What do you think?
Rate this book
Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage
A provocative analysis of the deadly Cold War conflicts that devastated countries and communities far from Moscow and Washington
Transforming battlegrounds in Africa, Asia, and Latin America into veritable hellscapes, the surrogate wars of the Cold War era left behind a legacy of collective trauma and social conflict that have persisted into the present. In this ambitious work, Alfred W. McCoy uses a bottom-up, outside-in approach to offer an unexpected new perspective on the longest, most consequential conflict in modern history.
McCoy renders an intimate portrait of both embattled covert operatives and committed antiwar protesters, thus humanizing the history of the Cold War—a history that has too often been told in impersonal terms of economic growth, nuclear arsenals, or diplomatic ententes.
As today’s great powers devote humanity’s scarce resources toward ratcheting up a “new cold war” in the face of a worsening climate crisis, McCoy’s history is an important reminder that otherwise- ordinary individuals once helped end a global conflict that threatened nuclear holocaust.
Transforming battlegrounds in Africa, Asia, and Latin America into veritable hellscapes, the surrogate wars of the Cold War era left behind a legacy of collective trauma and social conflict that have persisted into the present. In this ambitious work, Alfred W. McCoy uses a bottom-up, outside-in approach to offer an unexpected new perspective on the longest, most consequential conflict in modern history.
McCoy renders an intimate portrait of both embattled covert operatives and committed antiwar protesters, thus humanizing the history of the Cold War—a history that has too often been told in impersonal terms of economic growth, nuclear arsenals, or diplomatic ententes.
As today’s great powers devote humanity’s scarce resources toward ratcheting up a “new cold war” in the face of a worsening climate crisis, McCoy’s history is an important reminder that otherwise- ordinary individuals once helped end a global conflict that threatened nuclear holocaust.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
608 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 9, 2025
35 people are currently reading
331 people want to read
About the author
Alfred W. McCoy
31 books345 followersDr Alfred W. McCoy is professor of SE Asian History at the U. of Wisconsin at Madison where he also serves as director of the Center for SE Asian Studies, a federally-funded National Resource Center. He's spent the past quarter-century writing about the politics & history of the opium trade. In addition to publications, he serves as a correspondent for the Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues in Paris & was plenary speaker at their '92 conference in Paris sponsored by the European Community. In '93, he presented a paper on the Mafia & the Asian heroin trade at the Conference in Honor of Giovanni Falcone in Palermo, Sicily. In 3/96, he was the plenary speaker at the 7th International Conference on Drug Harm Reduction in Hobart, Australia. He's served as expert witness & consultant to the Canadian Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical use of Drugs, the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs, the Minister of Administrative Services, Victoria State Parliament, & the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Enforcement Policy & Support in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense. Recently, he worked as consultant & commentator for a tv documentary on the global heroin traffic produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, accompanying the crew to locations in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam & Laos.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 1, 2026
“During the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower authorized 170 major CIA covert operations in forty-eight nations, making the Agency Washington’s prime instrument for force projection in the Cold War’s first, formative decade.” “The US would spend a total of $12.4 trillion on defense from 1950 to 1990, for an average of $303 billion per year – far more than any other nation.” During the Cold War, US leaders openly supported dictators as long as they were openly anti-communist or allowed penetration by US finance capital to the detriment of citizens of that country. Ike referred to these complaint dictators as OUR S.O.B.’s. Similarly, today’s US liberals are ok with billionaires just as long as they are OUR (democratic) billionaires. Alfred calls Cold War US policy, “setting aside democratic principles to back almost any reliably loyal leader, whether dictator or democrat.” Alfred calls NY socialite Mary Pinchot a “great beauty” on page 36. Visual fact checkers will quickly notice Mary Pinchot would have been lucky to be a restaurant hostess.
