The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States indelibly shaped the world we live in today--especially international politics, economics, and military affairs. This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's key international conflicts, including the "war on terror." Odd Arne Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that drove the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. towards interventionism. He focuses on how these interventions gave rise to resentments and resistance that, in the end, helped to topple one and to seriously challenge the other superpower. In addition, he demonstrates how these worldwide interventions determined the international and domestic framework within which political, social and cultural changes took place in such countries as China, Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua. According to Westad, these changes, plus the ideologies, movements and states that interventionism stirred up, constitute the real legacy of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2004 he was named head of department and co-director of the new LSE Cold War Studies Centre. Professor Westad is the author, or editor, of ten books on contemporary international history including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (2003) and, with Jussi Hanhimaki, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003). In addition, he is a founding editor of the journal Cold War History.

A fascinating and wide-reaching new postcolonial account of the Cold War. Instead of the classic view of Cold War contention as chiefly European, Westad argues, here, that the Cold War consisted of colonial-interventionist actions in the Third World by the US and USSR to legitimize their state ideologies and to naively usher in modernity. However, the leaders of Third World had plans of their own. They played each superpower against the other for aid and eventually they revolted, thus spelling the end of the Cold War.

This is an attempt to change the paradigm through which the Cold War is studied. Westad argues that the Cold War was not focused in Europe, but in the Third World, where the US and USSR fought proxy wars. Although giving the Third World more attention in Cold War study is a welcome change, his argument is a bit stretched. The beginning and end of the Cold War were arguably in Germany, so saying Europe is less important is difficult.

The most impressive part of this work is the incredible detail he is able to extract from a variety of archives. He looks at conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola and the Horn of Africa. His analysis of each episode in impressive, more so than his overall analysis. ( )