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The Cold War: Decolonization and Conflict in The Third World

September 17, 2019 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union was fought on several fronts:

  • It was a contest for the domination of Europe, punctuated by dangerous crises over Berlin.
  • It was a competition in strategic weapons, using the deadly technology of the nuclear and missile age.
  • It was a struggle for influence and dominance in the developing world — Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

In many ways, the war in the developing world is the most interesting because it coincides with the process of decolonization.

Many of the Cold War’s sharpest confrontations erupted in formerly colonized regions —  in Korea, the Congo, Cuba, Indochina, the Middle East, as well as in Afghanistan.

The Origins of the Cold War

The Cold War was a conflict of philosophies as well as ideologies, and its origins go back well before 1945. In fact, differences between the U.S. and the Soviets became quite apparent at the end of World War I when the European colonial empires began to crack. At this time, both Lenin, the head of government of Soviet Russia,  and Woodrow Wilson, the American president, saw themselves as model and patron for the political movements that were seeking national independence. Lenin was a famed revolutionary and political theorist while Wilson was the father of modern American internationalism and world leadership.

The Unraveling of Old Empires

The Second World War completed the unraveling of the old empires. Simultaneously, the United States and the Soviet Union were propelled into superpower status. Latin America and the ex colonial lands of Asia and Africa were thrust into an uncertain future as they became significant players in their own right. 

For Wilson’s and Lenin’s successors, the developing regions became a furious testing ground of competing political and economic ideas. Marxist versus capitalist theories of economic progress, totalitarian versus democratic modes of political organization, and class struggle versus collective security as principles of the international order — all were on the table.

The Superpowers Respond to the Struggle for Independence

Each superpower’s response to the struggle for independence in the colonial domains went to the heart of its sense of mission, its image of itself. 

Early on, Lenin saw the value of anticolonialism as a weapon against the Western powers. Marxists who believed that imperialism depended on colonial exploitation believed that revolution in the Third World would seriously undermine the remaining imperialist powers. But the Soviets faced choices. Should they back only Communist or radical parties in these colonial domains? Or was it okay for them to align themselves with “bourgeois” nationalist forces (sometimes the enemy of the local Communists) who might be more significant partners in the fight against the West? 

The Americans faced even tougher choices. For a century and a half, the U.S. had remained isolationist. But, there was now an argument for engagement. As Peter Rodman notes in his book More Precious Than Peace:

Our championship of independence for the colonial peoples in the twentieth century was an echo of America’s own origins, the mandate of our ideals.

After World War II, when America emerged as a great power, a tension developed between our idealism and our growing sense of responsibility for international order. Did resisting communism justify certain means — like military force or covert action or backing rightist dictatorships? Increasingly often, we found ourselves on unsteady ground, defending morally flawed but friendly governments against Soviet assaults. Could we do what seemed necessary to combat Soviet influence while remaining faithful to our own moral standards?

A Summary: Cold War Competition in the Third World

A summary of the Cold War competition in the Third World might go something like this:

  • In the 1920s and 1930s, Josef Stalin withdrew his nation from world affairs to consolidate Soviet power at home. American turned isolationist. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt (the American President) pressed Wilson’s anti- colonialist cause.
  • The 1950s and 1960s were the heydey of decolonization. Under Nikita Khruschev, the Soviets were aggressive in their attempts to mobilize the Third World against the West. Consequently, America believed that the Cold War would be won or lost in the Third World. 
  • The 1970s were marked by the debacle in Indochina. America withdrew into itself while the Soviet Union grew to full status as a military superpower. The late 1970s became a period of new Soviet boldness in the Third World, marked by serious overreaching in Angola, Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. A decade of global insecurity and deteriorating East-West relations was triggered.
  • In the 1980s, America recovered from its post Vietnam disillusionment, reengaging with the world. The Soviet system and its foreign policy came under pressure internally and externally.

In the end, the American recovery in the 1980s succeeded in restoring the balance of the international system. Troops of the Soviet Union or Soviet allies retreated from Afghanistan, Angola, and Cambodia.