South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee ruled for 15 years before the US found him too embarrassingly repressive to keep in office, leaving behind a South Korea that was “still an underdeveloped agricultural nation with widespread poverty.” Alfred says, “The Korean War brought the Cold War to Asia, starting a quarter century of armed conflict” but will not mention in a book on the Cold War that most subsequent Cold War deaths in Asia were by the US and not by the Soviet Union or China. Saudi Arabia went from producing 1,400 barrels of oil daily in 1938 to 246,000 in 1947. The Middle East’s share of world oil production went from 7% in in 1945 to 35% in 1973. In 1935, Reza Shah changed his country’s name from Persia to Iran”. In ’53 the CIA overthrows Iran’s Mosaddegh to stop his nationalization of Iranian oil – the US ends up 40% of Iran’s oil production post-coup. The CIA paid Iranian criminals (who normally collected protection money) to pull off that ’35 coup. Getting rid of democratically elected Mosaddegh only cost the CIA $20 million and around 300 dead Iranians. The incoming US puppet dictator (the Shah) delusionally thought the people loved and preferred him over Mosaddegh. Eisenhower’s inexpensive CIA success in Iran got Ike harder than nailing Mamie after a good golf game. “Seduced by the allure of that success”, Eisenhower authorized “during his eight years in office, 170 covert interventions in forty-eight nations compared to only one conventional military invasion.” Even US sociopath Madeleine Albright later admitted that Mosaddegh’s overthrow “was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development” and that the US installed Shah “brutally repressed political dissent.”
Cuba & Dominican Republic: “After Batista’s 1952 coup, US organized crime invested millions of dollars to make Havana a virtual (shady) Mecca for American tourists” – it employed 20% of Havana’s workforce. I’d love to see a book on the history of similarities, differences, and collusions between US foreign policy and the Mafia since WWII. In the Dominican Republic, the CIA ended Rafael Trujillo’s 30 year “reign of terror” because it worried that like Batista, Trujillo might cause a revolution and so installed Juan Bosch. But Bosch seemed too Left and so LBJ replaced him with dictator Joaquin Balaguer who for 12 years “presided over the torture, death and disappearance of 11,000 people.” Mission accomplished.
Congo & Southeast Asia: Then Washington backed Congo’s dictator Mobutu for 32 years (even though he stashed the $6 billion he stole from IMF loans in offshore bank accounts) until Congo’s economy (not surprisingly) collapsed. By that point, half of Congo’s “children died by the age of five.” Vietnam was a shitshow, but did you know that by the war’s end, “the VC had infiltrated 30,000 communist spies into every facet of Saigon’s security services.” Those numbers made the VC back then “by far the biggest agent network in the history of espionage.” Impressive. Back in 1951 the US began providing 75 to 80% of the funds France used to keep the Vietnamese from choosing its own government. “The (1968) Tet Offensive would mark the end of any chance for victory in Vietnam.” The CIA’s William Colby said the US Phoenix Program “killed 20,587 people since its inception in 1968; therefore, the Phoenix Program was only created after there was no chance of the US winning the war – how sadistically unnecessary was that? When the US finally pulled its soldiers from Vietnam, 34% of them were “habitual heroin users, and most units were no longer capable of effective combat.” Pause to wave the flag. The US dropped 2.1 million tons of bombs during ALL of WWII, yet did you know it dropped even more, a whopping 2.5 million tons, JUST on Laos (which took 580,000 bombing sorties). Either the US really hated farmers A LOT (Laos being largely agricultural), or it has a sadistic side that is off the charts – if Hitler or Muslims dropped that many bombs on Laos, that fact alone would be taught in US schools.
The September 11th, 1973, US orchestrated Chilean Coup against Allende lasted only seven hours – after which, the US approved replacement Pinochet (who was in power for 17 years), had tortured over 40,000 civilians. Cold War Question: Did the US ever bring anyone to power who didn’t torture civilians? Fun Fact: in 1980 the US gave Honduras $4 million in aid, while in 1985 the US gave it $200 million – you know, funding CIA torture training and illegally supporting the murderous Contra against fellow humans is NOT cheap. There’s an unwritten story of innocent migrants fleeing gang violence who immigrated to the US from Central American countries fucked up by the US. In 2018, the Vatican canonized the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero.
