global conflict, global (dis)orders, part ii. the cold war an intense, prolonged political...
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Global Conflict, Global (Dis)Orders, Part II
THE COLD WAR An intense, prolonged political confrontation between
countries, involving all spheres of relations (a war) But without a direct armed clash (cold) – though it may
escalate into a “hot” war The Cold War
1946-1991 East-West Communism – capitalism Soviet Union – United States
Minor cold wars (examples): US-Cuba: 1959-… US-Iran: 1979-… US-Iraq: 1991-2003 US-North Korea: 1953-… India-Pakistan: 1960s-2000s Soviet Union-China: 1960s-1980s US and Israel vs. Iran
The Cold War – 1946-1991 Europe and East Asia devastated by World War II Global capitalism is shattered even more than by WWI The stage is set for another round of global conflict The three dimensions of the new war:
ideological (global capitalism challenged by the Global Left)
geopolitical (competition between states) military (wars and arms races)
In the late 1940s, conflicts in the three areas converged to produce a rapid shift from the peace of 1945 to a 45-year-long period of confrontation
The ideological dimension:
global conflict between the two political-economic systems, capitalism and communism
The Three Worlds of the Cold War The capitalist West, the communist East, and the Third
World (now called the Global South) East-West conflict:
Will capitalism survive – or will be replaced by some forms of socialism or communism?
In the Third World, massive struggles for national independence from Western colonial domination
The Global Left consisted of: Communist states (the Soviet Union, People’s Republic
of China, and others) Communist parties around the world, most of them
supported by the USSR (Italy and France having the biggest)
Moderate Left forces (social democrats, labour movements, movements for democracy, etc.)
Anti-colonial forces in the 3d world
Red dictators: Soviet Union’s Stalin and China’s Mao, 1950
First American Cold War President: Harry S. Truman (in office from 1945 to1952)
George Kennan, American diplomat, architect of the policy of Containment of Communism
The US acted as the global force to save and rebuild capitalism
To defeat the Global LeftUse of forceCooptationRebuilding a global capitalist economy based on US dominance Ideological wars: liberal democracy vs. communist dictatorship
Construct a world orderAlliancesInternational organizationsInternational law
The geopolitical dimension
The end of WWII saw
the rise of the two superpowers:
USA and USSR
A bipolar world – something unique in world history
Challenging each other
Containing each other
Trying to control other states to follow them
But also: cooperating with each other to keep their power
Each needed the other as “The Other”
But both wanted to survive
The Berlin Wall, symbol of the Cold War division of Europe
The military dimensionThe 2 giants never had a significant direct armed conflict
between themThey fought wars by proxy (Korea, Vietnam, Angola, etc.)But they prepared for total military confrontation
Nuclear armsConventional armies and naviesMilitary alliances – NATO, the Warsaw PactSpy wars
New structures of militarismThe military-industrial complexThe national security state
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG2aJyIFrA&feature=related
Several moments when the world was within a few steps from nuclear war – e.g. October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis
Nuclear weapons: can you use them to win a war?
War-fighting vs. deterrence
The balance of terror
The nuclear stalemate
From an uncontrolled arms race to arms control and disarmament
The era of arms control began in 1963 with the US-Soviet-British treaty to ban all, except underground, tests of nuclear weapons
A system of treaties was developed in the 1960s-1990s to make nuclear war less likely
Losses in the Cold War (estimates): - Over 20 mln. died in local wars, mostly between the
Global Left and the West - Victims of totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union (1929-
1953), Communist China (1950s-1970s), other communist states : 60 mln. people died as a result of policies of forced
modernization and political repression Total: 80 mln. lives 80% of the human losses were civilian Massive waste of resources Unprecedented growth of technologies of destruction The degradation of natural environment Stymied democracy and economic development
Korea, 1950: US forces in battle with Communist troops
1960, the Cuban revolution: Fidel Castro challenges the US
1972, Vietnam: Communist soldiers
1972: Vietnamese villagers massacred by American GIs
Sept.1973: General Augusto Pinochet overthrows a socialist government in Chile and establishes a military dictatorship
Soviet helicopter gunships over Afghanistan, 1980
Afghan mujahid fighter against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, 1980s
Why and how did the Cold War end?
Ideological factors
Capitalism survived and expanded due to a number of factors: Social reforms (the welfare state) The post-industrial revolution Expansion of the market economy Globalization Rise of multinational corporations
By the 1980s, the Global Left was in retreat Soviet-type Communism stagnated and declined China launched successful market reforms after Mao’s
death in 1976 In the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev launched democratic
reforms in 1985 Collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union (1989-1991) Transition to capitalism
Communist states: 1917-2011
Map of Communist History
Geopolitical factors 1960s-1980s: from a bipolar to a multipolar world The rise of the integrated Europe, Japan, China Proliferation of independent states
1945 – 50 states Today – 193
The superpowers were losing control In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as a state and was
replaced by 15 new independent states The US moved to assume a hegemonic position (a unipolar
world?)
Military factors
The stalemate between the superpowers, the stabilizing effect of arms control
The economic burdens of the arms race
The futility of war as a means of policy
The rise of new pacifism - antiwar, antimilitarist movements - around the world (1960s-1980s)
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union
Negotiating an end to the Cold War The threat of nuclear war as the overriding issue The Cold War was undermining the Soviet system
The economic burden A militarized state ensured bureaucratic paralysis: society
lacked basic freedoms, the state was losing its capacity to govern
The atmosphere of confrontation with the West was stifling impulses for necessary reforms, imposing ideological rigidity
Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was now seen as an obsolete, counterproductive policy. Lessons of Czechoslovakia (1968) and Poland (1980-81). Reforms in Eastern Europe are necessary for Soviet reform.
