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Unit 16 – The Bipolar W orld/The End of Empire/A W orld W ithout Borders – Chapters 38-40 The Formation Of A Bipolar W orld The wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated quickly after World War II Competition for control of Europe combined with earlier competing ideologies of communism and capitalism acted as catalysts to drive the two superpowers apart It split Europe into separate spheres, then became global with the Korean War Blocs of nations lined up behind the two superpowers and competed economically, politically, and militarily Western European nations aligned themselves with the interest of the United States while eastern European nations were forced to align themselves with the USSR Western Europe continued to embrace capitalism and democratic institutions while Eastern European countries became communist under the watchful eye of occupation armies Germany was the first to be divided as the occupation forces carved up the country and its capital, Berlin, into sectors Access to Berlin was through the Soviet zone which further complicated matters A very tense relationship built up between the French, American, and British occupiers and their opposing Soviet occupiers and once the western powers decide to merge their zones, it got worse Berlin Blockade In an attempt to gain total control of Berlin, the Soviet Union blocked its rail and road access in June 1948 The western forces responded with a year-long Berlin airlift of supplies and embargoed products from Soviet-controlled countries The Soviet Union called off the blockade and the western forces kept their outpost deep within Soviet territory intact The western sectors became the Federal Republic of Germany with its capital in West Berlin Eastern sector became known as the German Democratic Republic with East Berlin as its capital For the next twelve years, the borders were fairly easy to cross so East Germany lost many citizens to booming West Germany In 1961, the communists reinforced their border in Berlin with barbed wire that became a wall with watchtowers, mines, and border guards with orders to shoot to kill The Berlin Wall stemmed the flow of immigrants but its reputation was sullied by incidents at the wall where over the years several hundred East Germans lost their lives It remained a symbol of oppression In both the Berlin airlift and the Berlin Wall episodes, it became clear that it was possible to avoid a shooting war, so the “cold war” had its moniker Quite amazingly, despite the build-up of massive stores of nuclear weapons, the war remained cold Treaties firmed up the two military alignments with the western powers’ North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed in 1949 and the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact in response in 1955 Both sides began to amass huge arsenals of nuclear and conventional weapons but not until the 1960s did the Soviet Union approach the number that the west h ad The cold war continued despite outbreaks of conventional warfare like the Korean War The first to challenge the global balance of powers occurred in the summer of 1950, when the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) invaded the Republic of Korea (South Korea) After World War II, Korea had been partitioned along the thirty-eight parallel because the two superpowers could not agree on a timeline for reunification The international response marked one of the first effective uses of the newlyformed United Nations which voted to allow member countries “to provide the Republic of South Korea with all necessary aid to repel the aggressors” The United States with token support form twenty countries responded by pushing the North Koreans back with their borders Inchon Approached the border with China, they were met by three hundred thousand Chinese forces The United States and its allies were pushed back to the south and after two years of a stalemate, no peace treaty was ever signed So Korea remained in a hostile state of potential warfare at the same lines set up i n 1949 The “containment” of communist North Korea proved the efficacy of such policies and became the dominant policy of the United States It began to offer aid to other Asian nations in an effort to contain communism, and it set up an Asian counterpart to NATO, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) According to President Dwight Eisenhower(1890-1969), Asia was viewed in terms of the “domino theory” which held that if one nation fell to communism, the rest would follow Subsequent administrations would extend the theory to Latin America and Africa Cuba became the focus of U.S. concern in the western hemisphere In 1959, Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro overthrew the corrupt, U.S.