HY 150 BISK
THE COLD WAR
http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/hy150biskcoldwar.htm
McNEILL
THE HUMAN COMMUNITY
CHAPTER 25
THE WORLD SINCE 1945: PUBLIC AFFAIRS
TWO LEADING PHENOMENA (657)
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RIVALRIES, 1945-1991 (659)
Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1953 (659)
Charter of the United Nations (662)
Precarious Stabilization: The Cold War, 1953-1973 (666)
New Dilemmas and the End of the Cold War, 1973-1996 (670)
POPULATION AND SOCIETY (675)
Growth of Human Numbers (675)
The Green Revolution (676)
Urbanization and the End of Village Autonomy (676)
Population Decay in Urbanized Societies (678)
Cultural & Biological Continuity Under Urban Conditions (680)
CONCLUSION (682)
BIBLIOGRAPHY (682)
EMERGING NATIONAL MOVEMENTS IN ASIA AND AFRICA, 1920s-1950s
Barbara Tuchman has called World War I a
"burnt path across history." By that, she meant that this event was so
wide-ranging and compelling that it affected a broad cross section of the
world’s people. In so doing, it linked the destinies of many diverse peoples in
a way never seen before. Neither the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century
nor the great plague epidemic of the fourteenth century had tied together the
fates of so many. The 1920s and 1930s interwar years brought bitter
disappointment to colonial peoples. They shared the common appeal to universal
principles of common humanity, equality, individual worth and self-determination
of peoples for which the Allies had claimed to be fighting for in the First
World War. European imperial nations hung on, through mandates, to former
colonies and extended them by dismembering the old Ottoman holdings. European
hypocrisy only lent righteous indignation to African and Asian nationalist
feeling.
In several ways, the West contributed to the growth of nationalism in the
colonized world. Schools and missions created a small native elite who would
hold Europe to its own ideals. Never was there a better example of Western
ideals coming back to haunt them.
World War II completed the process of laying the groundwork for decolonization.
Too many peoples, all at once, were ready to try their wings as free nations,
drawing confidence in part from the colonial infrastructures built during the
past hundred years. They drew together the negative impulse of anti-imperialism
and the positive optimism that the new countries they would create could better
serve their people. The catalog of exploitations gave them a handy list of what
they did not want for the future. The Western imperialists, exhausted from the
war, could not militarily or morally stand up to the wave of decolonization that
followed. Britain gave in with some good grace in Africa and India. France,
Holland and Portugal carried on longer. Especially in Southeast Asia, this would
produce a last round of bitter struggle in Indonesia and Indochina.
Read
"Russia Loses Control of Eastern Europe"
http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/wizzr.html
THE BI-POLAR WORLD AND DECOLONIZATION
Historians often hesitate to draw conclusions
about the recent past. They assume that the significance of events becomes more
clear with the passage of time. It is, however, interesting to speculate about
what historians in the middle of the next century will say about the period from
the end of World War II to the end of the so-called Cold War. Perhaps the
dominant view will highlight decades of relative stability and economic growth.
No major wars have erupted since 1945 and many nations have reached
unprecedented affluence.
The Soviet Union and its satellites, of course, did not achieve as much wealth
as did their Western counterparts. The USSR achieved superpower status through
an impressive arms buildup, but in the end the diversion of resources from
consumer industries to military purposes aggravated the shortcomings of its
centrally planned economy. Soviet communism had within it the seeds of its own
destruction. The satellite nations, which have long had an historic tendency to
lag behind Western Europe economically, suffered serious handicaps under Soviet
domination.
With the collapse of Communist regimes around 1990, Germany’s reunification in
1990, and continued German membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
while the Warsaw Pact fell apart, the allies claimed they had won the Cold War.
Problems of economic hardship, political instability, the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, and ethnic strife have plagued the aftermath of
this victory, and many have felt nostalgia for the Cold-war years
THE CAPITALIST WORLD SINCE 1945
While nationalism has continued to be a
divisive force—with ethnic warfare often dominating headlines—a countervailing
trend towards integration has emerged in the last half century. Consider the
economic integration in Europe. The six states that formed the European Coal and
Steel Community and the European Economic Community in the 1950s consolidated
impressive achievements by forming the European Community (EC) by 1967. The EC
doubled its membership by the late 1980s and by the beginning of 1993 set up a
thoroughly integrated "single market." Reconstituted as the European Union, it
sought further expansion of its membership to fifteen by 1995, and most of its
members went on to launch a common currency (the Euro) in 1998. Responding to
Europe’s success with economic integration, Canada, Mexico, and the United
States began in 1994 to implement the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), and the so-called Pacific rim states agreed to establish an
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation area (APEC).