Solution: New Thinking, a plan to negotiate an end to the Cold War to assure security and free up Soviet and East European potential for reform. “The Sinatra Doctrine”
Gorbachev and Reagan as partners: Time to end the Cold War!
November 1989: crowds of Germans breach the Berlin Wall
When did the Cold War end?
1988: officially declared over by Reagan and Gorbachev (before the fall of European Communism)
1989-91: the fall of European communist regimes
Global capitalism and liberal democracy emerged victorious
Expectations of an era of peace, cooperation and progress
In reality…
The misleading effects of Cold War triumphalism:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR30.1/crawford.html
Balkans, 1992-95: the Bosnia War
Africa, 1994: the Rwandan genocide
1994-96: Russia’s war in Chechnya
1999: NATO-Yugoslavia war over Kosovo
New York City, September 11, 2001
Afghan Taliban
US forces in Afghanistan
US-British invasion of Iraq, 2003
MQ-9 Reaper, pilotless bomber (“drone”), used by US forces in Pakistan
Taliban soldiers leaving Buner, Pakistan, April 2009
Subway station, Mexico City, April 2009
US military power http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=jDfJjvice3w&feature=related Russian military power http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMm-
sxhho_g&feature=related China’s military power http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-rgPI5iGBg Brazil’s military power http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=CyScyV9hku4&feature=related
The US under the Clinton and Bush Administrations acted as the world’s hegemonic power.
Key features of the Bush foreign policy: Proclamation of GWOT Radical Islam and “rogue states” cast in the role of “the
enemy” “Democracy promotion”, including by means of force “The unipolar moment” Unilateralism vs. multilateralism Determination to preserve US hegemony
Potential challengers: rising centres of global power EU China, India Russia Brazil and others
Use of force has been becoming more frequent and larger in scale: invasions, terrorist attacks
The new concept of “preventive war” Militarization of outer space Dismantling of arms control, proliferation of nukes The danger that nuclear weapons may be used is
considered higher than in the Cold War New hi-tech weapons The war in people’s minds: ideas and beliefs, religion A new culture of war?
"This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War.“ – James Woolsey, former Director of CIA*
“The Long War” Guardian | America's Long War
*http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war
THE WORLD’S MILITARY FORCES
20,000 nuclear weapons
120,000 battle tanks
35,000 combat aircraft
1,500 major warships
Over 23 million under arms (regular and irregular armies)
including 0.5 million women
and 0.2 million children under 15
Russia*** 13,000
USA 8,400
France 300
China 240
UK 180
Israel*** 80-100
Pakistan*** 70-90
India*** 60-80
North Korea*** ?
Total*** 23,360
The World’s Nuclear Weapons (data from Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20091118_4824.php )
*** Estimates
Patterns of war, early 21st century:
Mostly in the Global South -
even though most military preparations are in the North
Mostly within states, not between states
Casualties overwhelmingly civilian
Terrorism a widely used weapon
The threat of WMD use
The potential for escalation and spread
The dialectics of integration and conflict in world politics Conflict and integration are inseparable from each other Integration has generated new conflicts They are undermining integration Will conflicts converge to produce large-scale warfare on
global scale? At what level of conflict will the world achieve more viable
and humane forms of integration?
Do we have alternatives to escalation?
See Kofi Annan’s report “In Larger Freedom”:
Report - Table of Contents
And UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel’s report “A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility” :
Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel
A new global security consensus is needed The UN was created in 1945 as a collective security
organization – To prevent states from waging aggressive wars on other
states It was understood that peace and security would require:
facilitating socioeconomic development and protection of human rights
• SECURITY
• DEVELOPMENT
• HUMAN RIGHTS
–are inseparable
DEVELOPMENT
HUMAN RIGHTS
SECURITY
“Sixty years later, we know all too well that the biggest security threats we face now, and in the decades ahead, go far beyond States waging aggressive war…
…The threats are from non-state actors as well as States, and to human security as well as State security”.
From “A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility”
Examples of mutual insecurity Northern troubles – southern consequences
World Bank estimates: the attacks of 9/11 increased the number of world
poor by 10 million total cost to the world economy – $80 bln.
Southern troubles – northern consequences 9/11 Global epidemics Terrorism
The “front line actors” to assure security – Individual sovereign states But they must act collectively – individually, they cannot do
the job The threats are transnational No state is invulnerable And an individual state may not be “able, or willing, to
meet its responsibility to protect its own peoples and not to harm its neighbours”
“What is needed today is nothing less than a new consensus between alliances that are frayed, between wealthy nations and poor, and among people mired in mistrust across an apparently widening cultural abyss. The essence of that consensus is simple: we all share responsibility for each other’s security. And the test of that consensus will be action.”
The primary challenge - PREVENTION How to prevent security threats from rising: DEVELOPMENT If successful -
Improves living conditions Builds state capacities Creates an environment which makes war less likely
But what if prevention fails? Conditions for legitimate use of force Article 51 and Chapter VII of the UN Charter They need no changes, but they must be used more
effectively Build a consensus on guidelines 5 guidelines:
Seriousness of threat Proper purpose Last resort Proportional means Balance of consequences
Other major issues arising during and after violent conflict: Needed capacities for peace enforcement: all countries
must contribute resources Peace-keeping Peace-building Protection of civilians
A more effective United Nations Organization Revitalize the General Assembly Reform and make more effective the Security Council
(decision-making and contributions) Give attention, policy guidance and resources to countries
under stress, in conflict, and emerging from conflict Security Council must work more closely with regional
organizations Institutions to address social and economic threats to
international security Create a more potent international body for the protection of
human rights