The Third World Front

CHAPTER 8 · 1947–1979 · The Cold War, 1945–1991

Now pull back and watch the century’s other great story run underneath the Cold War: between 1947 and 1975, some 90 new states are born as the European empires liquidate. Scrub the timeline across Africa and watch the parchment spread — 1957 Ghana, 1960 seventeen states in one year, 1962 Algeria after a war that kills hundreds of thousands. Each new flag is a question both Moscow and Washington rush to answer with aid, arms, advisers and, when those fail, coups. But start the chapter at Bandung, 1955 — the marker in Java — where twenty-nine Afro-Asian states refuse the question itself. Nehru,

The turn: October 1973 — the war that moved the pivot.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.