I’ve made this comment in print about one book and I’m soon going to make it about another out loud: I find it strange to encounter histories of the 20th century…
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in which there are Cold War liberals without a Cold War, in which Vietnam is a place but the USSR is not, in which there is anti-Communism including McCarthyism but no Communism.
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Replying to @jtlevy
Honestly, I think American foreign policy of the last century & more is best seen as long project of global hegemony with the chief target being the South. The Cold War was a subset of that. It's telling that end of USSR led to no reduction of NATO, military budgets etc.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
That could be an interesting conclusion to argue for but as an unargued-for historiographical assumption it's something different. Also, US military spending fell by *half* as a % of GDP from the late 80s to the late 90s.
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Replying to @jtlevy
Fair enough there was a decline in 1990s. But I'd insist fact that current spending is in ballpark with Cold War era shapes how we understand the past: that the project of USA hegemony over global south was far more important than ideological contest with USSR.
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But even the discussion of that project is inflected with American exceptionalism. For every Suharto there is a Mengistu, for every Pinochet there is a Hafizullah Amin but the latter are ignored. The Soviets were as intent on dominating the global South as the Americans.
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Oh, I agree Soviets (and to a lesser extent Chinese) had ambitions in global South. But I think they were far less effective in that arena and had a lesser reach.
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