-supported government He denounced Yankee imperialism, seized businesses, and accepted assistance from the Soviet Union The U.S. response was to cut off sugar imports and diplomatic ties In addition to that, the United States began a secret program to take back Cuba The Soviet Union used its entrée into Cuba to set up a large contingent of advisers and military weaponry while Fidel Castro loudly supported its goals in the in the U.N. General Assembly President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) approved an invasion by anti-Castro Cubans soon after he got into office The insurgents, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), landed on the beach in the Bay of Pigs and were quickly captured or killed The episode diminished U.S. prestige and strengthened Castro’s popularity in Cu b a It also may have been a factor in Castro’s decision to accept Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuban shores The Soviets had other reasons for the assertive move such as protection of the Cuban government, to gain influence in Latin America, and to increase their diplomatic leverage with the United States At the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis, October 1962, President Kennedy announced on television that there were photographs of missiles pointed right at the United States and that the United States would blockade the island until they were removed The superpowers came as close to nuclear warfare as they ever would, and for one week, disaster seemed imminent Tense negotiations resulted in Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) withdrawing the missiles in return for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba There was also a secret agreement that the United States would remove its secret missiles from Turkey The world breathed a collective sigh but it became more evident that nuclear weapons and the tense balance of power could propel the world into a third world war The so-called “kitchen debate” between American vice-President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Khrushchev personified the differences between the values and attributes of each society and their allies For example, the United States had wonderful new appliances to simplify women’s lives, and on top of that, they did not need to have a job to attain this lifestyle In contrast, Soviet women had few conveniences and were required to work Nevertheless, all was not safe and secure as concerns about global communism cast a shadow on American lives and reached a panic level in the early 1950s Congress began investigations that caused thousands of Americans to be purged from their jobs on suspicion of being members- or having been members-of the Communist Party Despite the advantages, more married women worked during the cold war than they had during WW II Global feminist movement Many resented the domestic image on television Women began to press for more recognition and equality Books by French author Simone de Beauvoir and American author Betty Friedan put their concerns into words Women activists also began to use Marxist, anti-imperialist rhetoric like “oppression” and “women’s liberation” to describe their position in society As decolonization became more likely, black nationalism became more prominent throughout the globe In the United States and the Caribbean, citizens of African descent began to identify with Africans in revolutionary battles against colonial powers Marcus Garvey Kwame Nkrumah in Africa Dr. Martin Luther King all advocated the unity The cold war coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States as King also borrowed passive nonresistance strategies from another anti-imperialist movement, that of Gandhi in India The southern United States had institutionalized segregation since the Civil War, but in the early 1950s, it was challenged in federal courts and changes began to take place The first change was Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) which ruled against segregation in schools Then a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama resulted in desegregation of interstate transportation Many changes followed and coincided with African liberation efforts and the cold war Huge contrasts existed between the materialism of the western powers and the deprivation of the Warsaw Pact countries The devastation of World War II had been improved in the west by the U.S. Marshall Plan that granted over $13 billion to rebuild western Europe The western European economy responded quickly and its gain in the 1950s were enormous, outpacing the United States growth rate during the same period The only area that the Soviets could compete well in was their space program and sports programs In 1957, they put the first satellite into space, which horrified the west Then the Russians sent the first man into space With an infusion of government money and force, the Americans were the first to land on the moon in 1969 The space race fueled concerns that there was a large “missile gap” and contributed to increased nuclear armament on both sides The Olympics became the premier venue for the sports competition, as it had been before World War II During the cold war, both East and West Germany sent teams while the People’s Republic of China boycotted it until Taiwan lost its recognition Violence even played into it Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes in 1972 A United States boycott of the games in 1980 was followed by a Soviet boycott in 1984 Despite competition, the relationship between the superpowers began to temper after Stalin’s death and the communist “witch trials” in the United States after 1953 Both governments realized that mutual destruction was a distinct possibility so they began to move toward “peaceful coexistence” Challenges To Superpower Hegemony Each side had its challenges as the French decided to challenge NATO French president Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) envisioned Europe as a third superpower, and to this end, he questioned U.S. policies He refused to sign a partial nuclear test ban and criticized NATO as he pursued French nuclear equality Despite nuclear