulted in more warfare;
• US president John Kennedy had not been murdered and, instead, continued to build upon the effort begun with Soviet leader Khrushchev towards limiting the nuclear arms race and beginning disarmament, the subsequent relationship between the United States and Russia might have evolved into a workable partnership.

Throughout this remarkable book, the reader “hovers” in time, watching as key decisions are made and marveling at how many of them were based upon misinformation or misunderstandings. The tit-for-tat response and counter-response of each side to the other’s moves (or what were thought to be their intentions) for the next several decades only served to reinforce – and, in a real sense, create – the belief that this was an all or nothing struggle for survival.

Nonetheless, for all of the missteps and misjudgments – and there were many by all involved – major disasters were somehow avoided. This is all the more amazing because the Soviet Union, the United States and China all had significant internal destabilization at some point during these long years: within Russia it was the period of “de-Stalinization,” when Khrushchev attempted to undo many of the excesses embraced by Stalin during his long rule; in the US, the hysteria of the “Red scare” of the ‘40s and ‘50s was soon followed by domestic unrest resulting from the civil rights movement and the country’s deepening involvement in the unpopular war in Viet Nam; and in China Mao struggled with the Olympian task of rapidly bringing his poor and rural country into the modern age.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, some in the West foolishly proclaimed “victory” while others believed that now the world could embark on a truly peaceful future. However, since the fundamental causes of the Cold War – indeed, of all of the conflicts of the bloody 20th century – remain little understood and, therefore, unresolved, it is hardly surprising that we find ourselves in the second decade of the 21st century once again in a time of rising inter-state tensions aggravated by extreme nationalists. Instead of building bridges, or reinforcing those that exist, far too many seem determined to blow them up once again.

Despite the beliefs of some, history does not “repeat itself.” What do re-occur are stubborn patterns of human behavior that, sadly, repeatedly lead to tragic outcomes. Not only, for example, do today’s nationalist populists, constantly sowing suspicions about multi-state cooperation, use the alleged threat posed by immigrants to boost their own control, but they also refuse to recognize how those waves of refugees are largely the result of climate change – heat waves, droughts, and crop failures – and ongoing wars and civil unrest that can only be successfully resolved through international teamwork.

Where among us are those with eyes to see and courage to lead?

[Dеnnis]

Written by not a US or UK national and it tells. It is far more balanced in its assessment of events. I would say it's ±70% ideal. Why 70? Because even in this tour de force equally diabolical acts of the US and the West still leave an impression of being less sinister and nefarious than those of the USSR :(

Во времена продолжающейся мировой напряженности, которую некоторые называют второй холодной войной, вышла новая попытка осмысления первой. Автор — норвежец, и это заметно — большинство работ его англосаксонских коллег нашему читателю можно изучать, только если он мазохист: героические силы западного Добра сопротивляются и, наконец, одолевают советское Зло по всему миру. Типичная история, написанная победителями, к примеру, бестселлер йельского профессора Дж. Л. Гэддиса The Cold War: A New History. Скандинаву такое манихейство не свойственно, и дьявольские козни американцев и их союзников он называет своими именами. Впрочем, к СССР он тоже относится без излишних симпатий, но этим книга и ценна — это наиболее объективный рассказ о главном противостоянии XX века. Отойдя от американоцентризма, Вестад смог лучше и глубже рассказать о третьем мире и социалистических странах — тут коллеги из США в основном проходят по верхам. А напрасно, ведь рассказ о том, как банановая корпорация United Fruit (ныне Chiquita) держала за горло всю Центральную Америку, может, не достаточно эпичен, но точно иллюстративен. Таких важных нюансов у Вестада приятно много.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive global history of the Cold War period and how competing philosophies and territorial ambitions played out all over the world. I particularly appreciated Westad's commentary on the end of the USSR and the lost opportunities after its breakup.

Jonathan Keeble is always a good narrator, but what surprised me in this book is that he made an effort to give the flavor of the voices of key figures of the period when quoting them. He didn't attempt an impersonation, but he gave enough of the essence, especially with his Reagan, that it brought it back for me.

