The Global Cold War Quotes

“For the Russian Communists, this meant that not only did they inherit a multicultural space in which Russian was spoken by less than half the population, but they also took over a state in which the tsars for at least two generations had attempted a policy of Russification and modernization of their non-Russian subjects. Many Russians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including some who became Communists, believed that their country had been endowed with a special destiny to clear the Asian wilderness and civilize the tribes of the East.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“Kennedy and Johnson had more to offer than bread alone. Initiatives such as the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress were intended to stimulate political as well as economic development.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“Kissinger’s 1960 recipe for success was to combine massive increases in US foreign aid with assistance in constructing “enlightened political institutions” in the recipient countries. Noting that “economic assistance is a form of intervention,” Kissinger believed that “to offer nothing but bread is to leave the arena to those who are sufficiently dynamic to define their purpose.”39”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“The Chinese Communist revolution, the US-supported wars against Communist guerrillas in Vietnam, Malaya, and the Philippines, the radical orientation of the postindependence regimes in Indonesia, India, and Egypt, and even the successful interventions in Guatemala and Iran convinced the Eisenhower administration that the Third World may not be ready for democracy”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“Like Wilson during World War I, Franklin Roosevelt believed in “positive nationalisms” as the best guard against authoritarian ideologies, but with the crucial difference that America this time could and should assist in finessing the content of these nationalisms and the reforms they envisaged for their countries when liberated from the enemy menace.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“The great majority of Americans, however, viewed the growth of authoritarian collectivist ideologies in Europe during the Great Depression with suspicion and fear. Although Communism had in many ways been the original challenge, it was not difficult to see similarities between the Communist faith – especially in its Stalinist form – and other contemporary political directions, such as fascism or national socialism. They all represented a challenge to America.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“The existence of an American Communist Party, from 1921, therefore became an ideological manifestation out of proportion with the very limited following that party came to command. To many Americans, the very existence of such a party (alongside other ills, such as organized crime) proved the need for Americanization and vigilance at home. At the same time, the existence of an American Communist Party did become, for a brief moment during the Depression, a signal to some of those whom Americanism had disenfranchised that other methods for organizing society could be envisaged, even in America.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“In post-World War I America – the period in which most US Cold War leaders grew up – the idea that Europe and the world had shown themselves not ready for American order, organization, and concepts of rights merged with concern over the effects of immigration. In ideological terms it could be argued that the two perceptions were mutually reinforcing; if foreign countries had not yet reached the necessary levels of civilization needed to receive the American message, what then about the masses from these very same countries who were coming to the United States? Immigration could overwhelm American democracy and defeat it in ways foreign powers were no longer capable of doing.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War

“the Communists when taking power in Russia of course became successors to an old expansionist empire, in much the same way as the American revolutionaries developed out of the British empire. In both cases the ideologies that justified intervention had developed from concerns that were formed in earlier centuries, under different regimes.”
― Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War