parity, de Gaulle’s dream of equal status went unrealized The Soviets began to liberalize their relations with their own satellite countries but still exercised severe action when necessary, such as the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and among its own dissidents Marshall Tito(1892-1980) of Yugoslavia forged his own brand of communism without aid or direction from the USSR and forged his own alliances with other nonaligned nations USSR After Stalin’s death, it took several years before the new premier Khrushchev would criticize the Stalin regime In 1956, he began the process of de-Stalinization which ended the rule of terror and attempted to erase Stalin’s name and image from Soviet society It also liberalized government control enough to permit the publication of antigovernment works like the expose of its prison system One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn This encouraged satellite governments to liberalize as well In Hungary, the people demanded and reformist leader Imre Nagy (1896-1958) supported a withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact The Soviets treated it as a serious threat and sent tanks that brutally crushed the uprising Hungary returned to the fold and Nagy was secretly executed In 1968, the Czech government supported a loosening of control known as the “Prague Spring” Again, Soviet tanks were sent in and no bloodshed ended the liberalization The justification of the invasion was part of the Brezhnev doctrine, named for Khrushchev’s successor After the defeat of Japan in 1945, China erupted into civil war between the Guomindang and the CCP Initially, Mao set out to reproduce Soviet communism but eventually, he broke with the USSR and proclaimed a uniquely Chinese communism The early steps established a form of government 1949, former nationalists were purged from society by imprisonment and execution The Chinese developed their own Five Year Plan to power rapid industrialization Landowners were purged from society Collective farms replaced private farms while health care and education were centered around the collectives Social reforms that benefited women: Banning child marriages and foot binding Granting women access to divorce Legalizing abortion By recognizing Russia’s foremost role in global communism, China received enormous military and economic aid China became the Soviet Union’s primary trading partner in the 1950s However, the Chinese grated under the constant lecturing of their Soviet tutors Resented the unequal quality of the relationship The USSR required full repayment of its aid during the Korean War before granting more aid In 1955, Soviets gave more aid to noncommunist countries like India and Egypt Moscow even declared neutrality in the rivalry for Tibet between China and India Finally, small border clashes between China and the USSR exacerbated the deteriorating relationship In 1964, the two nations broke out into a spate of public name-calling that combined with China’s successful nuclear weapons test to finish the split An unintended result of the rift was that nonaligned countries were able to play the two communist countries off each other as they had earlier with the United States and Russia By the late 1960s the superpowers had instituted a policy of détente or a reduction in hostilities Their leaders exchanged visits and signed cooperative agreements The most visible sign of détente were the two Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) in the 1970s where both sides agreed to reduce their nuclear weapon inventories However, when the United States resumed full diplomatic relations with China and even agreed to sell nuclear weapons to it, détente was over The relationship was further aggravated by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 This would prove disastrous for the Soviet Union But the prestige of the superpowers had already waned earlier with the U.S. involvement in Vietnam After the French left Vietnam and communists had taken control of the north, the United States began to support noncommunist South Vietnam as a part of its containment theory U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) then militarized the U.S. presence in the south until by 1968 more than a half million U.S. troops were in Vietnam Still, the south Vietnamese were losing the Vietnam War The American public became increasingly outraged by U.S. casualties President Richard M. Nixon (1968-1974) began a process of Vietnamization where the United States began to hand over the war to the South Vietnamese An escalation of the war in North Vietnam and an invasion into Cambodia combined with secret talks with the North Vietnamese resulted in U.S. withdrawal i n 1973 The Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. participation and two years later the communists unified their nation In nonaligned Afghanistan, a pro-Soviet coup in 1978 ended its neutrality The new government issued radical reforms which led to an intense backlash that soon became an armed rebellion Soviet forces entered Afghanistan to assist the communist government and nine years later made no headway against the mujahideen (Islamic holy warriors) supported by the American, Chinese, Saudi, Pakistani, and Iranian governments A cease-fire accord withdrew Soviet forces but Afghanistan erupted into civil war two years later In 1996, the Taliban, an army of religious conservatives, triumphed and installed a rigid, Islamic regime Both episodes proved the