[Yair Zumaeta Acero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, la Guerra Fría!!! … ese conflicto que pareciera fácil de definir pero que entre más se estudia más complicado y enrevesado se torna, incluso más que las conflagraciones directas. Para quienes nacimos antes de la década de los 90 puede parecer incluso una colisión lo bastante vívida en nuestra memoria, con imágenes que aún se mantienen frescas de la caída del muro de Berlín o los bombardeos en Sarajevo durante las guerras yugoslavas. Y es que incluso la Guerra Fría es un fantasma que se mantiene muy presente hoy en día, 32 años después que Gorbachov y Bush – padre- le dieran punto final en un barco soviético anclado en la isla de Malta en 1989. Basta con ver las noticias internacionales para encontrarnos con el Ejército Ruso apostado en la frontera con Ucrania por ese irresuelto conflicto de 2014 en el Dombás o con la decisión del gobierno de los Estados Unidos para desclasificar 1.491 archivos relacionados con el asesinato del presidente John F. Kennedy en 1963; todos estos asuntos cuya raíz se encuentra en lo profundo de la Guerra Fría.


Odd Arne Westad es un historiador noruego vinculado como profesor e investigador de la Universidad de Harvard, quien se lanzó a la titánica tarea de escribir una historia mundial de la Guerra Fría, como bien lo expresa en el título de su ensayo. Aquí dejaremos de lado la visión meramente euro centrista del conflicto, la reducción a una simple pugna entre Estados Unidos y la Unión Soviética y sus aliados o la mera focalización del mismo en escenarios muy concretos como Berlín, Vietnam, Corea, Cuba o Centroamérica; para analizar la Guerra Fría como una disputa de escala global que abarcó 4 continentes y de una u otra forma, a casi todos los países del mundo. Las dos tesis principales del autor se centran en demostrar por un lado que la Guerra Fría fue una guerra de dominación global y áreas de influencia – como si se tratara de jugar al “Risk” o a “Rise of Nations” pero con armas nucleares - y que contrario al imaginario colectivo cuando se habla de Guerra Fría, si existieron conflictos bélicos y uso de armas y tecnología soviéticas y estadounidenses por medio de las cuales se buscaba equilibrar la balanza a favor de uno u otro bando. Pero tal vez la tesis más interesante aquí planteada es la de mostrarnos que la Guerra Fría no arrancó en 1945 en la Conferencia de Postdam sino mucho antes, con la Revolución Rusa de 1917 y el ingreso de Estados Unidos a la Primera Guerra Mundial con la consecuente agudización de la división ideológica del capitalismo y el comunismo, frente a dos imperios que empezaban a perfilarse como el reemplazo de aquellos que agonizaban en los campos del Somme y Verdún.

“La Guerra Fría: Una historia mundial ” es un trabajo complejo y largo, pero a la vez supremamente ágil, estructurado y erudito que fácilmente puede leerse como una historia del Siglo XX. Si bien es cierto el énfasis del autor se centra más en lo político y económico (descuidando un poco lo militar), resulta gratificante el análisis que hace de causas y consecuencias más allá de ser un mero relato fáctico de lo que ocurría en el mundo entre 1945 y 1989. También se agradece enormemente la descentralización de la narrativa hacia otros teatros de operaciones de la Guerra Fría: China, Latinoamérica y especialmente, el continente africano; muchas veces olvidado a la hora de hacer crónicas sobre la Guerra Fría pero cuyo proceso de descolonización, militarización y encuentro con las realidades étnicas y nacionales más allá de los límites impuestos por los imperios europeos, repercute incluso hoy en día.

Texto perfecto para los interesados en la historia / ciencia política de este interesante y complejo período convulsionado de la Edad Contemporánea, así como para aquellos que prefieran ahondar en una visión global del conflicto antes de entrar con más detalle en otras guerras o episodios directamente relacionados con la Guerra Fría.

[Pieter Decuyper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Degelijk overzicht van de Koude Oorlog in al zijn facetten. Ideaal in combinatie met de nieuwe Netflixserie 'Turning Point: the Bomb and the Cold War'.

[Maarten Mathijssen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can you write an objective book about the Cold War? I believe Westad did, the fact he's from Norway probably helps. Looking at the conflict from this objective point of view one can only draw one conclusion: no matter what mistakes the West (USA) made, compares what the other side did it almost seems harmless. Nice example ; when Westad describe the McCarty period, with it's witch hunt on everyone suspected of leftish sympathies one can only be appalled. But the next chapter is about Stalin's gulags with it's million of casualties. The conclusion Westad draws in the end in all his so precious objectivity is that the Sovjet Union (and all communist states) is a failed state with disastrous consequences for it's people. But also the the USA failed to adapt to the new situation after 1990 in a proper way, keeping this "us against them" attitude, Westad is probably right. Great book, everybody with an interest in 20th century history should read it.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic history of the period. Well detailed, hits on all areas of the world, and is much more of a global history than a US-based history. Gives the reader a different view of certain events, and it is not rooted in any US political leanings. Very good for a clear, level-headed analysis of the Cold War period.

