Degeneration of postwar order

1. Degeneration of postwar order

2. Misperception and misunderstanding • Many factors causing and driving Cold War resulted from misperception and misunderstanding. • Pre-existing mutual suspicion. • Communist role in Greek and Turkish civil wars, Truman Doctrine, Stalin’s understanding of spheres of influence. • Gradually partly overcome by increased mutual knowledge and understanding.

3. Gradual process under surface—largely unnoticed • Mellowing of Soviet and Soviet-type regimes, death of ideology. • American learning experiences in postwar era (e.g. Sino-Soviet split, Vietnam). • From ignorant, ideological hostility to partly friendly, cooperative US-Soviet relations. • In many senses, Cold War wound down significantly before Soviet collapse.

4. Soviet postwar intentions in retrospect

5. Two new superpowers • US and USSR both isolationist in interwar period, both inexperienced. • Catapulted into world-leadership roles through devastation of Europe. • Both ideological states with missionary role. • Both ignorant of world outside their borders. • Both vaguely representing opposite poles of major ideological divide in modern society.

6. Mutual misperception readily understandable • Soviet perspective: Western intervention in Russian Civil War, hostility towards Soviet Regime, resistance to interests Stalin perceived as vital. • Western perspective: Threat to liberal-democracies, International Communist movement instrument of Soviet foreign policy.

7. Soviet aims and objectives • Security, after devastation in World War II. • Two World Wars ignited in Eastern Europe—determination to prevent future threats from emerging in this area. • Militarily weak, economically devastated, Communist movement compensation for military weakness. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFYfOfowEHk

8. US aims and objectives • Countering Soviet expansionism, easily confused with Communist threat. • Over simplistic perception of world Communist conspiracy: USSR, China, North Korea = single monolith. • Barbara Walters’s puzzlement over Chinese invasion of North Vietnam in 1975.

9. Factors Promoting Evolution away from Stalinist System Liberalization and softening Soviet type regimes

10. Brutality masked process of softening • Soviet suppression of popular movements and uprisings reinforced impression of Soviet intolerance to fundamental reform. • Misleading. • Ongoing process of reform and softening beginning with death of Stalin. • Logical result of fundamental problems in these regimes.

11. Prague Spring & Perestroika surprised almost everyone • Both emerged from within power elites believed to be uninterested in fundamental reform and incapable of it. • Perceptual framework masked what was taken place in open daylight. • Regimes built on voluntarism backed by force and terror ultimately not sustainable. • Arbatov and Bogomolov.

12. Hungarian uprising 1956, Soviet invasion • Khrushchev encouraged destalinization. • Hungarian leader Rakosi to arrest 400 trouble-makers--Khrushchev would not allow. • Riots of students, workers and soldiers--smashed statue of Stalin, attacked AVH and Russian soldiers. • Imre Nagy (reformist) took over as Prime Minister--asked Khrushchev to take out the Russian troops. • Khrushchev agreed, Soviet army left Budapest.

13. Brutality and softening in Hungary • New Hungarian government introduced democracy, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Nagy also announced that Hungary would leave Warsaw Pact. • 1000 Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, destroyed Hungarian army and captured Hungarian Radio. • Kadar installed, two years of repression, then “anyone who is not against us is with us.”

14. Poland 1956 • Workers in Poznan rebelled--Pushed Polish situation into crisis. Party membership began to dissolve. • Reform communists already in touch with Wladyslaw Gomulka, supported by leaders who cared little for Gomulka’s view, but convinced he must be brought back into Central Committee to halt disintegration of Party’s authority.

15. Reformists organize in factories, workers’ councils spread across Poland, became powerful centers of revolutionary debate, challenging and criticizing Party leaders sent to pacify them. • Claimed right to manage own enterprises, at joint mass meetings with the students, called for Gomulka’s return to power’.

16. Khrushchev yields to Polish leadership • Soviet tanks advanced on Warsaw. • Khrushchev began to accept situation. Gomulka proved unshakeable, PUWP Politburo continued to back him. • Received assurances criticism of the Soviet Union in media would be suppressed, and Poland would remain in the Warsaw Pact. • Recognized Gomulka would lead PUWP.

