The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions And The Making Of Our Times: Volume 129 (The Macat Library)
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In 2008 Westad co-founded LSE IDEAS—a foreign policy think tank—with British academic Michael Cox.* (LSE IDEAS evolved from LSE’s earlier Cold War Studies Center, also co-founded by Westad and Cox.)
While the intellectual debate over the origins and legacy of the Cold War has been the dominant theme throughout Westad’s work, his embrace of a multidisciplinary, multi-archival approach runs a close second. Westad laid the intellectual foundation for the new approach in articles for Diplomatic History in 1995 and 2000, then proved its value—not only to Cold War studies, but to academic research in general—with the release in 2005 of The Global Cold War.
Significance
There is little question that The Global Cold War is Westad’s most successful work. Other works also have been praised—particularly his co-edited volume, The Cambridge History of the Cold War—but none has been as influential as The Global Cold War. As mentioned previously, the book has been cited in more than 725 academic publications. In a 2006 review, professor of international history John Young* described it as “a truly seminal work, whose findings will exercise those researching the Cold War for many years.”9
Westad was already known as a scholar of East Asian history by the time The Global Cold War was published. The book firmly established him as a leading scholar of the Cold War, too. Historian William Hitchcock writes:* “The Global Cold War is the most original and path-breaking work of Cold War history to have been published since the end of the Cold War itself.”10
NOTES
1. Gier Lundestad and Odd Arne Westad, eds., Beyond the Cold War: Future Dimensions in International Relations (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press Publication, 1993).
2. Odd Arne Westad, Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War (Columbia University Press, 1993); Westad, et al, The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945–89 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994); Westad, et al, 77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Indochina War, 1964–1977 (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998); and Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999).
3. Odd Arne Westad, “A ‘New’, ‘International’ History of the Cold War,” Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 4 (1995): 483–7.
4. Odd Arne Westad, Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (London: Frank Cass & Company Ltd, 2000): 2–7.
5. Odd Arne Westad, “The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (2000): 551–65.
6. Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford University Press, 2003).
7. Odd Arne Westad and Sophie Quinn-Judge, The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79 (London: Routledge, 2006); Melvyn Leffler and OA Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 (London: The Bodley Head, 2012).
8. See, for example, Arne Hoffman, The Emergence of Détente in Europe: Brandt, Kennedy and the Formation of Ostpolitik (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007); Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Washington D.C. & Stanford: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2009);Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2011), and Artemy Kalinovsky, A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan (Harvard University Press, 2011).
9. John Young, “Review: Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War,” Reviews in History 534 (2006), http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/534.
10. William Hitchcock, “The Global Cold War:Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” ed. Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 4.
Section 3
Impact
Module 9
The First Responses
Key Points
Initially The Global Cold War was criticized because it focused so heavily on ideology (to the seeming neglect of political, economic, and geostrategic* factors), and tied Cold War* interventions* to post-Cold War conflicts.
Westad, who acknowledged the book’s narrow focus on ideology, responded at length to his critics in a series of online debates.
Westad’s popularity, and the strength of his arguments, were the most important factors in how The Global Cold War was received.
Criticism
Publication in 2005 of Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times generated wide-ranging discussion not only among scholars, but journalists, about the best approaches to the study of the Cold War. One reviewer, historian William Hitchcock*, was exuberant in his praise: “In my mind, the book’s significance lies in its conceptual ambition, and I believe the book reveals that ‘the New Cold War History’ has finally arrived. This new history is global, as was the cold war; it is multilingual, as was the cold war; and it operates on a north-south axis as well as on an east-west one, as did the Cold War. Westad’s book is a model that challenges us to continue to think and write globally.”1
Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews of The Global Cold War,2 even the best research, including Westad’s, has its flaws.
“Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War is a very impressive work of international history that definitely merits the prestigious awards that it has received: the Bancroft Prize, the Akira Iriye International History Book Award, and the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association.”
Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo Roundtable Review
In 2007 Thomas Maddux,* a professor of history at California State University, Northridge, edited the contributions of a roundtable discussion3 on H-Diplo, a website and electronic discussion network dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history. The five scholars who participated in the discussion identified four areas of concern with Westad’s book:
Some disagreed with Westad’s opinion that American and Soviet* ideologies were similar (i.e. an expansionist,* or universal, view of modernity*).4
Westad did not include Europe in his analysis.5
Westad’s argument that interventions in the Third World* were driven by ideology was reductionist,* and failed to consider strategic, political and economic factors.6
Some thought Westad had overreached in tying Cold War interventions to lingering instability in the Third World.7
Lastly, several participants in the roundtable were “troubled” by the lack of separation between the United States and the Soviet Union in Westad’s central thesis. According to Maddux, some scholars took issue with “the perception that neither [superpower*] was any more preferable to the other in their projects for the Third World and the methods that they used, from armed intervention to civilian advisors and economic projects.”8
Responses
Westad was given an opportunity to respond to the criticisms of his colleagues in the H-Diplo Roundtable. In keeping with his calls for pluralist history,* Westad said he welcomed the challenges to his focus on ideology as the root of Cold War interventions, but was unapologetic: “I am—unabashedly—a Cold War essentialist; someone who finds—after studying the historical record—that leaders mostly meant what they said about why they engaged in interventions abroad.”9
Westad was defiant, too, in the face of claims that he ignored Europe in his analysis: “What I have tried to do in The Global Cold War is the opposite of disregarding Europe; it is rather … to bring the Third World into play to rectify the balance in … the historiography* regarding it. For far too long Europe has been seen as not just the only cause of the Cold War but also as its key engine throughout.” In fact, Westad went on to suggest that his research should be viewed as “a somewhat overdue piece of historiographical ‘affirmative action,’ which focuses on the Third Wo
rld in order to overcome the explicit Eurocentricity* of earlier accounts.”10
On charges of overreach in linking interventions of the Cold War past to conflicts of the post-Cold War present, Westad said he made the final revisions to his book “very much with [US President George W.] Bush’s wars in mind.”
Lessons can be learned from the work of historians, he said.
“The interventionism that the United States practices today came out of policies pursued during the Cold War and out of a mindset that allows policymakers to argue successfully that Americans will only be safe when the world has become more like America,” Westad added. “My argument is that US interventions during the Cold War were not, on the whole, reasons for exultation in the United States or abroad, and that any suggestion, at any time, that the world needs to be remade in order to make one country secure is usually a product of misapprehension or megalomania, or sometimes both.”11
Finally, Westad pushed back against claims that he is simply opposed to intervention. The facts, he said, speak for themselves: more often than not, foreign interventions fail to achieve their objectives and result in considerable human suffering.
History shows, he concluded, that democracies* like the United States should adopt a straightforward rule: “Do not intervene abroad unless … attacked or … prevailed upon to do so by a world organization.”12
Conflict and Consensus
The manner in which Westad responded to his critics reflects a willingness to engage in meaningful debate. Even though he rejected most of the criticisms of his work, he did so politely and through sound arguments, backed by strong evidence.
His passions flared only in response to claims that his perspective was colored by an anti-interventionist streak tinged by a “peasant romanticism.” Westad accused his critics of possessing an arrogant worldview, stressing there was “nothing romantic” about sympathizing with the world’s poor.13
Because The Global Cold War was published as recently as 2005, it is too early to assess its long-term impact on historiographical studies, that is, the study of history writing as a subject and the methodology of historians. Clearly, however, a wide range of scholars has already begun using the book as the intellectual basis for future research. It seems unlikely that the book will cease to be relevant in terms of studying the Cold War, or Third World interventions. As David Painter,* a scholar of the Cold War at Georgetown University, pointed out during the roundtable: “[The Global Cold War’s] unique combination of archivally based analysis of US and Soviet policies toward the Third World and firm command of the secondary literature—including a deep knowledge of the social, political, and economic histories of Third World nations—make it required reading for all students of international relations.”14
NOTES
1. William Hitchcock, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” ed. Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 6, accessed March 24, 2015, http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/GlobalColdWar-Roundtable.pdf.
2. See Jeremy Black, “Review of The Global Cold War,” The Journal of Military History 70, no. 4 (2006): 1191–2; James Buchan, “The Cold War and The Global Cold War,” The Guardian, January 28, 2006; Ian Roxborough, “Review of The Global Cold War: Third World interventions and the Making of Our Times,” American History Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 806–8; and Jean-François Morel, “Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 484,” Études internationales 38, no. 1 (2007): 127–9.
3. Thomas Maddux, ed., “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007).
4. Jerald Combs, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” ed. Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 9.
