To bring greater variety to the material I’m exploring in my Past Through Pages series, this post compares two articles on the Cold War. This allows me to explore how historians have shifted in their approach to the Cold War over time, moving beyond the traditional East-West divide and towards a more global appreciation of its impact. I read Lawrence Freedman’s review of The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ‘Frostbitten: Decoding the Cold War, 20 Years Later’, and Odd Arne Westad’s article ‘Rethinking Revolutions: The Cold War in the Third World’. Even though they give differing views, the articles are complementary. Freedman follows a top-down approach, highlighting diplomacy and ideological struggle at the international level, while still critiquing dominant Western-focused Cold War history. Westad, in contrast, shifts the attention to the so-called “periphery”, the newly decolonised nations where most of the revolutionary actions of the Cold War occurred.
Frostbitten: Decoding the Cold War, 20 Years Later, Lawrence Freedman
Abstract:
Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War is largely seen as an undifferentiated chunk of history. This is the view taken by the magisterial Cambridge History of the Cold War. But the Cold War was actually just one strand of history of the middle and late twentieth century, not the whole story.
Freedman reviews The Cambridge History of the Cold War as an ambitious attempt to synthesise different historiographical perspectives on the Cold War. The series covers political, economic, military, and ideological factors spanning decades and continents. However, Freedman notes its structure as feeling almost fragmented as it doesn’t present a consistent explanation for the causes or evolution of the Cold War.
He identifies the ways in which some of the most significant themes are downplayed such as NATO’s build-up and Western preoccupations with Soviet intentions. Equally, the roles played by fear of nuclear capability and ideological conflict in exacerbating tensions are not discussed with the emphasis they arguably deserve. Freedman explains this avoidance as the editors’ reluctance to identify with any one school of explanation.
What resonated with me most was his critique of the book’s largely Western-centric perspective. The Global South, especially the decolonised nations of Asia and Africa, often appear to be an afterthought to the superpower narrative of the Cold War. Freedman’s point reinforced a view that I have been forming: that Cold War history can’t be fully understood without viewing the context of decolonisation and the ‘Third World’ as integral to how the conflict played out globally.
This is why I am planning to read Robert J. McMahon’s ‘The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan’ as it examines US foreign policy through a South Asian lens. This perspective could also help me revisit the decades-long consequences of the Partition of India.
Freedman’s criticism also highlights the fact that the most violent aspects of the Cold War unfolded outside of Europe. In Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua, the Cold War was experienced as a real war with huge human costs and long-term consequences. It was not just an ideological and political conflict in these nations but violent local wars, shaped by Cold War geopolitics and based upon local factors of colonialism and nationalism.
Lost in the process of writing up Cold War history is the agency of postcolonial states. The majority of the new leaders used Cold War adversariness to their advantage by playing the superpowers off against each other or making demands for aid and diplomatic support. The leadership of India’s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is an example of navigating a position outside of both blocs while still gaining influence.
This raises the related major issue of Cold War interventions in the Global South, as they, in most cases, seemed like the continuation of classic imperial tendencies. The 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran, for example, looked more like a reassertion of Western dominance under the disguise of anti-communism rather than Cold War policy. The question of whether Cold War foreign policy in the Global South was essentially a continuation of Western imperialism in a new form is an idea that I would like to explore further.
Rethinking Revolutions: The Cold War in the Third World, Odd Arne Westad
Abstract:
The article critiques recent research on the foreign policies of late 20th-century revolutionary movements, and attempts to identify some basic elements in the ideology and organization of these policies. The author finds the search for foreign great power allies to be a vital element in the foreign policy practice of revolutionaries, and seeks to analyze how Great Power interests and local revolutionary aspirations interplayed in different cases (China, Iran, Angola). In conclusion, the author looks at how the Cold War international system influenced the chances for revolutionary success, and finds that the character of the Soviet-American conflict in many countries enhanced the potential for revolution by making it impossible for established regimes to monopolize foreign support.
Odd Arne Westad’s Rethinking Revolutions picks up where Freedman’s leaves off. Rather than shifting his focus to Moscow and Washington, Westad looks at how Cold War politics were shaped by grass-roots movements in the Global South. Westad’s central argument is that many revolutionary movements were driven by internal forces and social change rather than ideology or foreign interference.
Westad explores how revolutionary leaders were pragmatists, rather than ideological fanatics. He argues that they used three simple strategies to discourage foreign intervention: nationalist mobilisation, alternative diplomatic alliances and skillfully constructed propaganda. Even in appealing to superpowers, these actors typically possessed some degree of autonomy that traditional Cold War narratives downplay.
Something that surprised me was how revolutionaries were sometimes willing to cooperate with hostile powers if it served their own interests. For instance, Westad identifies how Iranian Islamists would work with America, even after the revolution, provided that their political project was not actively undermined. The idea that leaders utilised Cold War competition tactically, rather than being defined by it is an important counterpoint to more dichotomised Cold War narratives.
Westad also dispels the myth of a Soviet grand strategy in the Third World. He describes Soviet intervention as often ad hoc and more responsive to short-term needs than to further a revolutionary agenda. This goes against the traditional Western paranoia about an international communist advance as part of a coordinated plan.
Looking at the articles together
Freedman and Westad may consider the Cold War from different vantage points (top-down diplomacy versus bottom-up revolution), but both lead us toward a broader and less Eurocentric analysis of the conflict. If, as Westad argues, the Cold War was “stronger at the centre than at the periphery,” then it was at the periphery that local actors could adapt and exploit the bipolar global dynamic.
These articles have developed my understanding of Cold War history as, instead of seeing it as a standoff between two ideologies, I now see it as a constantly shifting landscape where postcolonial nations were helping to redefine global power dynamics. The articles have also made me more conscious of the importance of understanding local contexts and less convinced that superpower rivalry was always the driving force behind Cold War outcomes. Therefore, I am now planning to explore more case studies where the Cold War overlapped with the impacts of decolonisation, starting with India and Pakistan.
Reading Freedman and Westad together has reminded me of how Cold War narratives can completely shift depending on whose perspective and which sources we prioritise. In London, Washington or Moscow, it might have seemed like a war of ideologies but in Delhi, Tehran, or Hanoi, it looked like a time of danger and also opportunity.
telling tales 