17. Cuban Missile Crisis • Frightened both sides—demonstrated possibility of war resulting from unintended escalation running out of control. • Reinforced determination on both sides to avoid confrontation in vital spheres of interest. • Tended to exclude eventuality of conflict in Europe. • Competition continues in peripheral areas.

18. Soviets ambivalent about Czechoslovak reform movement • Understanding and tolerant of Czechoslovak leadership’s post-January policies. • Increasingly nervous situation was getting out of control. • Exceedingly reluctant resort to military forced. • Decision mistakenly assumed widespread support for brotherly assistance.

19. Normalization in Czechoslovakia • Profound spiritual blow (Aaragon—Biafra of the spirit). • Not return to Stalinism, totalitarianism or, as Pithart argues, even authoritarianism. • Leave politics alone, and Party will leave you alone.

20. Invasion of Czechoslovakia 1968 • Confirmation of stable, peaceful, and secure division of Europe. • Soviet interventions in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), and actions of communist regimes against domestic adversaries not seen as calling for NATO intervention. • NATO went out of its way to signal its restraint and desire to avoid East-West confrontation.

21. “Actually-existing Socialism” (1970) • Socialism is what we have already got. • Prague Spring shocked Soviet and orthodox Communist leaderships: Good, Moscow-friendly Communists could not be trusted. • Ideal of Socialism represented threat to regime. • “I knew it meant the death of Socialism” (Yuri Krasin)

22. Mistake of assuming ruling elites content with system • Everybody aware of flaws in Soviet-type regimes. . • Mistake was in believing Soviet ruling elite content with this state of affairs. • Entered ruling elites voluntarily, benefitted from their status. • Why should they desire change?

23. Застой (stagnation) • System unable to adapt. Rule by complicit. • Significance of aging leadership—only those socialized under the terror and/or the war unable to judge what was permissible. Locked into Stalinist frame. • No one left after Andropov and Chernenko—move to new generation by default. • New generation fundamentally incapable of maintaining system.

24. V. Groping towards a new world order

25. Cold War did not end with Gorbachev or collapse of USSR • Cold War did not really end with Gorbachev's New Thinking, or even with the collapse of the Soviet Union. • As Soviet threat disappeared, West did not go back to the drawing board and fundamentally re-think the world system of international relations. Gorbachev and his programs were first received with deep skepticism.

26. West successful, so why change? • Eventually recognized Soviet leadership serious about proclaimed intentions. • Western attitudes towards the USSR, and subsequently Russia remained suspicious. • Existing institutions and policies had served the West well, first against the Nazis, then against the Communists. Why then change?

27. Institutions adapted without fundamental re-thinking • Institutions and adapted to new situation. • NATO expanded Eastward, taking in the Soviet Union's former allies and the Baltic republics. • Yet as General Charles Wald has noted, those involved with the expansion didn't even think about Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which would require NATO to come to the defense of the new members.

28. Logic and inertia • Logic of NATO and EU expansion--pre-existing patterns to fall into. • Habit, institutional inertia: People sitting in offices doing well-defined jobs likely to continue what they have been doing until fundamental reorganization.

29. Impediments to fundamental reorganization • Habit, vested interest. • Difficulty understanding situation we are immersed in--of knowing what needs to be changed. • Imaginative gap: How to conceive of an order that has never existed—tendency to believe in what exists and is tangible, and to see alternatives as merely speculative. • Overwhelming political impediments.

30. Opposing tendency: Entropy • Everything in the Universe tends to degenerate, unless Something drives survival. • The more resistance to “natural” forces, the more powerful the forces of entropy. • Wild irrationality of Soviet-type regimes—dependency on fanaticism, belief in official ideology. • Western perception of threat as driver.

31. Collective defense after Cold War • Logic of NATO alliance—anti-Communism, anti-Soviet threat. • These are gone. • New members paying costs of involvement in NATO, while unsure they can rely on its collective defense provisions.