5. Maddux, “The Global Cold War Roundtable,” 4.
6. Natalia Yegorova, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” ed. Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 28; and Mark Lawrence, “The Other Cold War,” Reviews in American History, 34/3 (2006): 385–92.
7. Maddux, 4.
8. Maddux, 3.
9. Odd Arne Westad, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” ed. Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 31.
10. Westad, “The Global Cold War Roundtable,” 30.
11. Westad,, “The Global Cold War Roundtable,” 29–30.
12. Westad, “The Global Cold War Roundtable,” 33.
13. Westad, “The Global Cold War Roundtable,” 30.
14. David Painter, “The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times Roundtable Review,” ed. Thomas Maddux, H-Diplo 8, no. 12 (2007): 22.
Module 10
The Evolving Debate
Key Points
It is too early to gauge the long-term impact of Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War.
Although a growing number of scholars identify with the multidisciplinary, multi-archival approach advocated by Westad, a distinct school of thought has yet to emerge from The Global Cold War.
Westad’s approach to research has led to the publication of numerous texts covering a wide range of historical topics, but predominantly on the Cold War* in the Third World.*
Uses and Problems
Given that Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times was first published as recently as 2005, 10 years are not enough to assess the book’s long-term impact. However, over the past decade the book clearly has served as a source of inspiration for a number of different scholars and political thinkers, many of whom have taken on board Westad’s desire to investigate different disciplines and different archives. Westad believes this approach helps him get to the heart of the subjects he is investigating and this idea has certainly broadened the scope of Cold War studies.
This can be seen in the fact that since the publication of The Global Cold War, academic research into the Cold War has since shifted away from the Eurocentric* and realist* approaches of the past. The Third World is now the focus of the “New” Cold War History school of thought. In fact, scholars are now looking at the relevance of interventions during the Cold War period as forerunners of a number of post-Cold War conflicts.
“For the record … this book is not an attempt at a general overview of the Cold War. It is a history (very simplified) of the Cold War as it played out in Africa, Asia, and Latin America … [It] is slightly unfair to take me to task for not having written a general history of the Cold War, since that was never my aim. It is very clear to me, therefore, that if I were to undertake such a project, then Europe would loom much larger in it.”
Odd Arne Westad, H-Diplo Roundtable Review
Schools of Thought
It is probably too early to tell if an entirely new school of thought will form around the conclusions Westad reached in The Global Cold War. Already, his main thrust falls within an established school of thought: “New” Cold War History. It is unlikely, therefore, that a distinct school will develop around his work.
Perhaps the most lasting influence of The Global Cold War will prove to be Westad’s rigorous research methods.
A growing number of scholars are referencing Westad’s ideas—and his approach to The Global Cold War—in helping to frame their own work. A collection of essays on the Cold War in Latin America, by historians Gilbert Joseph* and Daniela Spenser,* aimed to compensate for what the authors regard as the relatively scant attention Latin America receives in The Global Cold War. Yet, even though Joseph and Spenser believe The Global Cold War is too steeped in the idea that the Cold War was driven by US and Soviet* ideology, the pair recognized that Westad’s research on the Cold War in the Third World offered rich new ground for further study.1
Historian Tanya Harmer* also saw
the potential for further research into the role of the Cold War in Latin America, but, unlike Joseph and Spenser, she broadened Westad’s embrace of ideology to include the roles of Cuba and Brazil in her book, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Like Westad, Harmer also used a multi-archival approach, including personal interviews, in her examination of Chile.2
In Current Scholarship
Recently a number of studies have drawn from Westad’s research to show how the intervention of the United States and the Soviet Union continues to shape global politics today.
In 2011 Christian Emery,* a lecturer in international relations at Plymouth University, traced the ongoing nuclear crisis in Iran* to the legacy of Cold War dynamics,3 and Christopher Dietrich,* a historian at Fordham University, showed how Iraqi efforts to nationalize the Iraq Petroleum Company in the 1960s were emblematic of efforts by other developing countries to reassert economic control after independence.4
In 2013 Christopher Lee,* a historian with special interest in Southern Africa,* showed how the Cold War superpower rivalry in the Indian Ocean region still influences regional rivalries today.5 And early in 2015, Middle East historian Bryan R. Gibson* examined US-Iraq relations during the Cold War, linking the interventions of superpowers in the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein,* which paved the way for ongoing post-Cold War interventions by the United States.6