"The former colonial world was a more promising arena for US-Soviet competition. With their large populations, crucial raw materials, and strategically important locations, Third World countries represented a prime arena to launch a global contest between capitalism and communism. Beginning in 1953 Washington and Moscow, eager to supplant European control while advertising their own anti-imperialist credentials, formulated two rival economic development models accompanied by generous military and civilian aid packages and goodwill gestures (from student scholarships to high-level government visits) to attract the elites in the colonial and semicolonial states of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Both deployed their overseas intelligence agencies, the CIA and the KGB, to enlist allies and informants in the Third World, monitor political movements and foreign governments, and penetrate their rivals’ activities. Both sides entered this global competition with assets and liabilities, and both approached the Third World with a combination of ambition, altruism, and fear of the other’s gains. The United States, brimming with confidence over its role in rebuilding Western Europe and Japan, sought to extend its political influence by supporting the expansion of free markets and elected governments. The Soviet Union, which had revived spectacularly after World War II as a major military and industrial power, countered the West’s appeal with its call for centralized planning and a regime that promoted social and economic justice."