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

fine, cogent history, fluently composed and broad in scope. Westad is a skillful historian, and the result is a work that informs well and provides a nice perspective on the years 1947-1991. after learning of the some of the excesses in Chile, I was a little surprised at the lack of coverage, but other than that, I can't register any complaints.

[Keith Daniels · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely pro-Western. Treated Soviet side as uniformly villainous, and treated the stated goals and ideals of the Western side as if they were true at face value. Borderline hagiography in section on Reagan.

[Micah Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was exactly what I was looking for: a high-level history that bridges the gap between WWII and current events to explain why the world is the way that it is today.

Great powers and their historians often fall into an overly autobiographical interpretation of events, framing their culture, people, government, and military as at the nexus of all that is important and the catalyst of all that changes. That being said, it is remarkable the degree to which the second half of the 20th-century is a tale of two nations: the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Westad's thesis is essentially this point - that the fundamental story through which this ~45-year period in human history should be understood is that of the U.S. versus the Soviet Union. What Westad shows is that the centrality of the Cold War results from it being much deeper and broader than a bilateral power struggle. Rather, the Cold War is capitalism versus communism, liberalism versus totalitarianism, the individual versus the communal, the autonomous versus the centralized. It is a conflict about what humans value and how we can realize that vision at scale.

The war was essentially inescapable due to its fundamental nature and because the two superpowers viewed everywhere on Earth as a battleground. Advancing their sphere of influence was the primary factor in every U.S. and Soviet decision for over 45 years - all other priorities, including justice and humanity, were subordinate. Leaders across the globe and across sectors of society - even the purportedly non-aligned powers - also had to filter their decisions through this paradigm, considering their impact on the broader conflict and how they would be viewed by the great powers (or those powers' allies and enemies). Almost every important geopolitical reality and occurrence in this period responded to the conflict, rendering the Cold War "A World History" and the most helpful lens through which to understand this period more broadly.

The U.S., the West, and capitalism did win the war. The Soviet Union fell shortly after the Berlin Wall, the international political economy and civil sector is construed in a liberal image, and the U.S. is still far and away the most powerful and wealthy country on Earth. Yet the victory was not totalizing. Communal values are still jostling to find an apt expression outside of a strict Hayekian liberalism and Friedmanite capitalism, both across the globe and within U.S. borders. The seemingly indomitable Western alliance and ideology undergirding Pax Americana and the liberal international order - the supposed "end of history" - has been destabilized by a nationalist and populist turn. And the East is in the process of congealing a revisionist front of power with some of the U.S.'s key Cold War antagonists (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) at the center. The great conflict ended but the human story is still being written in its wake. To anticipate, understand, and react properly to where it is heading next, it will be critical to understand the Cold War, which Westad captures with a balanced perspective and a view to its holistic, global impact.

"The Cold War's central logic had been that one of the superpowers had to lose for the other to win."