32. Color revolutions

33. Orange Revolution and other color revolutions • Orange triumphalism following regime changes in Georgia and Ukraine perceive decline of Russia’s influence in post-Soviet space as irreversible. • Only relevant questions--how many more weeks Lukashenka could survive in power and where the next “colour revolution” would take place. (Krastev 2005)

34. Consequences of Orange Revolution for Russian policy • Orange revolution--revolutionary impact on Russian foreign-policy thinking. • Russia had viewed EU as benevolent competitor and strategic ally in its desire for a multipolar world. • Post-orange EU Russia’s major rival?

35. Marginalizing EU and sidelining the “new” Europe • Marginalizing EU as foreign-policy actor and sidelining “new” Europe--major objective of new Russian policy. • Moscow will focus on bilateral relations with the key European powers – Paris, Berlin, Rome and London. • Russia will attempt to block any common European policy towards post-Soviet space.

36. Georgia war

37. War shocked the world. • Some saw it as what they had always feared and expected of Russia. Look, for example, at the war in Chechnya. • Proves Russia hasn’t lost imperialist aspirations and allusions. We need to do something to stop it. • Others surprised. First time since emergence of post-Soviet Russia force used outside boundaries of Russian Federation.

38. U.S. involvement not aimed at Russia • "At no time did the U.S. attempt to train or equip the Georgian armed forces for a conflict with Russia. In fact, the U.S. deliberately avoided training capabilities [that] were seen as too provocative" to Russia. Col. Robert Hamilton (ran the U.S. military training program) • Georgia's troops crumpled so fast—precisely because their training didn't cover conventional warfare topics like tanks, artillery and helicopters.

39. Aimed at Chechens tied to Al Qaeda • Putin suggested Washington secretly provoked Georgia conflict. • Actually began with mission aimed at reducing Moscow's nervousness. • Russians complaining Chechen rebels with suspected ties to Al Qaeda holed up in Georgia's Pankesi Gorge.

40. 2002 Pentagon stepped to train and equip Georgia's ragtag Army to clear out the unwelcome guests. • Mission ended in 2004, Georgia joined the Coalition in Iraq, training's focus shifted to counterinsurgency and peacekeeping.

41. Neglected problem of Article 5 of NATO Treaty • Debacle in Georgia exposed neglected issue--how NATO will defend its new members. • If America solidifies Georgia's defenses, can it fail to do likewise for the 10 new members? • Article 5 of 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, attack on one member regarded as an attack on all.

42. No thought given to Article 5 • NATO didn't even formally assess new members' defense needs before they joined. … “didn't really look at the Article 5 part of it.” • “The attitude was, the more the merrier," (Gen. Charles Wald, then deputy commander U.S. forces in Europe).

43. Consequences of Georgia war? • Anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic cancelled. • Unlikely Russia's interests will continue to be ignored to the extent they have been. • Restrained and businesslike rhetoric of Russia’s leaders in response to initial hyperbolic reaction to Georgia episode.

44. Spengler on Georgia War • Thanks to Putin, the world has become a much safer place. • Intervening in Georgia, Russia has demonstrated that the great powers of the world have nothing to fight about.

45. US and EU lost nothing • Russia has wiped the floor with a putative US ally, and apart from a bad case of cream pie on the face, America has lost nothing. • US and EU did nothing to help Georgia, and nothing of substance to penalize the Russian Federation.

46. No vital US interests in Georgia • Contrary to hyperventilation of analysts on US news shows, no US vital interests in Georgia. • Nothing happening in Georgia will have impact on US energy security. • Humiliating but not harmful for US to watch Russia thrash a prospective ally. • Georgia never should have been ally.

47. No basis for conflict • Lack of consequences of Russia's incursion is noteworthy. • Never before in the history has economic and military power resided in countries whose fundamental interests do not conflict in any important way. • US enthusiasm over Georgia's ambitions to join NATO encouraged Saakashvili.

48. Once it became clear that Russia would not tolerate a NATO member on its southern border, however, Washington had nothing to say about the matter, because no fundamental American interests were at stake. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag01.html

49. Need for good relations with Russia cannot be avoided • Has become clear that building a pipeline through Georgia, avoiding Russian territory, does not obviate need for good relations with Russia. • Has become clear Russia capable of taking serious measures to defend its interests, and of aligning itself with adversaries of West.

50. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYtDQ_t-_HQ