From bipolarity towards multidirectional challenges: The Cold War and International Relations Flashcards
When was the Yalta Conference and what was the goal of it?
Feb 1945:
The Goal: To shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order but a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of post-Nazi Europe.
When was the Potsdam Conference and what did it achieve?
July 1945
USSR taking Central and Eastern Europe territory from Germany
Insisting for control of Eastern Europe as a defensive measure against possible future attacks and claimed that it was a legitimate sphere of Soviet Influence.
What was the USA charachterised by during the Cold War?
Liberal Democracy
Freedom of choice
Rule of law
Market capitalism
What was the Soviet Union characterised by during the Cold War?
Totalitarian regimes in CEE
‘Brotherhood’ of socialist nations
Rule of the party, state planned economies
What was the Long Telegram and what did it say?
‘USSR still lives in antagonistic “capitalist encirclement” with which in the long run there can be no permanent co-existence’.
For USSR to ensure survival of communism is to destroy the capitalist way of life
Soviet attitude not based on objective analysis of external world but reflects conditions within Russia.
At the bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic world view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.
Soviet behaviour is ‘only the advance of uneasy Russian nationalism… in a new guise of international Marxism’
Soviet outlook is not ‘insincere’; rather ‘the very disrespect of Russians for objective truth- indeed, their disbelief in its existence leads them to distrust any indication to the contrary.
What was the policy recommendation and what was the USA’s interpretation of it in order to contain communism?
The Soviet regime is inherently expansionist and that its influence has to be ‘contained’ in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States
US political elites interpretation: containment = ‘by all means’ = military campaigns such as Vietnam War.
3 Direct proxy wars and their years
1950-53 Korean War
1964-75 Vietnam War
1979-89 Afghanistan War
3 Indirect proxy wars and their dates
1967 Six day war Israel vs Egypt, Syria and Jordan
1972-82 Nicaragua
1975 Angola
What was the Brezhnev doctrine?
“When external and internal forces hostile to socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of… the capitalist system… this is no longer merely a problem for that country’s people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries”
Which 3 Soviet interventions did the Brezhnev Doctrine justify and their years?
1968 Czechoslovakia
1971 Afghanistan
1980-81 Polish Crisis
What was the Helsinki Final Act?
Conference on security and cooperation in Europe
Based on the principles of the UN Charter
Concentrates on three areas:
European Security
Economic, Scientific and Environmental Cooperation
Humanitarian Affairs
How did bilateral-ism end?
1985: Appointment of Gorbachev as the new SU Secretary General
1986: Policies of ‘Glasnost’ (openness) externally and ‘Perestroika’ (reform) at home.
Substantial progress in arms reduction talks on the basis of Gorbachev’s announcement to reduce Soviet military contingent.
Abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine lead to fall of the Iron Curtain
Post Cold War Security Environment: From bipolarity to multipolarity
US as the only superpower
New emerging powers: BRICS
Post Cold War Security Environment: Growing importance of international and regional organisations
Security: NATO, UN, EU, OSCE
Economic: WTO, IMF, World Bank, OECD
Post Cold War Security Environment: Emergence of new actors
Transnational businesses
Terrorist cells/groups
Organised crime
