This chapter studies how the linkage between state power and large-scale projects that ruled during the modernization years entered a crisis in the 1970s, when modernity ceased to be an end in itself and new sensibilities replaced what in 1958 Nehru called the “disease of giganticism.” While development struggled to keep its promise to quickly grant underdeveloped countries wealth and well-being, problems related to industrialization appeared in the form of ecological imbalances. At the turn of the decade, development was considered a failure as a Cold War weapon, and there was widespread doubt about planning. Though ideology was still unyielding in the periphery, where international crises and civil wars stemming from decolonization and the failure of new states continued to fuel Cold War dynamics, in international organizations the East–West conflict rarely challenged the fundamental underlying agreement on global issues. Instead, a major cleavage ran along the old color line—between a rich, white, developed North and a colored, poor, underdeveloped South.
Northern Europe in the Cold War, 1965–1990. East-West Interactions of Trade, Culture and Security