Listened to Audio Version

[Manu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in the 80s in India, it was impossible not to have experienced the Cold War in some way - from listening to adults discussing it to having USA vs USSR wrestling matches between us kids! So this was nostalgia to some extent. And even though not by design, this was an opportune time to read this. To understand the direction and extent of the US hegemony in the last three decades and its impact on contemporary geopolitics, and to read it at the specific time when the Russian military invasion of Ukraine is bringing out a world order that is not just US-centric.
The Cold War is about not just about philosophy and politics, but people, places and the events that were either cause or effect. Ideologically, it was a contest of how the world and its citizens should be organised and into that whirlpool a lot of countries, policies and people were sucked. And in the end, as Depeche Mode sang, "The dawning of another year...one in four still here".
It is interesting to note that this level of bipolar conflicts are quite rare in world history, barring say Spain's Catholicism vs English Protestantism. Though the Cold War can be seen as a confrontation between capitalism and socialism from 1945 to 1989, its roots exist even before World War 1. And its impact can be seen in contemporary politics - from the state of Afghanistan to authoritarian China to unhinged North Korea.
Socialism as a thought had existed since the French Revolution but its acceleration and the start of the Cold War happened in the context of two processes - the emergence of new states (50 in 1900 to 200 by the end of the century) and the transfer of power to the United States during the world wars. This combined with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the creation of the Soviet state as an alternate to the US brand of capitalism set the stage. The socialists considered the war a creation of capitalism and saw it as a war between robbers and thieves who had nothing in common with the soldiers fighting the war. The only thing that could benefit the common man was socialism and communism. Lenin set up Comintern in 1919 to which a bunch of nationalists and anti colonialists flocked. Towards the end of WW2, Churchill used "an iron curtain" despite the Soviets being an ally.
And thus began the tussle that saw historic personality clashes and alliances - FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Brezhnev, Johnson, Khrushchev, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Gorbachev as well as Latin American, East European and African dictators, Chinese autocrats, South Asian, Middle Eastern and "non aligned" leaders like Nehru and Sukarno. Not to mention China playing the superpowers and sometimes getting played. The Cold War had places as far away as Berlin, Brazil, Baghdad and Busan all becoming a theatre of war. When one looks at the dictatorships that the US propped up in Latin America, it is easy to wonder whether it's really different from what the USSR did in Eastern Europe. The book also takes us through the context in which organisations like the UN, IMF and NATO were formed and how they became the arenas of the Cold War. Multiple spurts of arms races, events such as the Korean, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, the Suez Canal clash, Cuban missile crisis, and even an 'internal' event like Watergate all left their mark.
It is fascinating to think about how the world might have been different if Gorbachev had decided not to take his annual vacation in Crimea in August 1991. Would there have been a coup at all, or would he have been able to put it down and steer the Soviet into a democratic coalition of independent republics? Would they have been part of the EU now? Would there be Putin, or even Donald Trump? Odd Arne Westad does a great job of making this narrative of contemporary history accessible and engaging. It is not an easy task to map time, place and people and cover everything that deserves a place, but he does a fabulous job. if you're even slightly interested in history, this should be in your reading list.

Side Notes
1. Denmark in 1899 was the first country to have an agreement of annual negotiations over wages and working conditions. Probably explains its quality of life now.
2. Capitalist Norway has more state ownership of companies than China
3. Hilarious Soviet Russia jokes on pg 368, 535
4. Romania was so poverty-stricken that when Ceausescu visited Queen Elizabeth in 1978, the palace staff removed all valuables from guest rooms because he and his wife Elena might take them back with them!
5. One does feel sad for Gorbachev and how under-appreciated he was by his own people. For a Communist leader, Glasnost and perestroika were extremely liberal initiatives with the good intent of providing more freedom and a better quality of life for the people of USSR
6. An entire chapter is devoted to Indira Gandhi and boy, she was strong! In intent, speech, and action. To stand up to the might of the US when surrounded by Pakistan and China is no mean feat. "My father was a statesman, I am a political woman. My father was a saint. I am not."

[Lefki Sarantinou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ένα μνημειώδες έργο για τον Ψυχρό Πόλεμο υπογράφει ο Νορβηγός ιστορικός του Πανεπιστημίου του Yale, Οντ Άρνε Βέσταντ με τίτλο Ο ψυχρός πόλεμος – ��ια παγκόσμια ιστορία (μτφρ. Δέσποινα Κωνσταντινάκου, εκδ. Πατάκη). Ο Βέσταντ εστιάζει στις συνέπειες του φαινομένου και σε όλα τα γεγονότα, τα οποία αποτέλεσαν μέρος του, όχι μόνο στην Ευρώπη αλλά σε όλον τον κόσμο. Το συμπέρασμα είναι ότι ο Ψυχρός Πόλεμος υπήρξε ένα γεγονός μεγίστης σημασίας με συνέπειες που είχαν τεράστια επιρροή σε πολλές χώρες και οι οποίες καθίστανται ανιχνεύσιμες μέχρι και σήμερα.

Από τα τέλη του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, οπότε τέθηκαν και οι βάσεις για την ψυχροπολεμική διαμάχη, μέχρι και την πτώση του τείχους του Βερολίνου, ο Βέσταντ ανατρέχει έναν αιώνα ιστορίας προκειμένου να μην αφήσει απέξω κανένα σημαντικό ιστορικό γεγονός του περασμένου αιώνα. Ο συγγραφέας όμως ανιχνεύει τα σημεία εκκίνησης του Ψυχρού Πολέμου, όχι στη διάρκεια του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, όπως υποστηρίζουν πολλοί, αλλά ακόμη νωρίτερα, από τα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα και τους αποικιακούς ανταγωνισμούς των Μεγάλων Δυνάμεων.