superpowers had overextended themselves and exposed the weaknesses of their militaries and state policies In addition to the obvious problems that had been revealed in a bipolar world, young individuals from all countries began to criticize the cold war A global countercultural movement began In 1968, students in the United States and France protested government policies Mao supported a complete youth remake of Chinese society, the so-called Cultural Revolution Rock and roll music which had been merely shocking now became part of the youth revolution One U.S. president, Nixon, was partly brought down by the effects of student protests as he authorized illegal wiretaps on protest leaders and the press These were revealed in the Watergate hearings and he resigned in disgrace Even superpower leaders had become vulnerable to public opinion The End of the Cold W ar U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) advocated a return to full cold war with a military build up and anti-Soviet rhetoric based on Hollywood imagery, like “the evil empire” However, internal problems had existed in the USSR that led it to collapse before the United States could win the cold war Economic distress and political reforms brought on by Soviet premier Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-) prompted multiple revolutions in satellite countries which doomed communist regimes Despite Soviet influence and tanks, nationalism had failed to fuse with communist ideology in eastern Europe The early reforms of the Khrushchev era seemed to provide a solution, but after the harsh repression of Hungary, it faded As he seemed to liberalize again, he was despised in 1964 by communist hardliners Again the chance to win over the satellite peoples was lost However, the hardliners were followed by Gorbachev who was determined to improve the economic and political situation in the Soviet Union Eastern Europeans greeted his announcements with enthusiasm and soon managed to overthrow the communist regimes of most countries In 1989, the Soviet pact countries fell to democratic forces Poland was the scene of the first change as Solidarity, the labor union under Lech Walesa (1943-), a former dockworker and future president, took on the government In the same year, the Bulgarians overthrew their government while the Hungarians did the same Czechoslovakia’s “velvet revolution,” very little violence occurred as the Czechs rejected communist government and three years later divided the two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia A violent uprising in Romania overthrew the harsh dictator Ceausescu who with his wife was executed on television East Germany’s communist leader had objected to the liberal policies of Gorbachev but it too succumbed to revolution in 1989 The sight of the Berlin Wall being torn down became the symbol of the end of communism By Gorbachev’s election in 1985, it had become apparent that the Russian economy was in a state of collapse It had to import grain to feed its population Its standard of living was falling, and its health care system was deteriorating Pollution threatened the country while the educational system lost increasing amounts of funding Gorbachev decided to restructure (perestroika) and that needed to be linked to an increasing openness in government or glasnost Both policies proved to be more difficult to implement than he had foreseen Decentralization of the economy threatened those dependent on the old system, and open government led to harsh criticism At the same time, long simmering ethnic resentments bubbled to the surface in the republics In 1990, the Soviet economy disintegrated, and the Baltic peoples (Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians) rebelled in 1991 In the next year, twelve more republics followed The Russian republic itself under Boris Yeltsin (1931-) led the independence movement An attempted coup against Gorbachev was stopped but he was forced to resign Yeltsin went on to dismantle the Communist Party and push Russia toward a market economy By December 1991, the Soviet Union was no more The cold war, while potentially perilous, had provided a certain comfort in the balance of its powers An easy familiarity with the forces of good and evil had a certain security as well With the dismantling of the Soviet Union and its allies, critics and supporters of the cold war were unclear as to new direction the world would take The communist model had proved itself to be unworkable even though a few impoverished states- Cuba and North Korea among them-retain the form today A radical shift in power relations seemed imminent and is still working itself out today II. The End Of Empire Independence in Asia Decolonization, like the cold war, transformed the world after World War II It sometimes brought newly, independent states autonomy and self-determination However, pressures from cold war superpowers challenged these new nations to choose sides by aligning themselves with either capitalism or communism, often at the expense of their own independence Achieving national unity, social stability, and economic prosperity would prove a challenging, lengthy, uncertain, and dangerous process Freedom would come first, security hoped for eventually Throughout the 1930s, relentless pressure from the Indian National Congress Party and Mohandas Gandhi, along with the Muslim League lead by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, compelled Great Britain to move gradually toward