President Reagan, who said “peace is the highest aspiration of the American people”, approved the mining Nicaragua’s deep-water ports “in an effort to cripple the country’s economy.” Even right-winger Barry Goldwater acknowledged that the CIA and Reagan were involved. Committing war crimes for “peace”, no doubt. The $2 trillion dollar Iraq War killed 4,500 US soldiers and killed “about one million Iraqi civilians” and for five minutes, made conservatives blush when the Abu Ghraib prison photos were released. I wonder if today “put ‘em on a leash” Lynndie England, post-Abu Ghraib runs a successful OnlyFans domination site?
Fun Russia Facts: Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov died in 1984, and Chernenko died in 1985 and then Gorbachev took power. After investing $2 billion in Afghanistan’s destruction in our Soviet Union proxy war, Washington refused to pay for its reconstruction, just like we did in Vietnam. Instead, we left Afghanistan with “1.5 million dead, 5 million refugees, a ravaged economy, and warlords primed for struggle.” One more reason the US is adored everywhere. That US support for Afghan resistance to the Soviets led Afghanistan’s opium harvest to soar “from just a hundred tons annually in 1979 to 2,000 tons by 1990.” In other words, while Nancy Reagan was telling Americans “Just Say No”, her own husband was instrumental in dramatically increasing the world’s heroin output.
While the US sleeps, China has launched the “largest investment in human history, ten times bigger than the US Marshall Plan” – no, it’s not the Resurrection of Milli Vanilli’s career – it’s China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which economically integrates Eurasia at the expense of the US. ›Ya snooze, ya lose. Pride cometh before a fall. Never mind that Eurasia has 70% of the world’s population. We are all told by mainstream media how Israel thinks Iran is evil and no one should think of helping it, yet on page 364, we learn that in 1985 Israel sold Iran ninety-six Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missiles, or TOW’s, then one month later sent 408 more TOW’s to Iran. Why, pray tell, would you sell advanced weaponry to your arch-enemy? Probably for the same reason Netanyahu generously financed Hamas for over a decade which the NYT, Times of Israel, and Haaretz all wrote stories about.
I think US liberals will like this book because they will hear about Mao killing 30 million civilians through starvation, but absolutely nothing about the total civilian death toll caused by bipartisan US Cold War foreign policy (including financial warfare) since WWII (in a book about the Cold War). It comes down hard on Putin (and China) yet doesn’t mention Yeltsin’s deeply corrupt role in the Rape of Russia by US finance capital (creating all those Russian billionaires – see Michael Hudson’s books). Alfred won’t tell you how Truman manufactured the Cold War in order to win the 1948 election by scaring the hell out of the American people as Senator Vanderburg suggested to him. Nor will Alfred mention the massive threat of NATO expansion eastward (against US assurances to Gorbachev otherwise) in provoking Russia & Putin.
What I liked first about this book (which will be published in January 2026), was that it put lots of worldwide Cold War operational stuff in one volume (hence the title) with Alfred methodically going country to country giving you how the Cold War played out in each one. What I liked MOST about this book was I always thought Vietnam War ended largely because (as shown in the film “Sir No Sir!”) troops were fragging officers and dumping bombs off-target in protest, and brass knew those disillusioned troops might soon be needed back in the US to quell anti-war protests. But this book shows the deep contribution to ending the war by a.) the VC’s infiltration of 30,000 communist spies into every facet of Saigon’s security services -“by far the biggest agent network in the history of espionage” and b.) that 34% of US troops were habitual heroin users, and c.) most units were no longer capable of effective combat. Bravo to the author for deepening my understanding of the Vietnam War and the Cold War in general.
