International-History-lecture 2.pdf

10-09-2024 IR-1010-1 Nayan Chanda Lecture 2 International History towards https://www.the-map-as- history.com/kiosque/map/493-moving-...

10-09-2024 IR-1010-1 Nayan Chanda Lecture 2 International History towards https://www.the-map-as- history.com/kiosque/map/493-moving-towards- war 1  10-09-2024 What is Cold War? When did it start? Where did it start and how? How long did it go on and where? When did it end? The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the US and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies, from 1945 to 1991. The "cold" aspect refers to the absence of direct military conflict between the US and the USSR. This era was marked by a struggle for global influence between the two superpowers, which were ideologically opposed: the US championed capitalism and democracy, while the Soviet Union promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. 2  10-09-2024 The word Cold War was first used in 1947. By using the word “war,” it captured the seemingly life-or-death struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and between capitalism and communism. In 1949 the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb. 1980-1989: The American President Reagan increased military spending and adopted a more aggressive stance against the Soviet Union, including the Strategic Defense Initiative designed to bankrupt Moscow. 1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. Instead of administering and policing Germany side by side, as the Allies did in postwar Austria, the decision was made at Potsdam to divide Germany into four distinct occupation zones, one for each Allied nation (including France). 1948-1949: The Berlin Blockade by the Soviet Union led to first confrontation. Eleven months of Airlift by Western Allies kept West Berlin alive. NATO was formed. 3  10-09-2024 1945: The Yalta and Potsdam Conferences set the stage for post-war Europe, dividing Germany into occupation zones and establishing Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. 1947: The Truman Doctrine was announced, aiming to contain communism, and the Marshall Plan was introduced to aid European recovery. 1948-1949: The Berlin Blockade by the Soviet Union led to the Berlin Airlift by Western Allies. NATO was formed. 1949: Communist China founded 1950-1953: The Korean War where the US and its allies supported South Korea against the communist North, backed by China and the Soviet Union. 1955: The Warsaw Pact was established as a military alliance of communist nations in response to NATO. 1961: The Berlin Wall was constructed, symbolizing the Cold War's division. 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, leading to a US naval blockade and negotiations to remove the missiles. 1965: American troops landed in Vietnam proxy cold war with communist backers. Ended in Communist victory in 1975 1979: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reignited Cold War American and British pilots ferried some 2.3 million tons of supplies into West Berlin on a total of 277,500 flights, in what would be the largest air relief operation in history. https://youtu.be/X8cY1q1u5_0 4  10-09-2024 “It doesn’t depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don’t like us, don’t accept our invitations, and don’t invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!” October 1960 We’ll bury you The UN General Assembly October 1960, 5  10-09-2024 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, leading to a US naval blockade and negotiations to remove the missiles. 1965: American troops landed in Vietnam beginning a proxy Cold War with communist backers. Ended in Communist victory in 1975 1979: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reignited Cold War as the US moved to back Mujahideen 1987 US and USSR agree to remove medium-range missiles from Europe. 1988 Soviet troops begin to pull out of Afghanistan. 6  10-09-2024 The Cold War symbolically ended in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down The Cold War ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed splitting up into 15 countries, the largest of which was Russia. Twelve foot high, 27 miles long Berlin wall came down on November 9, 1989 7  10-09-2024 Even in 1835 Alexis Tocqueville saw the contrast between America and Russia clearly: Americans relied "on personal interest and [gave] free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals," while Russians concentrated "the whole power of society in one man." 8  10-09-2024 Vladimir Lenin, 1870-1924 In the nineteenth century diplomacy rarely reflected the compatibility, or lack thereof, of domestic institutions like slavery or democracy. It simply did not occur to Americans or Russians that either country might gain by attempting to alter the other, distinctly dissimilar though they were. The world was still empty enough for empires to expand without intersecting. Russia sold Alaska to America in 1867 Steam engine brought Russia to the edge of Asia, heightening competition, and Russian immigrants to America Contact and communication increased antipathy towards repressive Russia Gaddis p.3 9  10-09-2024 Although America and Russia were on the same side the October Revolution soon replaced that indecisive Russian regime with one committed, to ending capitalism throughout the world. Lenin undertook the ultimate form of interference in other states' internal affairs: overthrowing not just their governments, but their societies. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed as war aims self- determination, open markets, and collective security. His purpose was not to spread revolution, as was Lenin's; but Wilson did seek to alter world politics by removing what he thought to be the causes of injustice, and hence of war. Gaddis p. 5 Wilson’s appeal for a supranational League of Nations, was confronted with Lenin's call for a global proletarian uprising. Two “most messianic of twentieth century leaders” were pitted against each other. But it was coincidences rather than planning that led them to inimical position -- German submarine warfare and attempted alliance with Mexico and its help in Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd. Americans relinquished the global predominance their military exertions had earned them; Russians focused on creating a bureaucratic tyranny rather than conquering the world for the proletariat. Josef Stalin didn’t abandon world revolution but he emphasized building up the strength and security of the Soviet state. Gaddis P. 8 10  10-09-2024 The number of deaths resulting from Stalin's policies before World War II, it is now agreed in both Russia and the West, was between 17 and 22 million Twice the number killed in Holocaust. After unsuccessful attempt to form an alliance with Western Europe against Nazi Germany Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in August 1939, just days before Germany invaded Poland. Churchill shared Roosevelt's view that geopolitics was more important than ideology and both leaders foresaw the fragility of the Nazi-Soviet alliance and were prepared to accept Soviet help in containing Hitler whenever that became possible. Gaddis p.10 Four days after Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour (December 7, 1941) Germany declared war on the US thus forcing the US to join hands with Russia. But the challenge communism and capitalism posed to one another; Soviet memories of allied intervention in Russia after World War I; more recent American memories of Stalin's purges and his opportunistic pact with Hitler were all present. It was too much to expect a few years of wartime cooperation to sweep all of this away. But anti-Russian alliance was not inevitable. Left to his own Roosevelt’s idea of four great powers--the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Nationalist China--operating as world policemen, using force or the prospect of it to keep smaller states in line would have gained ground. Gaddis p. 13 11  10-09-2024 Churchill celebrates his 69th birthday with Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, at the Victorian Drawing Room of the British Legation in Tehran, Iran, 30 Nov 1943 Roosevelt persuaded a skeptical Churchill to endorse Wilson's thinking in August, 1941, when they jointly proclaimed, in the Atlantic Charter, three postwar objectives: self- determination— which would give people freedom from fear; open markets— with the assumption that an unrestricted flow of commodities and capital would ensure economic prosperity, hence freedom from want; and collective security. Stalin on the other hand did not trust collective security. His personal security was equivalent to state security and instead of Leninist idea of ideological struggle he wanted to spread communism by occupying territory. As he told Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas in 1945: "whoever occupies a territory also imposes his own social system.... It cannot be otherwise.” Gaddis p. 14 12  10-09-2024 The principal reason why there was no postwar cooperation was Stalin's insistence on equating security with territory. First thing he wanted was to retain what his pact with Hitler had yielded: the Baltic states, together with portions of Finland, Poland, and Romania. Roosevelt and Churchill saw no feasible way to avoid granting Russia a sphere of influence from Baltic to Adriatic because they needed Soviet cooperation against the Germans. Nor were they themselves prepared to relinquish spheres of influence in Western Europe and the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Latin America, and East Asia. Stalin effectively dismissed Roosevelt’s suggestion for plebiscite or free election in the land Russia acquired. He said “We can deal with it in our own way later. The point is the correlation of forces.” They could find a compromise between Soviet security interests and democratic procedures. Gaddis P.. 16 Stalin hoped Eastern Europeans to welcome liberation by the Red Army in similar fashion as Americans were in Western Europe. It ensured that an American sphere of influence would arise there largely by consent, but that its Soviet counterpart could sustain itself only by coercion. The resulting asymmetry would account, more than anything else, for the origins, escalation, and ultimate outcome of the Cold War. Unlike the Finns who acquiesced in Soviet dominance Germany, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia were not ready for a Finland like solution, nor was Moscow ready to leave them alone in their domestic policy. There was a growing awareness of the particular system Stalin had imposed upon his own people and might well export elsewhere. The war was ending with the defeat of fascism, but not authoritarianism. Victory over German authoritarianism brought fears of Soviet authoritarianism out into the open. Gaddisp. 