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  • The Global Cold War and Its Legacies
  • Andreas Hilger
Rodric Braithwaite, Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation. 512 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN-13 978-0190870294, $34.95.
David C. Engerman, The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India. 512 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. ISBN-13 978-0674659599. $35.00.
Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History. 720 pp. New York: Basic Books, 2017. ISBN-13 978-0465054930. $40.00.

Several years ago, Odd Arne Westad, James Hershberg, Geir Lundestad, and others advocated a “new Cold War history.”1 Multiarchival research, integration of different spheres and protagonists of international and trans-national life, multicultural sensibility as well as multipolar perspectives on developments since 1945 were expected to shed light on interconnections between parallel processes, on the importance of assumed peripheries, and on the interrelated roles of hard and soft power in international relations.2 Raising awareness of those interdependencies, mechanisms, and influences would challenge traditional superpower narratives, emphases, and conventional cesura. Indeed, a vast number of original approaches and fascinating studies have enormously extended former borders of research and knowledge [End Page 208] alike. They allow for deeper insights into entangled histories of Cold War, global and regional economic, technological, and social dynamics; development discourses and politics; religious and national movements; decolonization and cultural processes; ecological and emotional crises, and more.3 In view of these impressive advances, the time seems to be right for a broader synthesis.4 Definitely, Odd Arne Westad’s book will be the authoritative example of such integrative overviews for the near future, although area experts have already detected some gaps and imbalances.5 Equally, specialists on migration or environmental history might have chosen other emphases. One could shed more light on endeavors of international governmental and nongovernmental organizations and groups like the United Nations or transnational peace movements to reduce, correct, or overcome Cold War tensions.6 Finally, problems of contested cultural memories during and after the Cold War or the significance of China’s pretensions and rise since 1945 for the interrelation of Cold War and decolonization processes deserve closer attention.7 Indeed, Westad himself, in ruminating about legacies of the era, opens additional perspectives, including environmental consequences of the Cold War (2–3, 623–25). Unfortunately, the scant bibliography somewhat diminishes the book’s value for student readers.8

According to Westad, the Cold War as an international system was an outgrowth of the conflict between capitalist and socialist visions and versions of society. Consequently, the monograph traces the origins of the Cold War back 100 years to global economic, technological, and social transformations since the late 19th century and to competing answers given by capitalism and [End Page 209] socialism to these profound challenges. Simultaneously, the author connects specific Cold War developments since the 1940s with contemporaneous processes of “state proliferation and rising US power” in the international sphere (7). In so doing, Westad provides a complex matrix that brings together ideology, economy, culture, and power. In addition, the broad perspective allows for precise reconstruction of different degrees of local adaptions of capitalist or socialist recipes and models.

Within the framework of this conceptualization and by combining chronological narratives with regional studies and analyses of individual protagonists, Westad covers an impressively broad range of relevant topics. So, the chapter “Europe’s Asymmetries” covers the early period and “Breaking Empires” the 1950s, followed by “The Age of Brezhnev” or, simply, “Gorbachev.” Chapters on Latin America, India, and the Middle East are organized as case studies of different balances between Cold War and other global processes. At first glance, the absence of a chapter on the Horn of Africa is surprising, given both the author’s expertise on the topic and its importance for the worsening of international relations since the mid-1970s: after all, in the famous words of President Carter’s former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzeziński, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) was “buried in the sands of Ogaden.”9 However, Westad’s condensed explanation of this period provides a good example of the book’s ability to unfold in a few pages basic essentials of complex, multidimensional, and crucial...

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