Since the end of World War II, the United States has promoted economic
integration in Europe and Asia while trying energetically to ensure that
regional trade zones do not become protectionist blocs. By promoting the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade, the U.S. has had noteworthy success in lowering barriers and expanding
world trade. Boosted by substantial American economic aid, West Germany and
Japan rapidly recovered from wartime devastation and caused formidable economic
competition for major U.S. industries. Meanwhile, financial strength and
economic productivity have gained greater prestige in world affairs while the
significance of military forces has lessened. The collapse of the Soviet Union,
a military superpower with a relatively backward economy, accentuated the focus
on economic clout.
Industrialization has spread almost all parts of the earth. While this holds out
possibilities of producing greater wealth, it has also aroused increasing
concerns about global pollution, which has been a byproduct of economic
development. Indeed, ecological damage has emerged as one of the major causes
fostering a growing sense of international interdependence.
THE DEVELOPING WORLD: THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL
Many in the developing world after World War
II saw Marxism or some other form of socialism as particularly applicable. After
all, free enterprise and free trade capitalism or the stigma of imperialism and
decolonization led many to jettison capitalism as well. Socialism promised a
more purposeful and scientific program that could balance the needs of a poor
population with the needs to industrialize rapidly to catch up to the rest of
the world. Even Western Europe caught the fever and began a whole series of
government-initiated social welfare programs. Could free enterprise capitalism
survive? In the Far East, there was a confrontation that would decide this.
China, which after 1949 was among the most active communist systems, confronted
a new Asian-style capitalism just taking root in U.S. Occupation-managed Japan.
This form of capitalism that put business and the government in partnership was
to become the paradigm for the new fast-growth economies that spread from Japan
to South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore—the "Four Tigers" of the Pacific
Rim. Another alternative to Western liberal secular models came in the form of
Muslim fundamentalism, whose power the Ayatollah Khomeini’s overthrow of the
Shah of Iran first displayed. Fundamentalist Islam quickly became a strong
political current, especially in the mid-East.
Following World War II, dozens of nations throughout Africa, the Middle East,
South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America enthusiastically contemplated
mimicking China's revolutionary efforts to transform the largest nation in the
world into a communist state. Their optimism, however, soon proved unrealistic.
A disappointing pattern of internal ethnic or tribal division, failed economic
plans and military coups became widespread. Gradually, the shortcomings of
ideological panaceas became obvious. Observers have come to understand the
magnitude of the problems facing most of the so-called Third World.
It is important to remember that the rise of rich and powerful European states
had taken centuries to develop. Expecting tribal societies to transform
themselves into modern nations within a generation was clearly unrealistic.
Moreover, many Third World societies are experiencing population explosions that
are creating enormous stresses. Any country that doubles its population in
twenty-five years will have to provide enormous increases in food supply,
education budgets, job creation, medical care, etc., just to preserve existing
living standards.
The post-World War II history of developing nations involved not just the choice
of economic systems. There was also a Cold War in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R.
for almost fifty years tried to extend their respective influences politically
and militarily. This rivalry influenced almost every diplomatic and political
decision. Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan suffered devastating wars. This
bipolar conflict affected all developing countries. Following the collapse of
the USSR, the major powers are no longer so quick to intervene in the developing
areas, leaving them freer to indulge their own quarrels, often at the expense of
both world order and the innocent civilians. Major-power arms exports have given
a decidedly military character to the Third World. Religious and ethnic
confrontations are becoming more ugly and dangerous all the time from Kashmir to
East Timor to Chechnya to the Balkans.
A Deep Crisis, Shallow Roots,
New York Times, August 30, 2003
John Shattuck
In central
Africa, a genocidal war has raged for nearly a decade, costing more than four
million lives in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo and precipitating the worst
humanitarian crisis in more than half a century. Central Africa shares this
gruesome recent past with southeastern Europe, where in the 1990s a wave of
killing and ethnic cleansing swept the Balkans. In both cases, many
misunderstood the genocide to be the inevitable product of "ancient hatreds."
Jean-Pierre Chrétien, a French historian with vast experience in the Great Lakes
region of Africa, has undertaken the formidable task of tracing the roots of the
region's violence and exposing the ideological myths on which the
ancient-hatreds theory rests. In a monumental study that marches through two
millenniums before approaching central Africa's contemporary agony, Chrétien
punctures the sense of inevitability that permeates our thinking about the
Rwandan genocide. Along the way, he explains the responsibility of a wide range
of actors from the colonial period through the present. As warlords continue
today to compete for power in a thoroughly ravaged Congo, Chrétien helps us
understand how this all came about and why it matters that we know.
The story begins with the geography of the central African highlands. Despite
its equatorial location, Chrétien says, "the region is blessed with good
climate, is rich with diverse soils and plants, and has prospered thanks to some
strong basic techniques. These include the association of cattle keeping and
agriculture; the diffusion of the banana a millennium ago; and the mastery of
iron metallurgy two millennia ago." In this healthy environment, complex social
structures evolved in which the idea of kingship and strong central authority
took hold and flourished for more than 300 years before the arrival of colonial
powers in the mid-19th century.
