Global Conflict,

Global
(Dis)Orders, Part II

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

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, Peoples 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 Unions Stalin and Chinas 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 Maos
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!

Gorbachev and Reagan exchange New

Year messages to their nations,
December 1987:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqmT
EsP7Aoc

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: Russias 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=yMmsxhho_g&feature=related
Chinas military power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-rgPI5iGBg
Brazils military power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=CyScyV9hku4&feature=related

The US under the Clinton and Bush Administrations acted

as the worlds 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 peoples 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 WORLDS 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

The Worlds Nuclear Weapons (data from Bulletin of Atomic

Scientists: http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20091118_4824.php )

*** Estimates

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

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 Annans report In Larger Freedom:
Report - Table of Contents
And UN Secretary-Generals High-level Panels 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 others 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