Title: The Cold War and Imperialism - Global Learning
Headings: 
The Cold War and Imperialism
Content: and Federico Chaves in Paraguay, which led to Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship (1956-89). At the same time, Eisenhower’s policies contributed to undermining the thrust of the Bolivian revolution in the governments of Victor Paz Estenssoro (1952-56) and Hernán Siles Zuazo (1956-60). Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti also arose in this period” (Regalado 2007:122). The Cold War was the ideological pillar of imperialism, facilitating US economic and financial penetration of Latin America and the Third World and ensuring the consolidation of the United States as the hegemonic power of the neocolonial world-system. Thus, we see that immediately following the Second World War, pushed by the economic interests of arms industries, political leaders created a Cold War ideology that provided justification for a permanent war economy. But the Cold War ideology distorted history in fundamental ways: the Soviet Union was not a threat, and it was less evil than portrayed; the nations of the Third World were not turning to communism, but were seeking independence from colonialism and neocolonialism; and the nation itself was less democratic than it pretended. The Cold War ideological distortions became widely accepted beliefs not because they were true or right, but because they served powerful particular interests.