Indigenous Hutu cultivators settled the fertile lands around the Great Lakes,
while Tutsi pastorialists used the more mountainous to raise cattle. In the
early kingdoms of the region, agricultural and pastoral systems were integrated
because they controlled complementary ecological zones and served mutually
beneficial economic interests. As Chrétien argues convincingly, nowhere at this
time should observers reduce the "social dialectic" to a Hutu-Tutsi cleavage.
That began to change in the 19th century. As social structures became more
complex, the success of the central African kingdoms depended increasingly on
territorial expansion through raiding, colonizing, and annexing of neighboring
lands. At the same time, Tutsi cattle raisers in search of more land began to
emerge as a new elite and a driving force behind expansion. The arrival of the
colonial powers thwarted the expansionism of the Rwandan and Ugandan kingdoms.
The immediate effect of colonialism was to reorient the stratified and dynamic
societies of the Great Lakes around competing poles of collaboration with, and
resistance to, the new foreign occupiers.
Because the slave trade that ravaged Africa's coastal regions also touched these
remote societies, they presented the Europeans with a range of robust
aristocracies and royal courts to win over. At this crucial point, the issue of
race entered the picture. Obsessed by their theories of racial classification,
19th- and early-20th-century Europeans rewrote the history of central Africa.
They imposed their racist projection of superiority on Tutsi "Hamito-Semites"
and a corresponding inferiority on Hutu "Bantu Negroes." Thus missionary and
colonial historians began to attribute the rise of the Great Lakes kingdoms to
the arrival of a superior race of "black Europeans" from the north. Chrétien
quotes many examples of this toxic "scientific ethnicism," which the Belgians
purveyed to their central African colonies until just before independence. A
typical example from a colonial school newspaper in Burundi in 1948 states that
"the preponderance of the Caucasian type is deeply marked" among the Tutsi,
making them "worthy of the title that the explorers gave them: aristocratic
Negroes." Anointed by the Belgians as their administrators and collaborators in
Rwanda and Burundi, the Tutsis, who never formed more than 18 percent of the
population, faced a poisoned chalice combining ethnic elitism with economic
favoritism.
In educating their chosen elites, the Belgians were relentlessly racist.
Starting in 1928, they segregated all primary schools in Rwanda, while at the
secondary school level Rwandan (and later Burundian) Tutsis were three to four
times better represented than Hutus. Not surprisingly, the majority Hutu
population chafed at this discrimination, and in the late 1950's a Hutu
counter-elite began calling for the end of "Tutsi feudalism." On the eve of
independence, in a catastrophic reversal, the Roman Catholic Church and the
colonial administration now claimed that the Hutu majority represented
"democratic values," thereby backing the Hutu rebellion. The outcome, as
Chrétien shows, was that "the new Rwanda declared its national past 'Tutsi' and
thus despicable." A zero-sum ethnic fundamentalism marked the post-colonial
period and destroyed the social fabric. Chrétien argues, "the generation
catapulted to the top of the former kingdoms thus squandered the opportunity
offered by independence." The deep ethnic insecurities created by European
rewriting of African history made the competing ethnic groups far more concerned
about their own survival than about the task of nation-building. As a result, he
writes, the elites were "haunted by a passion - which some admitted and others
covered up - about the supremacy of their ethnic group." In Rwanda, the Hutu
revolution led to a series of pogroms against the Tutsi minority, culminating in
the 1994 genocide.
Thus, modern hatreds, not ancient ones, destroyed Rwanda. Far from being part of
the country's ancient social structures, these destructive animosities exploded
during its recent colonial past. Even then, it took the manipulation of ethnic
identity by the country's new elites to produce the atmosphere of fear and
recrimination that expanded through the Rwandan countryside. The violence then
spread into vast reaches of Congo in the genocidal war that has gripped the
region for nearly a decade. In this respect, the Rwandans were no different from
Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, and the other authors of ethnic cleansing in
the Balkans. However, the world has so far done far less to confront them, and
Chrétien's extraordinary book prompts one to wonder whether the reason is rooted
in the racism reflected in the violent rewriting of central African history.
JOURNAL 17 QUESTIONS:
Read McNeill, The Human Community,
Chapter 25, "The World Since 1945, Public Affairs;" "Russia Loses Control of
Eastern Europe" at
http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/wizzr.html
and the material above. Please answer the
following questions in your journal.
1. Explain the importance of
independence for African and Asian nations on European and world history.
2. Explain the importance of the Third World in the rivalry between the United
States and the Soviet Union.
3. How and why did the former Soviet Union lose control of its colonial
satellite system in Eastern Europe?
4. The collapse of empires creates dangerous times. Speculate why this might be
so and give examples.
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