Δεν επρόκειτο όμως μόνο για ιδεολογικό χάσμα, αλλά κυρίως για το ζήτημα της πρωτοκαθεδρίας και της ηγεσίας στον μεταπολεμικό κόσμο.

Πρόκειται για ένα δίπολο –οι ΗΠΑ ενάντια στην ΕΣΣΔ– το οποίο τελικά δεν οδήγησε σε πραγματική ένοπλη σύρραξη στην Ευρώπη, όπως φοβόταν μεγάλο μέρος του παγκόσμιου πληθυσμού, καθ' όλη τη διάρκειά του. Το τεράστιο ιδεολογικό χάσμα μεταξύ κομμουνισμού και καπιταλισμού ήταν αναπότρεπτο ότι θα καθιστούσε αντίπαλες τις δύο υπερδυνάμεις του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου που πρωταγωνίστησαν στη συντριβή της χιτλερικής Γερμανίας. Δεν επρόκειτο όμως μόνο για ιδεολογικό χάσμα, αλλά κυρίως για το ζήτημα της πρωτοκαθεδρίας και της ηγεσίας στον μεταπολεμικό κόσμο.

Από τις κινήσεις των πρωταγωνιστών της Διάσκεψης της Γιάλτας, Στάλιν, Ρούσβελτ και Τσώρτσιλ, ο Βέσταντ συνεχίζει την αφήγησή του εξετάζοντας τις σταλινικές πολιτικές και τις κινήσεις του διαδόχου του Ρούσβελτ στην προεδρία των ΗΠΑ, Χάρυ Τρούμαν. Κατόπιν εστιάζει στις εξελίξεις στη μεταπολεμική Γερμανία, την ανέγερση του τείχους και τη σύσταση του Συμφώνου της Βαρσοβίας, που ήρθε ως απάντηση στη σύσταση του ΝΑΤΟ.
psixros polemos

Στις 21 Αυγούστου 1968, οι σοβιετικές δυνάμεις εισβάλλουν στην Τσεχοσλοβακία. Φωτογραφία του Josef Koudelka.

Τα καίριας σημασίας γεγονότα, όπως η κρίση των πυραύλων της Κούβας το 1962, η ουγγρική επανάσταση του 1956 και η άνοιξη της Πράγας το 1968, ο πόλεμος της Κορέας και του Βιετνάμ εξετάζονται αναλυτικά, αλλά ο συγγραφέας ασχολείται επίσης, εκτός από τα πολιτικοστρατιωτικά γεγονότα, και με την κοινωνική ιστορία, εξετάζοντας τον τρόπο ζωής των λαών της Ευρώπης τόσο από τη μία όσο και από την άλλη μεριά του Τείχους. Οι πολιτικές εξελίξεις σε χώρες όπως η Γαλλία, η Βρετανία και, ιδίως η Ουγγαρία, η Τσεχοσλοβακία, η Ρουμανία, η Βουλγαρία και η Πολωνία παρουσιάζονται ενδελεχώς. Από τις χώρες που δεν βρίσκονται στην Ευρώπη, εκτενείς αναφορές γίνονται στην Κορέα και το Βιετνάμ, την Ιαπωνία και την Ινδία, την Κίνα και σε πάμπολλες χώρες της Λατινικής Αμερικής, της Μέσης Ανατολής και της Αφρικής.

patakis wested psixros polemosΤο γεγονός ότι ο συγγραφέας δεν παραθέτει απλώς τα γεγονότα, αλλά αντιθέτως επεξηγεί αιτίες και αποτελέσματα και τα συνδέει με τη σύγχρονη εποχή, καθιστά το βιβλίο αυτό πολύτιμο για όσους επιθυμούν, όχι τόσο να γνωρίσουν την ιστορία του εικοστού αιώνα, όσο να πετύχουν τη μέγιστη κατανόησή της.