South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee ruled for 15 years before the US found him too embarrassingly repressive to keep in office, leaving behind a South Korea that was “still an underdeveloped agricultural nation with widespread poverty.” Alfred says, “The Korean War brought the Cold War to Asia, starting a quarter century of armed conflict” but will not mention in a book on the Cold War that most subsequent Cold War deaths in Asia were by the US and not by the Soviet Union or China. Saudi Arabia went from producing 1,400 barrels of oil daily in 1938 to 246,000 in 1947. The Middle East’s share of world oil production went from 7% in in 1945 to 35% in 1973. In 1935, Reza Shah changed his country’s name from Persia to Iran”. In ’53 the CIA overthrows Iran’s Mosaddegh to stop his nationalization of Iranian oil – the US ends up 40% of Iran’s oil production post-coup. The CIA paid Iranian criminals (who normally collected protection money) to pull off that ’35 coup. Getting rid of democratically elected Mosaddegh only cost the CIA $20 million and around 300 dead Iranians. The incoming US puppet dictator (the Shah) delusionally thought the people loved and preferred him over Mosaddegh. Eisenhower’s inexpensive CIA success in Iran got Ike harder than nailing Mamie after a good golf game. “Seduced by the allure of that success”, Eisenhower authorized “during his eight years in office, 170 covert interventions in forty-eight nations compared to only one conventional military invasion.” Even US sociopath Madeleine Albright later admitted that Mosaddegh’s overthrow “was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development” and that the US installed Shah “brutally repressed political dissent.”
Cuba & Dominican Republic: “After Batista’s 1952 coup, US organized crime invested millions of dollars to make Havana a virtual (shady) Mecca for American tourists” – it employed 20% of Havana’s workforce. I’d love to see a book on the history of similarities, differences, and collusions between US foreign policy and the Mafia since WWII. In the Dominican Republic, the CIA ended Rafael Trujillo’s 30 year “reign of terror” because it worried that like Batista, Trujillo might cause a revolution and so installed Juan Bosch. But Bosch seemed too Left and so LBJ replaced him with dictator Joaquin Balaguer who for 12 years “presided over the torture, death and disappearance of 11,000 people.” Mission accomplished.
Congo & Southeast Asia: Then Washington backed Congo’s dictator Mobutu for 32 years (even though he stashed the $6 billion he stole from IMF loans in offshore bank accounts) until Congo’s economy (not surprisingly) collapsed. By that point, half of Congo’s “children died by the age of five.” Vietnam was a shitshow, but did you know that by the war’s end, “the VC had infiltrated 30,000 communist spies into every facet of Saigon’s security services.” Those numbers made the VC back then “by far the biggest agent network in the history of espionage.” Impressive. Back in 1951 the US began providing 75 to 80% of the funds France used to keep the Vietnamese from choosing its own government. “The (1968) Tet Offensive would mark the end of any chance for victory in Vietnam.” The CIA’s William Colby said the US Phoenix Program “killed 20,587 people since its inception in 1968; therefore, the Phoenix Program was only created after there was no chance of the US winning the war – how sadistically unnecessary was that? When the US finally pulled its soldiers from Vietnam, 34% of them were “habitual heroin users, and most units were no longer capable of effective combat.” Pause to wave the flag. The US dropped 2.1 million tons of bombs during ALL of WWII, yet did you know it dropped even more, a whopping 2.5 million tons, JUST on Laos (which took 580,000 bombing sorties). Either the US really hated farmers A LOT (Laos being largely agricultural), or it has a sadistic side that is off the charts – if Hitler or Muslims dropped that many bombs on Laos, that fact alone would be taught in US schools.
The September 11th, 1973, US orchestrated Chilean Coup against Allende lasted only seven hours – after which, the US approved replacement Pinochet (who was in power for 17 years), had tortured over 40,000 civilians. Cold War Question: Did the US ever bring anyone to power who didn’t torture civilians? Fun Fact: in 1980 the US gave Honduras $4 million in aid, while in 1985 the US gave it $200 million – you know, funding CIA torture training and illegally supporting the murderous Contra against fellow humans is NOT cheap. There’s an unwritten story of innocent migrants fleeing gang violence who immigrated to the US from Central American countries fucked up by the US. In 2018, the Vatican canonized the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero.
