The Cold War was a decades-long military conflict that dominated geopolitics in the latter half of the 20th century. And as Americans, we often see it framed as a binary conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union; one that ended around the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. 

But historian Odd Arne Westad, author of The Global Cold War, thinks that version of the story is incomplete. The US and USSR never engaged in direct combat with one another, so the Cold War was fought indirectly via proxy wars and embargoes, and many Third World countries are still dealing with the effects. 

On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Anya Dua interviews Dr. Westad about the global impacts of the Cold War, more than thirty years after it ended.

Book: The Global Cold War

Guest: Dr. Odd Arne Westad, Professor of history at Yale University

Producer: Anya Dua

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman