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Порталус

Collapse of the Soviet Union

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Soviet Russia (1985-91) →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188915416


Did the collapse of the Soviet Union cause a dangerous vacuum in world politics?

Viewpoint: Yes. The change from a bipolar to a multipolar worldview caused significant destabilization because many nations resented the increased power and influence of the United States.

Viewpoint: No. The United States with its strong economy and resolve to use military power has filled whatever void in world politics the collapse of the Soviet Union caused.

____________________

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and its reconfiguration as a congeries of middle-sized regional powers generated as much anxiety as gratification among diplomats, soldiers, politicians, and intellectuals in the rest of the world. In forty years the Cold War had become familiar enough to seem the natural order of things. Even the threat of thermonuclear conflict was increasingly an abstraction. Particularly in hindsight, the bipolarity that developed after 1947 seemed accompanied by clarity, at least on major issues. Now every state faced a prospect of autonomy that tended to be more frightening than reassuring.
The situation of the United States as "the world's only remaining superpower" was another source of concern. To a degree it was generated by a cliché drummed for generations into the heads of students in basic history courses: the balance of power. This concept, reduced to its simplest terms, asserts that a state whose strength is disproportionate to that of its neighbors objectively encourages them to band against it. Where, in a global context, would the challenge to U.S. hegemony emerge, and what would be the consequences? The most likely challenger, moreover, the People's Republic of China, was scarcely a solid candidate for the moral high ground in a contest for world leadership. On the other side of the equation, concern was widespread that "American exceptionalism," the U.S. belief in its own moral and institutional superiority, would be given free rein.
That concern highlighted another contribution to post-Cold War angst: the power of disappointment. Generations of critics, domestic and foreign, who were influenced by varying compounds of Marxism, idealism, and malice, had predicted, if not the collapse of the United States, then at least its eclipse as the rest of the world marched triumphantly up the people's way into the sun. Instead the United States not only survived but flourished under a revived global capitalism. Their success just did not seem fair, and the use of its new position came under correspondingly intense scrutiny.
The results have been paradoxical. The United States has been simultaneously charged with seeking to impose a Pax Americana by unilateral initiatives in Haiti, Cuba, and Iraq and accused of callous indifference to poverty and injustice from Tibet to Timor and from Rwanda to Bosnia. Meanwhile, the Atlantic alliance tied itself in knots in the Balkans, ending almost a decade of muddle with nothing to show but a marginally effective protectorate over one of the more turbulent backyards in the world. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan, and China and Taiwan, continue to exchange threats--and in the former case, bullets as well. Yet, in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, conflicts have remained restricted in area if not in violence. The world may be longing, in Norman Graebner's words in a Winter 2000 Virginia Quarterly Review article, for an "unobtrusive, reassuring, potentially stabilizing" presence, but it also seems able to struggle along without it--as has been the case for the past several millennia.



Viewpoint: Yes. The change from a bipolar to a multipolar worldview caused significant destabilization because many nations resented the increased power and influence of the United States.

The end of the Cold War left the United States as the sole superpower. To win the Cold War, the United States greatly outstripped the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) both militarily and economically. It went on a weapons building spree that the Soviets could not match while at the same time producing an ever-increasing amount of consumer goods. The Soviets tried, but just could not keep pace with the United States and the West. In part, it was this fact that led to the Soviet defeat in the Cold War. Also during this time the United States outpaced its own European allies. However, the West, and specifically the United States, was left with a huge military arsenal and an industrial capacity that was simply enormous. Conversion of the industrial base was not too difficult, but what of the military capability?

Many Americans were uncomfortable with their country's role as the sole superpower. This situation gave rise to the so-called neo-Isolationists who believed that the United States was taking on too much responsibility in the post-Cold War world, and that its involvement should be greatly reduced. The greatest difficulty with this hegemony is that, unlike previous ones, it yielded no clearly defined Pax Americana, nor was there the expected "peace dividend" (expected reductions in defense spending would allow this money to be used elsewhere, according to the theory). There was no decline in violence around the world; in fact, there was an appreciable increase. One reason for this growth is that the power and influence of the United States, while usually mismanaged, was also greatly resented around the globe by both ally and foe alike as an unnecessary and unwanted intrusion into their affairs. With France leading the way, the world began to question the propriety and the right of the American "hyperpower" to meddle in other countries' affairs.

The dramatic increase in U.S. military operations in the decade of the 1990s is both a symptom and an illness--symptom in that there was a substantial increase in trouble around the world after the fall of the U.S.S.R., and illness as these actions only increase resentment felt around the world. Unfortunately, there was some validity in the resentment, for the countries and regions were rarely better off after U.S. intervention. This increase in operations, more than 300 percent accompanied by a one-third reduction in personnel, made the U.S. forces more depleted, run-down, and ineffective. This situation, in turn, created even greater tension within the U.S. government and armed forces. Clearly they could not indefinitely operate as they had.

By far the most dangerous area of the post-Cold War world was that of nuclear weapons safeguards. The U.S.S.R. was one large nuclear power, but with its collapse, it became four nuclear powers (with another eleven nonnuclear states). Where the international community was used to dealing with one government with a unified leadership and goals, it now had four to contend with. To their credit, three of these new countries opted to accept generous aid packages and relinquished the nuclear weapons. As a result, Russia became the sole former Soviet nuclear power.

Nevertheless, the desire of other nations to develop nuclear weapons did not end, and these nations brought all their resources to bear. The problem was that the main successor state to the U.S.S.R.--Russia--had a terrible economy. The results were severe unemployment, payroll problems, and massive inflation. In such a situation the possibility and probability of personnel with access to weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical) who were in serious financial hardship was on the rise. Grave violations of security occurred and continue to the present.

With nuclear weapons it was not just the uranium or plutonium that was the problem because weapons components and plans were also at risk. Worse still were the former Soviet scientists who, unable to earn a living at home, would accept positions (and high pay) from "rogue" states wishing to develop their programs. The countries with these programs were rapidly gaining what they needed to create these weapons. The outcome was a much more dangerous world.

The evidence of this dangerous world abounds. In 1998 India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club, confirming the long-time rumors that they were close to developing nuclear weapons. The list of countries working on this project was long, including such countries as Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, South Africa, and Syria.

Another cash-flow problem connected to this issue was that of nuclear surety--safeguarding these weapons from accidental or unintentional use. While Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus gave up their 2,822 nuclear weapons, the question remained: who was guarding the 5,326 nuclear weapons still in Russia? For instance, in the era of declining budgets and economic turmoil in Russia, and as the equipment aged, was there enough money to ensure proper maintenance or replacement of these weapons? What about the training of the operators and maintenance personnel? They frequently went for months without being paid. Were they working at peak efficiency?

Then there were early-warning radars and other systems to detect enemy missile launches. Did the Russians have enough money to maintain or replace these to ensure no false indications of an incoming attack? If not, the consequences could have been catastrophic, both for the United States and Russia as well as the world.

The breakup of the Soviet Union caused trouble outside as well. In Western countries there was a problem of division of resources. Where they had to watch and deal with one country and its goals, the countries of the world now had to deal with fifteen countries of the former Soviet Union, each with their own, sometimes competing, interests.

Another problem of the breakup of the U.S.S.R. was that it left Western Cold War institutions still in existence and floundering for a purpose. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for instance, became a superfluous entity with no raison d'être. Its actions in Kosovo in 1999 and beyond demonstrated this problem. It was a classic example of an organization trying to justify its continued existence by not taking serious risks.

A serious challenge came to the future status of the NATO alliance when the European Union (EU) announced that it was creating a rapid reaction force to deal with European matters and concerns--thereby leaving the United States conspicuously absent. This plan was a deliberate attempt by Europeans to keep the United States from meddling in their affairs. Perhaps it was to be a check to the American "hyperpower." Was it that the world was beginning to see the United States as the global threat? Only time will tell.

The United Nations (U.N.) also had difficulty defining its post-Cold War function. It attempted to assert control and power but was continually checked by states whose interests ran counter to such an organization. This development caused serious questions of status of national sovereignty, interestingly guaranteed in the U.N. Charter. Another obstacle for the U.N. was in defining its legal roles and responsibilities. In the late 1990s it established a war crimes tribunal to deal with the slaughter of thousands in Africa and the Balkans. It proposed an international criminal court for such matters, but this proposal was hotly contested by the United States and some nations usually at odds with America such as Iran and North Korea. Moreover, some of the rulings of the war crimes tribunal actually ran counter to established international law--such as the 1995 ruling that the Hague and Geneva Conventions apply to internal wars rather than just international conflict, as these documents themselves state.

During this time there was also an increase in terrorism. To be fair, much of this violence was because of the increase of narco-terrorism, but then, how does one classify terrorism at the hands of drug traffickers who are also "freedom fighters"? How to deal with terrorism, both unilaterally and as groups of nations, was a question hotly debated on both sides of the Atlantic.

One benefit of the Soviet Union and its system that went unrecognized for years was that internal ethnic, religious, and cultural struggles and disputes were suppressed and rarely came to the surface. Unfortunately for the innocents, most countries were unable to separate as peacefully as the Czechs and the Slovaks did. These disputes simply seemed to erupt in the decade following the Cold War, sending the United States and its allies scrambling to find a response.

Despite the stopgap measures of various organizations and governments and the supposed globalization of the international community, the world clearly became a more dangerous place with the demise of the U.S.S.R. This statement does not mean that the world was not better off without Soviet threats and influence. At least the planet was no longer under the threat of all-out nuclear war between superpowers. While there was a problem of nuclear weapons proliferation, at least it seemed to be under control. At the same time, there was a dramatic increase in lower-level warfare around the world mixed with terrorism. Only time will tell which threat was greater, and whether the responses were the correct ones.

-- William H. Kautt, San Antonio, Texas


Viewpoint: No. The United States with its strong economy and resolve to use military power has filled whatever void in world politics the collapse of the Soviet Union caused.

The end of the Cold War radically changed structures of international politics that had existed for nearly half a century. In the absence of the superimposition of superpower conflict over global affairs, many feared that local conflicts would reemerge and pose serious dangers for peace and security in the future. It was also widely believed that the collapse of the Soviet position in Eastern Europe would create a vacuum of influence that would eventually have to spread. The internal disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), moreover, led to great worries about what a truncated and unstable Russia would do in the future if it were not adequately conciliated; about new ethnic conflicts within the former Soviet Union; and about the proliferation of Soviet nuclear-weapons technology abroad. Despite all the prognostications about how unstable the world could become after the Soviet collapse, however, nothing occurred to suggest that the absence of the U.S.S.R. has been at all destabilizing.

Perhaps the most significant change outside the territory of the former Soviet Union was the liberation of Eastern Europe from communist domination. Despite dire predictions about the desperate need in the region for economic and political reform and modernization, the countries that were formerly in the Soviet orbit show remarkable signs of progress. Most of them have adopted democratic governments and are well on their way to having broad-based civil society institutions. They enthusiastically covet membership in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU), both of which have guaranteed peace and stability in Western Europe for decades. The so-called fast adjusters--Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic--have reached political and economic standards for NATO membership and were admitted to the alliance in March 1999.

With the exception of the former Yugoslavia, which despite its communist government spent most of its Cold War history as far outside the Soviet orbit as any country in Western Europe, the ethnic conflicts that plagued Eastern Europe historically have not posed much of a problem. The status of large Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia, and even within the former Yugoslavia, has been more or less normalized. The Hungarians in those countries have yet to revolt. Ethnic German minorities that remained in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, as well as in the former Soviet Union after World War II have largely immigrated to Germany under its ethnicity-based citizenship laws. The question of the German-Polish frontier, which has no historical legitimacy and resulted in the brutal expulsion of millions of German civilians after 1945, has been sanctified both by the international community and Germany itself, as have legal issues concerning the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. At reunification, language providing for the incorporation of historically German territory into the Federal Republic, which had been applied to East Germany, was deleted from the German constitution. If the point is of any interest, the residency provisions of the Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union; approved 1991, ratified 1993) allows any German citizen to move to their historic home should Poland and the Czech Republic join the European Union (EU).

The apparent success of the EU as an agent of economic and political integration effectively defuses another potential problem for Eastern Europe. Historically, that relatively underdeveloped region either came under the domination of one power (as it did during the Cold War) or was the object of dispute (as it had between the Hapsburg and Russian Empires in the nineteenth century). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, traditional patterns of hegemonic domination have not applied. Rather than facing economic and political penetration by a single country, the recent history of the region suggests that its countries will become integral parts of the supranational EU with their security guaranteed by NATO membership.

Conflicts surrounding the post-Cold War fragmentation of Yugoslavia, which had been outside Soviet influence, has presented challenges to regional stability, but after nearly a decade the conflict has not gone beyond the former borders of that country. Its disintegration along ethnic lines, moreover, resulted from problems that have plagued that part of the world for the past thousand years and that historically presented challenges to the Yugoslav state. The decline of its cohesion began to reemerge after Josip Broz Tito's death in 1980, when the U.S.S.R. was still regarded as one of the two superpowers, and accelerated not as a result of events in Moscow but simultaneously with them. The resulting conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina seems to have been ended by a U.S.-led NATO peacekeeping force, which entered that country in 1995 after U.N. peacekeepers failed to make an impact. In the wake of a U.S.-led aerial offensive against Yugoslavia in 1999, more NATO peacekeepers were poised to enter Kosovo, where ethnic conflict had broken out.

Further afield, potential trouble spots and "rogue" states have been checked by unilateral American action or by multinational efforts. Since its military defeat by a U.S.-led coalition in 1991, Iraqi chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons facilities have been dismantled by U.N. inspectors, while the U.S. Air Force enforces a "no-fly zone" that prevents Saddam Hussein from attacking Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minorities. In 1994 U.S. troops ousted a military junta in Haiti and restored pretensions to democratic government. That same year Washington reached an agreement with Japan and South Korea providing for a military solution should North Korea not acquiesce to UN inspection of its nuclear facilities. The United States has also demonstrated a willingness to take unilateral action against international terrorism, through both economic sanctions against countries that sponsor terrorists (such as Lybia and Iran) and military strikes against terrorist installations (such as the 1998 bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan).

The situation within the former Soviet Union presents problems, but hardly a challenge to world stability. Despite widespread popular resentment about having lost the Cold War, economic difficulties, and its political instability, Russia has had to face the fact that its future modernization and development depend on its relationship with the West. Even when that relationship is strained, as it has been since U.S. planes began bombing its traditional Serbian ally in March 1999, Moscow has had to swallow its pride and make concessions to the West in order to preserve the financial and commercial ties that offer the best chance to reinvigorate its economy and society. In the event, the continuing decline of Russia has impeded its ability even to keep the central authority over the country intact. The Russian military utterly failed to put down an insurrection by Chechen guerrilla fighters after several years of involvement. Remote provinces inhabited by ethnic Russians have demonstrated increasing independence from the Federation government.

The problems of Russia at home underscore the influence it has over the other Soviet successor states. While Belarus, ruled by the dictatorship of a former communist, is politically close to Russia, the others remain jealous of their independence. The Baltic States, Ukraine, and Moldova are actively interested in close ties to the West, potentially including NATO membership. While the states of Transcaucasia and Central Asia have a long way to go to develop liberal democratic governments and still have ties to Russia (including, in some cases, the presence of Russian troops), they are all not under its domination.

Nor have broader international problems related to the collapse of the Soviet Union destabilized the world. Eight years after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., much-touted fears that poorly paid scientists or disgruntled military officers would sell Soviet nuclear weapons technology to "rogue" states have yet to be justified. Whatever progress countries such as Iraq or North Korea have made toward developing a nuclear device with Russian help have been thwarted by the United States and the international community. There is no evidence that the most recent emerging nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, received the necessary technology and materials from Russia.

The widespread belief that the relative stability of a bipolar world would give way to the instability in a multipolar world has not been borne out in reality. Russian reemergence as a viable economic and military power is a long way off, probably decades in the future. In addition to the fact that the movement of the EU toward economic and political integration is predicated on stability and peace within the continent, the process that many believed would cause Europe to emerge as a superpower in its own right, has generated many structural problems. Most European economies are plagued with chronic high unemployment and slowing economic growth. The overbearing presence of many European governments in national economies and the increasingly unbearable burden of their comprehensive welfare states stifles initiative, creativity, and growth. A spate of electoral victories by left-of-center political parties resulted largely from their movement away from socialism and an expressed intent to reduce the role of government in the economy and society, in some cases even to a greater extent than the parties of the right. The euro, the unified currency introduced in several EU states in January 1999, has not reversed these trends, and its value has actually declined since its introduction. Several countries, notably the United Kingdom (U.K.), have not adopted the common currency and are not likely to do so for at least another several years. Although there are now notions of a common European defense force, the EU has proven itself unable to stop the ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia, its own backyard, without decisive American leadership and military action.

In Asia the great concerns of the 1990s over the development of the Japanese economy have not been justified. Like the European economies, it too has suffered from rising unemployment, slow growth, and the burden of a social-welfare system that is becoming harder and harder to maintain. The industrialization of smaller Asian countries has meant the loss of Japanese blue-collar jobs, as has the large-scale movement of basic industries (such as textiles) overseas, the same problem faced by the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Japanese defense and foreign policies are much more coordinated with those of the United States than any of its Asian neighbors.

The development of one of those neighbors, China, while impressive, is greatly dependent on the health of its relationship with the United States, which buys the largest single percentage of Chinese exports. Controversies over the appalling human-rights record of Beijing, recent revelations about the broad scope of Chinese nuclear espionage in the United States, past and present relations with rogue states, and its opposition to recent NATO action in Yugoslavia have made that relationship increasingly tense. Proponents of "engaging" China in broad commercial and diplomatic ties to stimulate domestic reform and geopolitical restraint, an argument stunningly similar to the one made by proponents of détente with the Soviet Union, are justifiably finding their strategic approach to China difficult to sell. Nevertheless, Chinese economic power has not yet compensated for its strategic inferiority to the United States. Even with its acquisition of what has been estimated to be nuclear parity with the United States, China remains a regional power without sufficient clout or influence even to establish control over Taiwan, which China insists is, and much of the world (including the United States) officially regards as, part of its territory. Its economic growth notwithstanding, the average national standard of living remains rather low. The political monopoly of the communist party is challenged by a large number of political, ethnic, and religious dissent movements that enjoy much notoriety and sympathy abroad. Beijing has much bark but little bite.

While information-age media technology brings various local and regional crises to the attention of the American public, and while academic studies have put forward theoretical approaches to the relative decline of the United States and the increasing turbulence in international politics, the hard facts do not bear out the conclusion that the post-Cold War world is, or will be, marred with instability. The United States stands strong as the only superpower, with an economy larger than those of the next three largest countries taken together. Despite cuts in military spending through the 1990s, the decisions of the Clinton administration to increase the defense budget (which even include the once-ridiculed idea of developing a ballistic-missile-defense system), its resolve in using military power to defend U.S. interests abroad, and the general good health and steady growth of the economy for more than two decades prove that the United States will not retreat from the global stage. Pessimists who believe that America would become, or is becoming, just another player among four or five "emerging centers of power," and that its tenure as the major world power has ended or will soon end, are wrong to believe in what Henry R. Nau, in The Myth of America's Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (1990), has called a myth. The United States has the preponderant influence and has every chance of keeping it for a long time.

-- Paul Du Quenoy, Georgetown University

FURTHER READINGS


References


R. J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (London & New York: Routledge, 1994);

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992);

Norman Graebner, "The Limits of Meliorism in Foreign Affairs," Virginia Quarterly Review, 76 (Winter 2000): 20-37;

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996);

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987);

Henry R. Nau, The Myth of America's Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);

Kenneth Walz, "Globalization and American Power," National Interest, 59 (Spring 2000): 46-56.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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