self-rule for its Indian domain World War II, however, stalled that push Once WW II was over and a new more liberal Labour government was installed in Britain, moves toward Indian independence proceeded As the likelihood of independence grew, so did Muslim fears about their minority status in an independent India dominated by Hindus Muhammad Ali Jinnah frankly expressed his desire for a separate Muslim state, despite continuing attempts by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to reassure Muslim and urged all Indians to act and feel as one nation In August 1946, Muslim leaders called for a Day of Direct Action to push the British closer to granting Indian independence This demonstration-turned-riot resulted in the death of six thousand Indians and fueled Jinnah’s fears Communalism, an ideology which promotes religious identity over national identity, was undermining hopes for a united Indian nation As Hindus, perhaps Gandhi and Nehru could not fully understand the Muslim fears of being a minority submerged in a large majority culture However, their fears of “rivers of blood” resulting from partition came to chilling fruition More than ten million Muslim and Hindu refugees migrated to either Muslim Pakistan or to Hindu India between 1947 and 1948 and up to one million of those migrants died in the ensuing violence Hostility between migrating Muslims and Hindus became hostility between nations- Pakistan and India- as the two went to war in 1947 over the contested province of Kashmir Pakistan lost the battle and sought a U.S. alliance to strengthen its position India responded by accepting aid from the Soviet Union although Nehru insisted on India remaining nonaligned in the superpower standoff Even Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 did not quell the violence Though Britain granted full independence to India in August 1947, it chose to rely on its previously tested model of decolonization rather than battle to retain its Asian colonies as the French and the Dutch would painfully and unsuccessfully try to do Instead, like Canada before them, India and Pakistan became Dominion members of the British Commonwealth and retained English as their first official language India set another example for other nations grappling with the issues of decolonization: it zealously protected its nonaligned strategy One of the most outspoken defenders of nonalignment was Indian prime minister Nehru who warned of the dangers of newly independent nations getting caught in a superpower tug of war Nehru’s and other leaders’ stance on nonalignment was clearly articulated at a meeting in April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia dedicated to the struggle against colonialism and racism Promoted the ideal of a “third path” as an alternative to aligning with either the United States or with the Soviet Union This “third path” proved an elusive reality even as the Nonaligned Movement took form Though the movement’s primary goal was to maintain formal neutrality, a constant lack of unity among members and inconsistent and informal ties between nations and superpowers made the movement more theoretical than real Vietnam’s struggle for independence got all tied up in cold war issues Ho Chi Minh had been interested in independence for Vietnam since World War I and had even sought to have his nation’s independence discussed at the Versailles peace conference His hopes were not realized then, nor in 1920s or 1930s Ho had helped to oust the Japanese from Vietnam during World War II and again sought independence for Vietnam, this time issuing the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence modeled after the founding American document France, however, still stinging from their resounding loss to the Germans, was anxious to rebuild its international reputation and status as a world power Determined to retain its lucrative prewar colonial holdings, including Vietnam Using British and U.S. weapons, France recouped Saigon and much of southern Vietnam in 1945, but the northern part of the country proved much more difficult to reclaim French mercilessly bombed the cities of Hanoi and Haipong, killing at least ten thousand civilians By 1947, it appeared that the French had regained control of their colony, so they were unprepared for the guerilla war led by Ho and General Vo Nguyen Giap Ho and Giap found willing supporters among the Vietnamese people and after 1949 from the Chinese communists The humiliating French loss at Dienbienphu in 1954 forced the former colonial power to sue for peace However, peace would not last At the 1954 Peace Conference in Geneva, it was determined that Vietnam would be divided at the seventeenth parallel with Ho and the communists controlling the north South remaining in the hands of the non-communists The Geneva Agreement ordered national elections to be held in 1956 “domino effect” of all of southeast Asia falling to communist control if such elections were held, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower avoided the elections Ngo Dinh Diem, a U.S.-backed leader, as president of South Vietnam Diem was never popular with the Vietnamese people Ho found support among many Vietnamese in the south National Liberation Front (NLF) was founded in 1960 in South Vietnam to fight for freedom from U.S.