Κανένα σημείο της υφηλίου –πλην της Ωκεανίας– δεν άφησε ανέγγιχτο η ψυχροπολεμική διαμάχη των δύο υπερδυνάμεων. Χαρακτηριστικό το παράδειγμα της Αφρικής, με την ιστορία της οποίας ο συγγραφέας ασχολείται περισσότερο απ' όσο θα ανέμενε κανείς σε μια ιστορία του Ψυχρού Πολέμου. Κι αυτό γιατί πολλοί από τους εμφύλιους πολέμους τόσο της Αφρικής, όσο και της Μέσης Ανατολής, ήταν αποτέλεσμα της ψυχροπολεμικής διαμάχης και της διαδικασίας αποαποικιοποίησης, μετά το τέλος του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου.

Τέλος, οι αιτίες της πτώσης του υπαρκτού σοσιαλισμού αναλύονται διεξοδικά, όπως επίσης οι λόγοι για τους οποίους η διαμάχη μεταξύ ΗΠΑ και νέας Ρωσίας τερματίστηκε μονάχα στα χαρτιά. Η νέα Ρωσία –όπως μας δείχνουν περίτρανα και τα σημερινά γεγονότα του πολέμου με την Ουκρανία που βρίσκεται σε εξέλιξη–, απέτυχε τόσο να ενταχθεί όσο και να νιώσει μέρος της Ευρωπαϊκής Οντότητας. Και αυτό φαίνεται εκτός των άλλων και στον τρόπο με τον οποίο αντιμετωπίζει ο σημερινός Ρώσος πρόεδρος το πρώην ανατολικό μπλοκ.

Εν κατακλείδι, το βιβλίο του Βέσταντ είναι ένα από τα καλύτερα και πληρέστερα βιβλία που έχουν γραφτεί για τον Ψυχρό Πόλεμο και όσοι το διαβάσουν θα κατανοήσουν καλύτερα, όχι μόνο ολόκληρη την παγκόσμια ιστορία του εικοστού αιώνα, αλλά και τις σημερινές στρατιωτικοπολιτικές εξελίξεις.
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[Olaf Koopmans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mwahhh, maybe 2,5, just.
This book falls short on so many levels, that it's hard to know where to start. Besides a somewhat dull style of writing and the muddled argumentations on a lot of subjects, my biggest complaint about this book is, that it doesn't deliver what it promises. The title makes you believe that you're in for a comprehensive History of how the Cold war played a part in developments on a global scale. Instead Westad writes just a History of the World, and although he focusses on the Cold war, he is not able to connect all of these developments from a bigger perspective.

The problem I have with how he writes about the Cold war, is that he tries to compartilize historical developments within regions. He divides the world in blocks (the US and the West, the SU and the East European states, China and most of Asia, India and Non Alignment states, Africa) and then describes what happend in those blocks during the Cold war period. But he fails to connect the dots in how a lot of different events around the globe were connected to each other through the Cold war.

Besides that, the book is also very unbalanced in the way it pays attention to the different historical developments from the Cold War era.
For instance the Berlin crisis of 1948 or the Suez crisis of 1956 are hardly mentioned, but there's lot of attention for the 'Great Leap forward' and 'Culture Revolution' in China. And although the Culture Revolution had an impact on the Cold war, because it isolated China further from the rest of the World, that doesn't justify a few pages of detailed account he gives of the horrific incidents that took place in China in this period.
Especially since the Berlin Crisis and the Suez Crisis are probably 2 of most important examples of the Superpowers almost going Head to Head. There's a lack of feeling of urgency in his writing about these crisies. You don't really get a sense of what goverments and societies went through in these most critical moments of the Cold war, when there was a real fear that the Cold war would turn into a real, maybe even nucleair war.
And that's not the only misstep he takes concerning the Suez Crisis. Like I said before, Weststad fails to paint the bigger picture and how different developments were connected to each other. The mess that France and Great Britain made during the Suez Crisis was directly connected, on a day to day, and at one point even an hour to hour level, of how the USA and the West responded to occupation of Hungary in the same period in 1956

And there are much more examples of where Weststad misses these connection, or glosses over them.
For instance the trade-off between Churchil and Stalin about the East Block and Greece on a famous piece of paper. Either one promising not to meddle in the other's region of influence. Or the limited amount of pressure the USA could put on the Dutch goverment during the decolonisation war and struggle for Indepence of Indonesia, for fear of loosing their support in knitting together of the NATO. Or the way USA support of the French in Indochina was connected to the rise of communist China and the start of the Korean War.
And these are just a few examples of developments I'm more familiar with. I hate to think how Weststad messed up simular subjects in Latin America or Africa.

