Odd Arne Westad. The Cold War

“It was a bit like buying a car,” wittily writes Odd Arne Westad, historian and author of The Cold War: A World History. “In my heart, I would like a bit of Volvo, and a bit of Ford, and a bit of Toyota. But I cannot have that, since manufacturers refuse to sell their new cars in parts . . . The Cold War was a bit like that. Most people had to take what was available, even if it conflicted with specific needs or even with common sense” (628). This metaphor quite nicely captures the author’s positioning and attitude toward the Cold War. While many Cold War books have been written from the perspectives of the seeming “manufacturers”—the two superpowers, and particularly the United States—Westad approaches it from a buyer’s viewpoint, from outside of the centers. The metaphor also allows a significant degree of agency to the buyer (Third World leaders), while still alluding to the high-handed nature of manufacturers’ (superpowers’) attitudes and offerings. Finally, the metaphor suggests that the choices presented—capitalism and socialism—were real, competing alternatives, neither of them a folly doomed to failure.

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