-propped South Vietnamese rule Supported by Ho’s communist government in the north economic and military assistance from China and Russia NLF (Viet Cong) met with continued success against South Vietnamese forces Ho died in 1969, but the military stalemate in Vietnam continued until 1973, when the U.S phase of the war ended with the Paris Peace Accords South Vietnam lasted until 1975, and by 1976, Vietnam was a unified country, as Ho had wanted since 1919 First Egypt, then Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan gained complete independence after the war Palestine, however, remained and remains a problem After WW I and the end of the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain had controlled Palestine G.B. made conflicting promises to Palestine Arabs seeking a nation and to Jews emigrating to Palestine hoping to establish a homeland where they could escape persecution The Balfour Doctrine of 1917 had committed the British government to supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the Zionist dream of a national Jewish state in Palestine had also been supported at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 In seeking to fulfill both conflicting promises, the British government allowed limited Jewish immigration to Palestine while simultaneously promising to protect the Palestinian Arabs’ civil and economic rights The British could maintain these conflicting interests only through the use of imperial military forces against many opposing elements Arab Palestinians rejected British rule imperial and Jewish immigration as illegal Mostly of European descent, the Jews expected the British to fulfill their promise They immigrated to Palestine Purchased land Established kibbutzim, communal farms, which promised to turn the “desert into a garden” Such actions threatened Arab interests in the region Arab Muslims resented Jews as interlopers on land they considered rightly theirs Such overlapping conflicts erupted into sporadic open violence in the 1920s and 1930s An increase in Jewish immigration fleeing Germany and Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s only increased the tension and the complications of the settlement as Zionists in Palestine began to arm themselves to protect Jewish settlers against Arab reprisals As the surrounding Arab states gained their independence, a sense of Arab nationalism grew to include supporting their Arab kinsmen in Palestine against growing Jewish presence in lands they considered Arab The Holocaust increased the pressure on the British government and the free world to make good on a promise of a secure homeland for the Jews, especially those who had miraculously survived the Nazi’s “final solution” The British could find no answer to this conundrum 1947 - they gave up and announced that they were turning the contested lands over to the newly organized United Nations to administer The United Nations, operating with both U.S. and USSR approval for the plan, announced that two states, one Arab, one Jewish, would be created The Arabs found this decision unacceptable In May 1948, the Jews announced the creation of an independent state, the modern nation of Israel Almost immediately, Egypt, Jordan, Syria Lebanon, and Iraq led an attack on Israel in support of the Palestinian Arabs But their actions were uncoordinated underestimated Israeli determination and military skills Ironically, the Israelis won the conflict so decisively that they ended up with a nation whose boundaries far exceeded the ones they had originally been defending, far larger than those granted to the Jewish state under the U.N.’s original partition A truce went into effect in 1949 as did the new partition Jerusalem and the Jordan River Valley were divided between the new state of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan Israel controlled the costal regions of Palestine and the Negev Desert to the Red Sea Thousands of Arabs fled during the fighting, and even after the partition, as they feared life under Jewish political control Those refugees served, and their descendents serve, as a spur to Arab nations’ determination to rid the region of Israel Egypt, under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser sought to take the lead among Arab nations in opposing Israel To do so, he and his military supporters abandoned Egypt’s new constitutional government Began to use militarism to promote state reform, culminating in a bloodless coup which toppled Egypt’s King Farouk Nasser named himself Egyptian prime minister in 1954 and took complete control of the government which he hoped to make the fountainhead of pan-Arab nationalism Like Nehru, Nasser believed cold war politics were simply a new form of imperialism He adopted an “internationalist position” under which Egypt would seek to extract pledges of economic and military support from both the U.S. and the USSR without aligning with either superpower Nasser was an anti-imperialist in every sense He worked to destroy the nation of Israel which he viewed as an imperialist creation Also, he gave aide to the Algerians in their fight to oust the French He abolished British military rights to the Suez Canal Nationalized the canal and use the canal’s revenues to finance the building of a dam on the Nile River at Aswan When Nasser refused to back down on his attempt to totally control the canal, a combined force of British, French, and Israeli troops simply took control of the canal away from him However, Nasser did win the diplomatic fight, as the former allies had not consulted with the U.S. before taking action against Egypt U.S. strongly condemned their military actions USSR likewise