In the end this is just a lackluster overview of what happened in different parts of the world which were influenced by the Cold War. But it unfortunately never takes it to a next level in explaining why they happened and more importantly how different events on one side of the globe were connected with decisions and developtments on the other side. It might be a World History of the 20th Century with special thematic attention towards the Cold War, but there are better written general Histories of this same era that do a better job at that without the pretensions of doing something special. 'Postwar' by the Tony Judt comes to mind.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic read. I love history but I love reading the history I’ve lived through. I remember visiting Germany and the Netherlands and looking up at the Awax aircraft that had just taken off from airbases in western Germany (now I know this was part of “Able Archer 83”.

The Cold War and the superpowers wars through proxies fascinate me. How the hell did we all survive. At any stage either side could’ve just said “to hell with it”! And pushed the big red “launch” button.

This account is massive but it covers everything from Marx through to Yeltsin and hints at Russia today and missed opportunities that could’ve come out of the Cold War.

The problem with a book like this is it peaks your interest to read more about specific events discussed in the book.

[Iván · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un extraordinario libro que resume de forma magistral la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Este libro es junto a Posguerra de Tony Judt, el mejor libro que he leído sobre la Segunda mitad del siglo XX.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intensive and detailed look at the historical ramifications of the cold war and how it changed the world. It includes not just the actions after WWII, but a look as far back as the1890's and the city-sates involved.

[Ashlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book about the Cold War I have read, but even without being able to compare it with other books I can tell that Westad's is a very comprehensive history. The book visits each continent (aside from Antarctica 🙃) several times throughout the Cold War timeline and describes the complex interrelations between the primary hostile nations and groups. It includes biographical details of most national leaders, some of whom I hadn't heard of before.

Overall I strongly recommend this to anyone seeking to learn more about the Cold War. However, it might not necessarily be the best first choice as a first dive into the subject simply because it is so comprehensive that it can sometimes seem dry.

[Bettie]

Description: From a Bancroft Prize-winning scholar, a new global history of the Cold War and its ongoing impact around the world

We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world.

In The Cold War, Westad offers a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battle transformed every corner of our globe. From Soweto to Hollywood, Hanoi, and Hamburg, young men and women felt they were fighting for the future of the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where nearly every community had to choose sides. And these choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world.

Today, many regions are plagued with environmental threats, social divides, and ethnic conflicts that stem from this era. Its ideologies influence China, Russia, and the United States; Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by the faith in purely military solutions that emerged from the Cold War.


Opening: The Cold War originated in two processes that took place around the turn of the twentieth century. One was the transformation of the United States and Russia into two supercharged empires with a growing sense of international mission. The other was the sharpening of the ideological divide between capitalism and its critics.

[Rafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro bastante completo que se aleja de la típica narración cronológica de la Guerra Fría y en la que, no obstante, podemos contemplar el paso de todos los eventos que jalonaron este conflicto.
Como es de esperar, ya que a todos nos pasa, el autor tiene sus propios sesgos y en más de una ocasión nos da la sensación que la regla de medir no es la misma para unos personajes que para otros. Y sin embargo, es justo reconocer que el autor no omite los elementos negativos ni de uno ni de otro bando.
Buen libro para iniciarse en el tema y que nos permitirá profundizar o buscar nuevos conocimientos en otros volúmenes más complejos y detallados.

[Sverre · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History, the Norwegian Harvard professor presents the confrontation between capitalism and communism in a hundred-year perspective beginning in the 1890s. Westad states that it started with "the first global capitalist crisis, the radicalization of the European labor movement, and the expansion of the United States and Russia as transcontinental empires" (p. 4). His single volume is ambitious, uncompromising and superbly crafted; easily making it a book of choice for understanding the grand geopolitical chess of the Cold War and it's far reaching implications to date.

[Felix · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is simply a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of the world today. Despite having lived through the Cold War -- and as someone who probably pays closer attention to current events, world politics, and history than your average American -- there was a lot here that I did already know but so much more that I did not.

For example, I did know about U.S. interventions in Central America such as Nicaragua and Guatemala, but I had not known much about Soviet Union invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, nor its blockade of Berlin. I knew about the Marshall Plan, but I did not realize the importance of American culture in tying Europe and the U.S. closer together. And although I distinctly remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev as well as the rise of Yeltsin, it was fascinating to get a more behind-the-scenes look at what was exactly going on.

