lecture 13 - cold war and third world alternatives

Question 1

the bomb

Answer 1

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

Question 2

nuclear deterence

Answer 2

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

Question 3

definition of the cold war

Answer 3

= 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

Question 4

post-war planning by Allied powers

Answer 4

1. USSR would keep territories it had already (re)gained in Poland and Baltic states
2. new gov. of liberated states in Europe would be determined by democratic elections
3. the German state would temporarily be divided into zones of occupation
4. USSR would join the UN

Question 5

phases of the Soviet Bloc 1945-59

Answer 5

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)

Question 6

cold war Europe

Answer 6

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

Question 7

the global cold war

Answer 7

Odd Arne Westad

= now consensus view

three camps, attention away from Europe

1. USA (empire of liberty)
2. USSR (empire of justice)
3. 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

Question 8

the UN - original plan

Answer 8

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’’

Question 9

early struggle over direction of UN

Answer 9

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’’

Question 10

UN dramatic shift

Answer 10

50s-60s

• principle of national self-determination became globalized
• UNGA becomes anti-colonial forum

Question 11

decolonization / revolt against the West

5 phases

Answer 11

Hedley Bull (English School)

1. struggle for equal sovereignty (states that were formally independent, but had inferior status, e.g. Japan)
2. anti-colonial revolution: formal political independence (after WW2)
3. struggle for racial equality
   e.g. Bandung 1955 + Tricontinental conferences + US civil rights + anti-Apartheid
4. struggle of economic justice
   e.g. NIEO (1970s)
5. struggle for cultural liberation

Question 12

decolonization + violence

Answer 12

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)

Question 13

5 factors in success decolonization

Answer 13

Hedley Bull

1. conception of Western-dominated order as something that could be changed
2. Western powers lost self-assurance (WW1) + willingness/ability to accept costs (WW2)
3. SU provided alternative center of power regular ally against the west
4. division between imperialist powers -> advantage of those fighting against them
5. (former) colonized states transformed legal and moral climate of IR (e.g. in UNGA)

-> world of nation-states + sovereignty

Question 14

'’third world’’ 60s-70s

Answer 14

= 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)