Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
environmental protection, social equity, and economic growth such that
these three things became inseparable. That marriage— of equity, afflu-
ence, and environmental health— spoke as much to geopolitical goals is it
did to purely economic ones. It was very much a product of the Cold War.
In
The Global Cold War,
Odd Arne Westad describes the ideological
battle between Soviet-style communism and American capitalism as a
conflict over the rightful succession to the mantle of European moder-
nity— that is, over which system could claim the legacy of a culture and
society defined by reason, progress, and justice. Westad argues that this
conflict played out most visibly and importantly in the Third World— a
term coined in the 1950s to refer to “the people” or the “global third estate,”
in Westad's words “the global majority who had been downtrodden and
enslaved through colonialism, but who were now on their way to the top of
the ladder of affluence.”8
8
Since the turn of the twentieth century, Ameri-
cans had sought to export a package of economic aid, technological know-
how, laissez-faire economics, and various forms of liberal democracy to
Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. These diplomatic and material
overtures were meant not only to provide resources to impoverished states,
but also to help establish new markets for U.S. goods and to demonstrate
the desirability of the American way of life to nations making the transi-
tion out of colonial rule.
9
By the late 1950s, Soviet-style communism had
supplanted other forms of totalitarianism as the ultimate foil for American
capitalist democracy, and thus the battle for the hearts, minds, and markets
of the developing world became a battle against the Soviets.
The key terms in the rhetorical battle for influence in the Third World
were equity, liberty, and sovereignty. Communists prioritized equity—
often framed as a fundamental issue of justice— but struggled to demon-
strate their ability to provide the material wealth and consumer goods
available to Americans. Americans, especially after the Second World
War, rode the tide of liberty— buttressed by material wealth— but often
the affluence they associated with liberty highlighted the gross inequalities
that fueled Soviet criticism of laissez-faire capitalism.
Neither system did particularly well with the concept of sovereignty.
Even as both systems promised to bring former colonies out of poverty and
into a global middle class, both nations— the Soviet Union and the United
States— relied on Third World natural resources and markets to sustain
their own economies and to provide tactical and political advantages in the
