Abstract
Reviewed by: Stephen J Randall (srandall@ucalgary.ca ), University of Calgary, Canada
In this book Odd Arne Westad has provided a model of world-history writing, as well as the most insightful and comprehensive analysis of the origins, evolution, and immediate aftermath of the Cold War. His goal was to write “the history of the Cold War on all continents and within a broad chronology, in ways that make plain the differences in how groups of people experienced the conflict” (631). He has succeeded on every front.
Unlike most scholars, who tend to date the origins of the Cold War to the 1917 Russian revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Westad finds the roots of the Cold War in the years of the Industrial Revolution while finding parallels in previous world systems. He sets the Cold War in the broader context of international systems, from the mercantilism that characterized the European world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the colonial regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, he equates the Cold War to the bipolar rivalry between England and Spain from the late-sixteenth through seventeenth centuries, a rivalry that was based in large part on ideology—one Protestant, the other Roman Catholic. As in the case of the Cold War, the two major powers established alliances of like-minded countries and, again as in the case of the Cold War, elites in the bipolar system firmly believed that whichever cause prevailed would determine the course of history. Westad argues, not entirely convincingly, that the Cold War began in the 1890s—with the first global financial crisis in 1893—the radicalization of the European labour movement, and the expansion of the United States and Russia as transcontinental empires. Precise historical dating for a phenomenon as complex as the Cold War is fraught with challenges, but the author is on solid ground in placing the bipolar conflict’s origins and ending within the larger context of global transformations.
The strength of this outstanding history is Westad’s skill in avoiding, with a few exceptions, writing from a US perspective—perhaps easier for a scholar who was born and, initially, educated in Norway. The volume thus takes on the qualities of a true world history with, at times, remarkable insight into the decolonization of the post-1945 years, the emergence of the Third World as a powerful force in world history, and the challenges which the non-aligned movement posed to the bipolar views of Soviet, Chinese, and US elites after the Bandung Conference of 1955. The volume analyses—with equal success—the internal political, economic, and cultural changes in Eastern and Western Europe in the aftermath of the world wars, the emergence of two super powers, the Chinese Revolution, the challenges of decolonization in East and Southeast Asia, the hot Cold War in Korea and Vietnam, the surrogate wars in Africa and Central America, and the emergence of Pan-Arab nationalism and its impact on East–West relations.
It is refreshing to see that Vietnam and the Vietnam War, which to some extent overwhelmed US scholarship as well as US politics for several decades, is relegated to only twenty-six pages, while India, Nehru, and Indira Gandhi and the pivotal role they played in the non-aligned movement are given equal import—as are the Middle East and Latin America. Westad provides a thorough analysis of the evolution (or lack thereof) under Brezhnev and the other grey old men who led the Soviet Union before Gorbachev, and he treats the latter with far more understanding and empathy than the Soviet leaders’ compatriots by 1991. The Nixon–Kissinger opening to the People’s Republic of China, the détente and its critics, the crises of the Carter years, and the hardening of the Cold War in the first Reagan administration are set against the backdrop of the changing global environment in the Near and Middle East, Africa, South and East Asia, and Latin America. Westad appropriately places the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in their global context, including the emergence and impact of radical Islam. The Chilean, Nicaraguan, and El Salvadoran civil conflicts, including the Soviet–Cuban role, also receive their due.
Westad’s concluding section, “The World the Cold War Made,” provides an assessment of the decade that followed Gorbachev’s resignation in December 1991 and the end of the Soviet Union. One might wish he could have resisted yet another assertion that the United States “won the Cold War,” when his own analysis demonstrates how global forces, changing technology, enlightened and radical leadership in Central and Eastern Europe, the power of the Third World, among other factors outside the control of Washington—and certainly beyond Ronald Reagan’s understanding—created a different dynamic. As he himself writes, “[t]his book has shown that the main reason the Cold War ended was that the world as a whole was changing” (620).
Westad also observes that there were other winners and losers in the Cold War. China, he suggests, was to some extent one of the beneficiaries: It has emerged as one of the strongest powers in a more multi-polar world. At the same time, the regions which bore the brunt of hot Cold War military action suffered the most from a world divided into two poles: Korea, Indochina, Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America.
Since this review is written for a “Canadian,” though international, journal, one caveat is in order for Canadian readers: there is not a single reference to Canada. Thus, the important Cold War issues for Canadians—membership in NATO, the establishment of the UN, the resolution of the Suez Crisis, the building of the Joint Arctic Weather Stations and the DEW Line, or the establishment of NORAD, to mention only some of the pre-1960s issues—make no appearance here. This is a minor quibble, written by a Canadian scholar who has spent some four decades trying to offseta US-centric scholarly orientation in the writing of international relations. Such a quibble should not detract from one of the finest and most important volumes in international relations published in many years.