Indeed, I finally now even get the joke in Star Trek VI when Spock says to Kirk that Vulcans have a saying, "Only Nixon could go to China." It was all about his credibility due to his reputation as a tough Cold Warrior -- the same way the Klingons viewed Kirk. And I must confess what I mostly know about Richard Nixon is Watergate and thus had absolutely no idea how instrumental he and Kissinger were to detente (and thus, I hate to admit, possibly the survival of the world). Nor did I have any idea of how hawkish Jimmy Carter was as a president, and indeed I saw a lot of parallels with his foreign policy and that of Trump (particularly what I read about in Superpower Showdown).

Perhaps not surprisingly, I am appreciating Tom Clancy's books quite a bit differently now that I have a much richer knowledge of his setting. It was not a conscious decision to take advantage of this, but I did happen to reread Hunt for Red October shortly after this, and my family also gifted me Sontag's also excellent (albeit much more narrowly focused) Blind Man's Bluff that also happens to tie in very well.

There is so much treasure here. I've highlighted it heavily and am still taking notes from it, and I've cited it in online discussions (link is to last post, scroll up a ways to get to the beginning -- you might need to click on the post's date first). It's well-organized (willing to occasionally present things out-of-order if it improves the narrative), obviously very well researched, and it's very objective. I do have one slight quibble where he characterizes Milton Friedman as extremist when actually his school of thought has been almost wholly incorporated into the Neoclassical Keynesian mainstream, but beyond that Westad is very fair to both sides and also not shy at uncovering grievous and horrific actions on both sides.

Due to the immense amount of material, he can't quite get as detailed in his characterization as a more tightly focused work such as Tuchman's excellent Guns of August, and by the nature of how the conflict actually played out, it does end more with a whimper than a bang, but there's enough detail and color to make each chapter compelling, and indeed I found it a book that was very difficult to put down.

In summary, it is a book that I am so very glad to have read, and it is one I expect to be revisiting again and again.

[Andrew Sternisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an ambitious work by the preeminent historian of the Global Cold War. Westad certainly touches on most of the countries that were affected by the Cold War, but his acceptance of the Cold War as a useful trope to evaluate the entire world is flawed. Indeed, Westad is one of the historians who has shown that the Cold War was anything but "cold." It was actually comprised of many "hot" wars. Portraying the conflict between the US and USSR as "cold" delegitimizes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the world and portrays them as pawns in a bigger game by white, European and American powers.

Westad tries to show that these smaller, less powerful countries had some impact on the US and USSR, but often paints the situation in a manner where one of the superpowers acted and the less powerful country reacted. There is a brief chapter on Latin America in which Westad shows that the people in those countries had some agency, but he rarely gives agency to any players outside of the Non-Aligned Movement, led by India. Further, Westad never touches on the people in the "third world" (another trope that delegitimizes people who do not live in Europe or the US) countries outside of the governmental figures. The reader is left wondering what the lives of the citizens in the "third world" countries was like. Other historians have shown that many of them did not care one way or another for communism, capitalism, the USSR, or the US, yet Westad does not examine this at all.

The strongest aspect of this book is in its discussion of the triangle of the US-USSR-Sino relations, as Westad continually discusses that complex, evolving relationship.

This book will likely become the text of choice for any classes on the Global Cold War and for any readers who want to read more on this topic. His lack of discussion of non-governmental figures can perhaps be forgiven due to the scope of the book. However, the lack of agency that Westad attributes to the non-superpowers is something of which readers must be aware.

[Vincenzo Tagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my mind, this is the definitive history of the Cold War. It's comprehensive, dedicates some time to countries and regions that are often overlooked when one writes about a history of the Cold War, and leaves you with the urge to look for specific accounts of events that are glossed over in this tome.

[Gabriel Gale · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good general history with some interesting ideas.
One that I found particulary relevant was his opinion that the EU integration process was a major cause for the colapse of the eastern european socialist regimes

[Jahrome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good high-level summary of the Cold War with a lot of context I didn't previously have. Well written.
The author makes too many uncritical assumptions, but he is a professor of international relations at Harvard... so, what can you expect.

[Vjekoslav Smolčić · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author provides a systematic overview of events during the Cold War. Given the amount of them, even double the number of pages would not be too much. I object to his somewhat one-sided approach to the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.