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-yearlong 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 Left
Use of force
Cooptation
Rebuilding a global capitalist economy based on US
dominance
Ideological wars: liberal democracy vs. communist
dictatorship
Construct a world order
Alliances
International organizations
International 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 dimension
The 2 giants never had a significant direct armed conflict
between them
They fought wars by proxy (Korea, Vietnam, Angola, etc.)
But they prepared for total military confrontation
Nuclear arms
Conventional armies and navies
Military alliances – NATO, the Warsaw Pact
Spy wars
New structures of militarism
The military-industrial complex
The 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-SovietBritish 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 (19291953), 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


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 ARMED FORCES
16,000 nuclear weapons
120,000 battle tanks
35,000 combat aircraft
1,500 major warships
Over 27 million under arms (regular and irregular armies)
including 0.5 million women
and 0.2 million children under 15
The World’s Nuclear Weapons (data from Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists: http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20091118_4824.php )
Russia
4,700
USA
4,500
France
300
China
260
UK
215
Israel
80-100
Pakistan
120-130
India
110-120
North Korea
10
Total
10,295-10,335

Facts on terrorism:
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/#page/n
ews/1277
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
SECURITY
HUMAN RIGHTS
DEVELOPMENT



“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