1. THE THREE WORLDS
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart
Pages 769-783
WTWA: Companion Reader, pp. 350-354
Amanda Abrams and Qiaxian Johnson
2. THE FIRST WORLD
• United States influenced
• In early 1950’s, this was Western Europe, North America, and later
Japan.
– Liberal Modernism – organize world on basis of capitalism and
democracy
• Sometimes allied with 3rd world dictators to combat communism
3. POSITIVE EFFECT Negative Effect
• The post-war period was
marked by economies of • Fear of communism
recovery and prosperity – Atomic weapons
thanks to U.S. investment in – McCarthyism in the US
Europe and Japan. – Spread of communism in Asia
– Nearly ¼ of citizens lived in
poverty
• U.S. high prosperity following
the war • Western Europe – Cold
War slowed efforts to
– Homeownership more common punish Fascists, Nazis, and
collaborators
– Suburban development
– Fear complete de-
– High birth rates
Nazification would leave
Germany weak and
– Civil rights movements susceptible to
communism
• NAACP
4. THE SECOND WORLD
• Soviet Union influenced
– Determined to insulate itself from future aggression from the
west, created buffer states.
• Eastern and central Europe, Mongolia, and North Korea.
5. SECOND WORLD (CONT.)
Pro Con
• Rapid industrialization • The Stalinist Soviet system
• state management of the suppressed dissent and
anyone it considered
economy with a cradle-to- dangerous to the state
grave comprehensive welfare – returning POWs were sent to
system camps after being released from
German camps because they had
• Soviet science gained had too much contact with
foreigners
worldwide acclaim, especially – Security police massacred strikers
after the launching of Sputnik in Poland
in 1957
6. THE THIRD WORLD
• Term coined by French intellectuals
– “third estate” – represented majority of population but was
oppressed
• 1960’s large bloc of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
– All recently decolonized and create more just societies than First
and Second worlds.
• Stronger democracy than 1st and rapid development like the
2nd
7. THIRD WORLD
DRAWBACKS
• impeded by the multi-national corporations and by the
financial system (IMF and World Bank)
• US and USSR opposed Third World neutrality and
impeded Third World autonomy
• Both superpowers sought “client states,” and
contributed to the militarization of the Third World
• many new countries had become debtor states, ruled
by corrupt regimes supported by one of the
superpowers
8. THIRD WORLD
REVOLUTIONS
• Mao Zedong – 1958, introduced Great Leap Forward
(unsuccessful)
– 1966 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
• Rid country of old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas
– “Lost Generation” sent to country side to reeducate
• In Guatemala, the CIA toppled the progressive government
of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954
• in Cuba, Fidel Castro launched a successful guerilla war
against the US-backed Batista regime in the late 1950s
• Che Guevara (1928-1967), Marxist revolutionary and
champion of the Cuban Revolution and Third World
9. POST WAR TENSIONS: FIRST WORLD
• Civil Rights Movements
• African American Civil Rights, NAACP
• Integration, racial tensions cause riots
• feminism: March in NYC 1970
• Friedan, women more independent, work oriented rather than family oriented, sexual
revolution and birth control
• Anti-War Movements
• Kent State Shooting: Anti-Vietnam
• lead to heightened non-violent civil disobedience, along with Ghandi and MLK, Jr.
10. POST WAR TENSIONS: SECOND WORLD/
COMMUNISM
• Soviet Union Control
• Buffer countries were against such a strong-hold of communist
control
• Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia
• Prague Spring of 1968: political reforms to try to loosen
control -> caused tensions between USSR and satellites
• USSR response: give limited political freedom in exchange for
loyalty
11. RESULTS
• Decolonization was now complete
• Three World Order replaced old European dominance
• US and USSR now superpowers, not Europe
• “nation-states” now form of organizing, not empires
• states given more power because they were no longer under
control of a “mother-country”