Still, in America, ideological divisions between the Left and Right, debates over the morality of clandestine operations, the struggle between Congress and the president over control of foreign policy, differences over how to negotiate with the Soviets, attacks on the U.S. State Department’s conduct of diplomacy, and bureaucratic battles within the U.S. government over turf and policy all came to the fore. These same issues plague us today.

_____________________________________

Source: Peter Rodman, More Precious Than Peace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994) pp.3-10.

Photograph: manhhai (flickr) – Colonial Life in Indochina

 

Filed Under: Developing Nations

MILITARISM: THE LAST MODERN INSTITUTION

September 9, 2010 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Taipei (Taiwan), Havana (Cuba), and Isfahan (Iran) illustrate  the diverse ways in which military assistance and concerns associated with weapons acquisition contributed to an on-going reorganization of the location and distribution of various urban activities as well as to a contestation between global and local aspects of urbanization.

The idea of globalization was brand new. Prior to the 1970s and 1980s, the emphasis had been on the international economy.

In the international economy, goods and services are traded across national boundaries by individuals and firms from different countries, and the trade is closely regulated by sovereign nation states.

In the global economy, goods and services are produced and marketed by an oligopolistic web of global corporate networks whose operations span national boundaries but are only loosely regulated by nation states.

Whichever term is used — global or international — each refers to measurable flows of goods, services, and capital across national boundaries. These flows often became conflated over the course of the Cold War.

For some, there is (and was) no separation of national security and economic interests.

For example, there are those in the United States who believe that military and defense interests in the Cold War cannot be separated from those of capitalism in general.

It seems reasonable, though, to conclude that the military often acted as an independent player, dispersing funds, personnel, and technology as part of a competition for prestige and influence in the less developed world, at least during the early years of the Cold War.

In fact, Giddens argues that “No matter how great their economic power, industrial corporations are not military organizations ….”

He goes on to say that

… it is surely plain to all, save those under the sway of historical materialism, that the material involvements of nation-states are not governed purely by economic considerations, real or perceived. The influence of any particular state within the global political order is strongly conditioned by the level of its wealth (and the connection between this and military strength) … states … do not operate as economic machines, but as ‘actors’ jealous of their territorial rights, concerned with the fostering of national cultures, and having strategic geopolitical involvements with other states or alliances of states.

Lots of questions pop up as a result of Giddens’ thinking.

How much did Cold War competition affect the growth and development of Third World Cities?

What is the relationship between the allocation of superpower defense associated resources in the 1950s and 1960s, urbanization, and the move from internationalization to globalization?

What is the lasting impact of the US-Soviet rivalry on Third World cities?

Did American support influence her client states to transition to democracy and a capitalist free market economy?

Did the Soviet Union leave a lasting imprint on her client cities despite her own disintegration?

Do the consequences of Cold War militarism have any implications for cities in areas of the less developed world increasingly impacted by indiscriminate arms transfers and continuing militaristic activity? (What about Baghdad, Kabul, and Isfahan, for example?)

Militarism has been called the last modern institution.  However, at least as far as urban planning in the Muslim World is concerned

the impact of military spending on the patterns of settlement, on the regional and urban economies, on occupational structure, and on urban spatial patterns is yet to be studied … [even though] military spending continues to have a significant influence in the development prospects of a number of cities and regions.

The presumption has  been that global flows rooted in economic forces have come to underpin the contemporary world system.

But — we have neglected the likelihood that many of the ‘scapes’ associated with global flow can trace their beginnings to the transfer of capital, personnel, and technology associated with national security aspects of the Cold War conflict.

The question for us now is “how.”

During the Cold War specifically, how did the flow of weaponry and military assistance become intertwined with the industrialization of war in the urban arena?

Filed Under: Developing Nations

COLD WAR CITIES DEFINED

August 24, 2010 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Cold war Cities Defined

Cold War Cities absorbed large amounts of superpower assistance. This is because they were important to the superpowers in at least four different ways.

First: the cities were located in nations that had a patron-client relationship with one of the two superpowers (the US or the Soviet Union) during at least a portion of the Cold War conflict (1945-1990). This affiliation involved the large-scale transfer of military or defense associated resources from patron to client.