18 13  10-09-2024 Yalta conference February 4–11, 1945 Presumably Stalin had security in mind when he authorized the murder, at Katyn and elsewhere in the spring of 1940, of at least 15,000 Polish officers captured during the invasion that followed the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Stalin had not foreseen that he would need the cooperation of the Poles after the defeat of the Nazis. In 1943 the Nazis revealed the Katyn massacre making it necessary for Stalin to raise his own puppet Polish army to fight Germany and ignore the Polish government in exile in London. Stalin’s refusal to help the Polish uprising against Hitler allowed Germans to complete, on a far more massive scale, the purge of Polish anti-communists he himself had started at Katyn four years earlier. Stalin in the end got the acquiescent Polish government but he earned the enduring hostility of the Poles, thereby making their country a constant source of insecurity for him and for all of his successors. In 1990 Moscow acknowledged Stalin's responsibility for Katyn massacre. Gaddis p. 19 14  10-09-2024 The killings Stalin authorized, the states he seized, the boundary concessions he insisted upon, and the sphere of influence he imposed provided no lasting security for the Soviet Union: just the opposite. His actions laid the foundations for a resistance in Europe that would grow and not fade with time. A consensus had developed that Stalin’s conduct was dispositional which reflects deeply rooted personal characteristics which remain much the same regardless of the circumstances in which people find themselves. Any efforts to negotiate or compromise with him were likely to fail, because success would require that he cease to be what he was. One could only resolve henceforth to hold the line, remain true to one’s own principles, and wait for the passage of time to bring a better world. Such at least was the view of George Kennan, whose top secret "long telegram" from Moscow of 22 February 1946, would shape American policy over the next half century. George Kennan argued in his 22 February 1946 telegram that the Soviet Union was motivated by a combination of traditional Russian desires to expand and by Marxist ideology that taught there could be no cooperation with capitalist states. There was therefore no room for compromise and negotiation. The Soviets would take advantage of all sincere efforts at peace and only honor agreements when it was expedient to their goals. He portrayed Stalin as acting on a coherent design, rather than as a man responding to events in the interests of his nation. The obvious conclusion for Kennan—and the one drawn by the Truman administration—was that the Soviets had no legitimate grievances. There was thus no need to try to understand and meet Soviet concerns. Rather, a policy of opposition and the containment of Soviet power was necessary. 15  10-09-2024 ’ Khrushchev put it more bluntly: "No one inside the Soviet Union or out had Stalin's trust.“ Stalin was entirely ecumenical in the range of his suspicions, and if anything detested European socialists more than he did European conservatives. According to Molotov , Stalin believed World War II had resulted solely from the internal contradictions of capitalism, and only the entry of the Soviet Union had transformed that conflict into a war of liberation. Ambassador Maxim Litvinov , in an interview, given in Moscow to CBS correspondent,, Litvinov explained, the cause of distrust was "the ideological conception prevailing here that between Communist and capitalist worlds is "inevitable." What would happen, CBS correspondent wanted to know, if the West should suddenly grant all of the Soviet Union's territorial demands? "It would lead to the West's being faced, after a more or less short time, with the next series of demands. “ Gaddis P. 23 The role of the historian is, or ought to be, to focus exclusively neither on individuals nor on the circumstances they inherit, but on how they intersect. Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took one man in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place. Would there have been a Cold War without Stalin? Perhaps. Nobody in history is indispensable. Stalin had certain characteristics that set him off from all others in authority at the time the Cold War began. He alone had transformed his country into an extension of himself: no Western leader could have succeeded at such a feat, and none attempted it. He alone saw war and revolution as acceptable means with which to pursue ultimate ends: no Western leader associated violence with progress to the extent that he did. Suspicion, distrust, and an abiding cynicism were not only his preferred but his necessary environment; he could not function apart from it. "Conciliation struck Stalin as trickery or naiveté, and toughness only confirmed the Soviets' image of America as an unreconstructed enemy.“ Gaddis p. 25 16