lecture 13 - cold war and third world alternatives Flashcards
the bomb
little boy - Hiroshima -> blast + fire storm + radiation -> 66-1400 immediate deaths
- industrial city (did include military targets)
Nagasaki -> 35 thousand immediate deaths
- had strategic/military aspects as well
why?
- traditional: Truman wanted to avoid heavy casualties that would be caused by invasion of Japan
-> was not a true consideration - Walker (promt and utter destruction): there were alternatives + thought Japan was weak =>
two main reasons : wanted to end war quickly
- US econ. & public opinion strained by continued war in Pacific
- Threat of Soviet invasion of Japanese (US saw it as a strategic disadvantage)
- also: racism
nuclear deterence
cold war principle = Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
- all out war would end humanity
*soviets had spies in Manhattan project
contemporary principle of nuclear deterrence? still nuclear weapons
principle of MAD doesn’t really work anymore because we’re no longer in a bipolar world
definition of the cold war
= system of redirecting US-USSR conflict toward proxy wars in peripheral areas, carefully managing threat of escalation into nuclear war
*somehow worked, but there were some critical moments
ideologically: conflict capitalism/communism
practically: geopolitical struggle for balance of power within a new international system
George F. Kennen: USSR not a normal state: communist ideology is fundamentally expansionists -> USSR must be contained
post-war planning by Allied powers
- USSR would keep territories it had already (re)gained in Poland and Baltic states
- new gov. of liberated states in Europe would be determined by democratic elections
- the German state would temporarily be divided into zones of occupation
- USSR would join the UN
phases of the Soviet Bloc 1945-59
Soviet Bloc (eastern Europe)= Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, Albania
(buffer-zone between west and SU)
not in much detail: main thing = multiple internal changes in the Soviet bloc
phase 1
- people’s democracy 1945-47 (institutional and ideological diversity) = honored pledge to democr.
phase 2
- Stalinism 1947-53
(institutional & ideological uniformity)
phase 3
- Krushchev Thaw 1953-56
(institutional and ideological diversity) = turned away from cult of personality, more transparency
phase 4
- Communist Commonwealth 1957-59
(institutional & ideological uniformity)
cold war Europe
NATO vs Warsaw Pact
- first NATO
- defence treaties that obliged countries to defend when attacked
(there were also non-alligned countries)
Marshall plan = material aid, open to all European states (but eastern countries were ordered not to)
Molotov plan = similar plan (not as generous)
-> western europe recovers faster
the global cold war
Odd Arne Westad
= now consensus view
three camps, attention away from Europe
- USA (empire of liberty)
- USSR (empire of justice)
- anticolonial revolutionaries: Third World
*US and USSR intervened in ideological rivalry + proxy war
without the cold war, Africa, Asia and possibly also Latin America would have been very different regions today
- cold war in global South = continuation of European High Imperialism
e.g. permanent US military base on Cuba
the UN - original plan
Mazower thesis: UN originated as apparatus for administering Western Imperial interests (just like LoN)
it emerged in a world of empires, we have to understand it as such
- alliance of the great powers embedded in a universal organization
*more Concert of Europe -like than LoN-like
*in comp. to concert of Europe: Prussia and Austria-Hungary out, US and China in - UN would be new phase in IO history, but still linked to questions of empire/visions of global order emerged out of British Empire
- UN in many ways continuation of the LoN (e.g. ~same men that came up with it)
- UN as product of empire: regarded by states with colonies as mechanism for defending imperial system
UN emerged out of the same ‘‘imperial internationalism’’ as the League
*preamble sounds national-selfdeterministic etc., respect independence (has no binding force though)
Mazower: many issues UN are product of ‘‘expectations that it founders never intended to be met’’
early struggle over direction of UN
first decades = conservative tool for imperial entrenchment VS radical tool for post-imperial world order
- Jan Smuts (South Africa) = supporter imperial internationalism , important founder UN and LoN
- Jawaharlal Nehru = supporter anti-imperial internationalism
1946 Indian critique in UNGA targeted SA: poor treatment of Indian minority
SA: that’s internal affairs
UNGA: demands SA policy change
*it didn’t change much in SA (UNSC resistance -> UN powerless), but marked rise of ‘‘Asia’’
UN dramatic shift
50s-60s
- principle of national self-determination became globalized
- UNGA becomes anti-colonial forum
decolonization / revolt against the West
5 phases
Hedley Bull (English School)
- struggle for equal sovereignty (states that were formally independent, but had inferior status, e.g. Japan)
- anti-colonial revolution: formal political independence (after WW2)
- struggle for racial equality
e.g. Bandung 1955 + Tricontinental conferences + US civil rights + anti-Apartheid - struggle of economic justice
e.g. NIEO (1970s) - struggle for cultural liberation
decolonization + violence
Frantz Fanon: decolonization is always violent = raw, repressed and reckless state in the lives and consciousness of colonized men and women
violence also shapes behavior of colonizers
(British India as counterexample: mass civil disobedience (Ghandi))
!not really counter example: violence in process of partition (Hindu vs Muslims)
5 factors in success decolonization
Hedley Bull
- conception of Western-dominated order as something that could be changed
- Western powers lost self-assurance (WW1) + willingness/ability to accept costs (WW2)
- SU provided alternative center of power regular ally against the west
- division between imperialist powers -> advantage of those fighting against them
- (former) colonized states transformed legal and moral climate of IR (e.g. in UNGA)
-> world of nation-states + sovereignty
'’third world’’ 60s-70s
= growing consciousness, movement to become a coutnerpower against imperialism
= the are ignored, exploited, despised like the third estate also wants to be something
Bandung Conference -> Non Aligned Movement (NAM) -> Tricontinental Conference (brings Latin America into third wold solidarity)
