Diplomacy in the “Third World”

The postwar period was not only the era of the cold war it was also the era of decolonization and the rise of the “Third World.” In the wake of World War II millions of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America sought to throw off Western colonialism and its legacies. The combination of the cold war and decolonization proved volatile. Both the “first” and “second” worlds of capitalism and communism contended for allies, markets, and influence in the decolonizing world. As Koreans could attest, the cold war was not always cold in the Third World, where the conflict was often fought with devastating consequences for developing nations.