President Reagan, who said “peace is the highest aspiration of the American people”, approved the mining Nicaragua’s deep-water ports “in an effort to cripple the country’s economy.” Even right-winger Barry Goldwater acknowledged that the CIA and Reagan were involved. Committing war crimes for “peace”, no doubt. The $2 trillion dollar Iraq War killed 4,500 US soldiers and killed “about one million Iraqi civilians” and for five minutes, made conservatives blush when the Abu Ghraib prison photos were released. I wonder if today “put ‘em on a leash” Lynndie England, post-Abu Ghraib runs a successful OnlyFans domination site?
Fun Russia Facts: Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov died in 1984, and Chernenko died in 1985 and then Gorbachev took power. After investing $2 billion in Afghanistan’s destruction in our Soviet Union proxy war, Washington refused to pay for its reconstruction, just like we did in Vietnam. Instead, we left Afghanistan with “1.5 million dead, 5 million refugees, a ravaged economy, and warlords primed for struggle.” One more reason the US is adored everywhere. That US support for Afghan resistance to the Soviets led Afghanistan’s opium harvest to soar “from just a hundred tons annually in 1979 to 2,000 tons by 1990.” In other words, while Nancy Reagan was telling Americans “Just Say No”, her own husband was instrumental in dramatically increasing the world’s heroin output.
While the US sleeps, China has launched the “largest investment in human history, ten times bigger than the US Marshall Plan” – no, it’s not the Resurrection of Milli Vanilli’s career – it’s China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which economically integrates Eurasia at the expense of the US. ›Ya snooze, ya lose. Pride cometh before a fall. Never mind that Eurasia has 70% of the world’s population. We are all told by mainstream media how Israel thinks Iran is evil and no one should think of helping it, yet on page 364, we learn that in 1985 Israel sold Iran ninety-six Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missiles, or TOW’s, then one month later sent 408 more TOW’s to Iran. Why, pray tell, would you sell advanced weaponry to your arch-enemy? Probably for the same reason Netanyahu generously financed Hamas for over a decade which the NYT, Times of Israel, and Haaretz all wrote stories about.
I think US liberals will like this book because they will hear about Mao killing 30 million civilians through starvation, but absolutely nothing about the total civilian death toll caused by bipartisan US Cold War foreign policy (including financial warfare) since WWII (in a book about the Cold War). It comes down hard on Putin (and China) yet doesn’t mention Yeltsin’s deeply corrupt role in the Rape of Russia by US finance capital (creating all those Russian billionaires – see Michael Hudson’s books). Alfred won’t tell you how Truman manufactured the Cold War in order to win the 1948 election by scaring the hell out of the American people as Senator Vanderburg suggested to him. Nor will Alfred mention the massive threat of NATO expansion eastward (against US assurances to Gorbachev otherwise) in provoking Russia & Putin.
What I liked first about this book (which will be published in January 2026), was that it put lots of worldwide Cold War operational stuff in one volume (hence the title) with Alfred methodically going country to country giving you how the Cold War played out in each one. What I liked MOST about this book was I always thought Vietnam War ended largely because (as shown in the film “Sir No Sir!”) troops were fragging officers and dumping bombs off-target in protest, and brass knew those disillusioned troops might soon be needed back in the US to quell anti-war protests. But this book shows the deep contribution to ending the war by a.) the VC’s infiltration of 30,000 communist spies into every facet of Saigon’s security services -“by far the biggest agent network in the history of espionage” and b.) that 34% of US troops were habitual heroin users, and c.) most units were no longer capable of effective combat. Bravo to the author for deepening my understanding of the Vietnam War and the Cold War in general.
February 2, 2026
Revealing, provocative, and a must-read for the shadow history of the US empire through the four decades of Cold War in five continents!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews