All the old blogs
are gone now
or the people
are different.
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[begin spurious rant]
There is no end to the number of books talking about US interventions in the third world
during the cold war. I've only found one book on such interventions by the USSR, "The USSR in Third World
Conflicts, 1945-1980", by Bruce Porter, which is sitting at hand.
The book largely affirms my perspective on the
cold war - most of the book is dedicated to Soviet influence in Africa, which apparently makes up
most of Soviet third world interventions during that period. To my immediate
knowledge no books for laymen have been published that cover the rough details of other
UN Security Council member's fuck jobs in the third world during the "cold" war. Now the broad strokes that
historians discuss such conflicts within are bound to encompass Western Europe within
the confines of US dominance in policy making - the same is certainly true of discussions of
the USSR with respect to Cuba and Eastern Europe, all of which had degrees of policy independence
similar to those of countries within the US sphere of dominance, depending on their positions
(Yugoslavia and Cuba, for instance, were quite independent from the USSR in their own decision making,
as were Australia and Western Europe from the US - all within certain constraints).
Much of this "influence" - which often gauges assements of complicity -
is measured by statistics such as the quantity and quality of
foreign humanitarian, economic and military aid - which would preferably be presented
cross referenced by useful statistics such as GDP/GNP, human development indicators, etc.
There is no such thing, so far as I can ascertain,
as a database of military aid by country and recipient, let alone the rest. Ranges of estimates
for such data are
most likely accessible to historians, and a great deal of perspective and understanding would be
the result of assembling it into a congruent whole, accessible to the public (why shouldn't it
be, if it exists it's a simple matter to toss it onto the web). I won't entertain the question
as to why it doesn't exist already, one merely needs to point out that it really already should.
Part of the fallout of the focus on superpower mismanagement is that lesser powerhouses such
as Europe and Japan get viewed upon as somehow benign - relatively speaking this is probably
true, but the idea that they are in some way free of complicity is foolish, at best.
[end spurious rant]
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