Such resources include: 1) funds allocated under the US Military Assistance Program (MAP); funds authorized under the US Foreign Assistance Act, but budgeted within the Defense Department; the Soviet counterpart to this funding, especially various forms of subsidies; and 2) military/arms sales and deliveries of excess weapons stocks by either superpower.

Other resources also had impact. These include military assistance and expenditures associated with the US war in Southeast Asia and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan; supporting economic assistance; the US public safety program, food for peace; investigatory and advisory missions; CIA and KGB intervention; and the establishment of research facilities and expenditures.

Second: superpower military resources and assets became integrated into the economic, social, and political fabric of each city.

Third: affected cities experienced visible changes in their built environment and infrastructure which could be traced back to the militaristic influence of their patron.

Finally (and MOST IMPORTANTLY): the strategic and geopolitical value of the cities meant that they were critically important to the grand strategy of one or both superpowers.

Three regions of the world — the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America — assume particular importance.

For both superpowers, the Middle East has been the most critical region and Africa the most neglected. However, patterns of funding for the US and the Soviets have been quite different.

The two rivals spent nearly the same amount of money in the early Cold War period (1946-1967). However, the Soviet Union concentrated its effort on a relatively small number of recipients who were expected to agree with Soviet policies and maintain a friendly relationship with the Soviet Union.

The United States, on the other hand, dispersed its funds more widely, even (occasionally) funding countries that, at times, opposed US policies.

Nations in each of the three major areas of the world received significant amounts of superpower aid in the form of capital, subsidies, and arms transfers — all linked to particular superpower military objectives.

 

Filed Under: Developing Nations

COLD WAR CITIES

August 5, 2010 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Cold War Cities

Despite massive spending, neither the US nor the Soviet Union had won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Third World. The costs were, in fact, enormous. Peter Rodman says:

By the time the Cold War ended … the net [US] financial flow to aid receiving countries since the mid 1950s, both commercial and concessional, had reached the phenomenal total of some $2 trillion in 1980s prices. Soviet aid cannot be quite so neatly packaged. However, according to US estimates, Soviet military and economic aid from 1979 to 1987 to Vietnam and Cambodia totaled nearly $29 billion; to Afghanistan, nearly $9 billion; to Angola, over $8 billion (1975-1987); and to Nicaragua, over $3 billion. From 1983 to 1987, Cuba received nearly $11 billion, not counting over $22 billion in price subsidies on oil and sugar.

Mammoth expenditures did not ensure that countries like Taiwan, Iran, and Cuba — the closest of allies with the US at the outset of the Cold War — maintained diplomatic relations throughout. Change had occurred even in the close relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union, and internal transformation was also evident.

The ramifications of Cold War spending were not limited to the ultimate containment of communism. Nor were they limited to macro level institutions and policies, or indeed to the Third World. Cities in both the First and the Third Worlds were genuinely transformed by the unintended spillover effects of Cold War activities.

For example, Los Angeles became a premier industrial growth pole as aerospace and military bases proliferated and the area was pumped full of federal money via the Department of Defense.

Similarly, Isfahan (Iran) became the focal point for military led industrialization, Havana (Cuba) served as the largest intelligence information gathering station outside of Soviet territory, and Taipei (Taiwan) prospered as a result of American monetary and miltary intervention.

Some aspects of the urban metamorphosis had been foreseen by Eisenhower who warned in his oft-quoted farewell address:

The Cold War had produced something new in American experience … the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry … [its] influence is felt in every city, every state house, every office in the federal government ….

It is probable, however, that even Eisenhower could not imagine the transformations that superpower activity and intervention would effect in the character and identity of certain Third World metropolitan areas.

Shaped and molded by Cold War militaristic activity and auxiliary investment, such cities as Taipei, Havana, and Isfahan became, in effect, Cold War Cities.

 

Filed Under: Developing Nations

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A Cold War historian, Lisa holds a Ph.D. in Politics from New York University and a MS in Policy Analysis and Public Management from SUNY Stony Brook.

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