objected forcefully and managed to enhance its image as a strong supporter of Arab nationalism Oil interests and a sustained U.S. commitment to Israel made a tangle of cold war politics Southwest Asia, popularly called the Middle East, challenged the bipolar view of the world and the orientations of the two superpowers Decolonization in Africa The cold war also affected decolonization in Africa, a process already complicated by reluctant colonial powers and internal tribal conflicts The French resisted decolonization, especially in Algeria More than two million French had settled in Algeria by the mid-1940s, and those individuals and their descendents demanded protection for themselves and their property Beginning with a deadly riot in May 1945 and continuing though the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), the conflict pitted the National Liberation Front (NLF) against more than a half million French soldiers and was especially violent Frantz Fanon, the most famous Algerian revolutionary, supported the use of violence against colonial oppressors as a way of overcoming a history of racist degradation Nationalism flourished in sub-Saharan Africa before and after World War II The Negritude movement, which celebrated Africa’s great poets, writers, traditions, and cultures, was tied to the pan-African movement which was expanding in the United States, the Caribbean, and especially among Frenchspeaking west Africans Grassroots protests against colonialism became increasingly common among workers in areas like the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and Northern Rhodesia The presence of white settlers and the pressures from the cold war complicated the process of decolonization Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to become independent in March 1957 Many of these new nations took names honoring their pre-colonial past: Zam b i a Malawi Z i m b ab we Nations like Rwanda, Burundi, and Angola would become independent much later, with much violence and bloodshed sometimes continuing beyond official independence dates Ghana’s early independence and its charismatic leader Kwame Nkrumah inspired other African nationalist movements and symbolized changing times in Africa But independence was not always peaceful as it had been in Ghana Decolonization in Kenya, a British colony in east Africa, would be bloody and protracted In 1947 Kikuyu rebels began an intermittent violent campaign against white settlers and those Africans they deemed “traitorous” The Kikuyu resented the British removal of Kikuyu farmers from their fertile highland farmland and their relocation to “tribal reserves” and their reduced status as wage slaves The violent interactions continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s members of this Kikuyu movement were either labeled as communists or called Mau Mau subversives In 1952, the British colonial government in Kenya established a state of emergency, and moved to suppress all Kenyan nationalists including Jomo Kenyatta The British then mounted a major military offensive against the rebel forces including the use of artillery, bombers and jet fighters Effectively crushed all military resistance in the conflict which claimed more than twelve thousand Africans and one hundred Europeans By 1959, however, the calls for independence in Kenya from around the world had grown too strong, and, ignoring the calls by white supremacists, the British government lifted the state of emergency 1963, Kenya had negotiated its independence Most of the developing nations in south, southeast, and east Asia adopted some form of authoritarian or militarist political system after World War II India and Japan are the exceptions After Independence: Long-Term Struggles in the Postcolonial Era China, under Mao Zedong, served as a model for nations seeking political development away from the paths of their former colonial masters Mao transformed communism, a distinctively European ideology, into a distinctly Chinese system of control Bringing unity to China for the first time since the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 He envisioned the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) as a way to push industrial and agricultural production by abolishing all private property and by communalizing all farming and industry It was a total failure, especially in the agricultural realm where, coupled with bad weather and poor harvests, almost twenty million Chinese died of malnutrition and starvation In 1966, Mao tried again to mobilize the Chinese populace and reignite their revolutionary spirit Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution was designed to further the revolution and to root out any revisionists who were seen as traitors or simply not revolutionary enough This disastrous era cost China more than seven million lives, annihilated China’s intellectual elite, and cost China years of stable development Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, himself imprisoned and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution Commitment to Chinese self-sufficiency and isolation by encouraging the normalization of relations between China and the west Deng re-opened China to the west by sending thousands of Chinese students to foreign universities to rebuild China’s intellectual elite An unintended consequence of this western education was the exposure of Chinese youth to the democratic traditions of western Europe and the United States Deng bloodily crushed their pro-democracy Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 The question remains as to how China will reap the benefits of a global economy without compromising its identity and its authoritarian political hold While other developing Asian nations developed varying authoritarian rule, India maintained its political stability and its democratic system gained in 1947 Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter and no relation to Mohandas Gandhi, served as India’s second prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984 during a time in which India was beset with problems Food production Overpopulation Sectarian conflicts Feeling forced to declare a national emergency, Gandhi attempted to push her programs of population control, including forced sterilizations, on the Indian populace Riots ensued Population growth did not decrease and Gandhi rapidly lost favor Faced with a growing Sikh autonomy movement, Gandhi ordered her army to attack the Sikh’s sacred Golden Temple at Amristrar which harbored Sikh extremists Two months later, two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated Gandhi Likewise, her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by terrorists in 1991 Brutal assassinations and continued quests for peace and religious tolerance seem to be the pattern in modern India The Arab and the Muslim worlds geographically converged in southwest Asia and in north Africa where Arab nationalism became intermingled with the religious force of Islam to provide a model for those nations that wished to fend off U.S. or European influence The continuing animosity toward Israel provided another linking factor between these Arab nations However, pan-Arab unity did not develop, in large part due to cold war splits jealousies among authoritarian regimes religious splits between divergent Sunni and Shia traditions Israel’s resounding defeat of Egypt and Syria in the Arab-Israeli War (1967) and in the Yom Kippur War (1973) greatly intensified the tensions in the region Ironically led to a long series of peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt resulting in treaties signed in 1978 and 1980 Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who had supported those peace negotiations with Israel, was assassinated in 1980 by opponents of his Israeli policies The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which served as the government in exile for Palestinians displaced by Israel, was created and headed by Yasser Arafat to promote Palestinian rights Violent conflicts between the PLO and Israel characterized the 1990s Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat reached a series of agreements designed to advance the notion of a limited Palestinian self-rule in Israeli-occupied territories Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a Jewish extremist altered that process The path toward conciliation was further complicated by the rise of Islamism, the term used to describe the desire for reassertion of Islamic values in Muslim politics Many Muslims had become skeptical of the economic, political, and social values apparent in western, particularly U.S. society For Islamists, the solution lay in the revival of Islamic identity, values, and power The vast majority of Islamic activists saw this return to Islamic values as inherently peaceful However, a minority claimed a mandate from God calling for violent transformation These extremists took the ideal of jihad- which literally means a struggle to protect the faith-and used it to rationalize and legitimize their terrorist actions The 1979 Iranian revolution demonstrated the power of Islam as a means of holding back secular foreign influences Iranian leader Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi had come to power in Iran in 1953 with political help from the U.S. CIA, the monies generated by Iran’s oil fields, and military support from the U.S. government Iran became a bastion of anti-communism in the region By the late 1970s, the shah’s secular and very western lifestyle had become increasingly unacceptable to Islamists and especially to Iranian Shias who found his secular regime reprehensible Iranian small businesspeople resented U.S. influences, and leftist politicians rejected the shah’s repressive tactics The shah was forced to flee Iran in 1979 seeking medical treatment in the U.S., and Islamist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been maneuvering for the shah’s expulsion from many years, assumed power The Iranian revolution took a strongly anti-American tact in November 1979, when Shia militants captured sixty-nine hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held fifty-five of them for 444 days, until January 1981 Iranian leaders shut down U.S. bases in Iran Confiscated U.S.-owned economic ventures Inspired other terrorists to undertake similar actions Iraq, Iran’s neighbor to the west, was also a Muslim nation but Iraq is an Arab nation and Iran is a Persian nation Those ethnic differences, coupled with differing religious (Sunni vs. Shia) and secular ideals, contributed to the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, believing in the likelihood of a swift victory, attacked Iran in September of 1980 Although Iraqi troops were initially successful and Hussein boasted he would be in Tehran in three days The Iranians were determined in their counterattack, and the war settled into a long conflict of attrition costing more than a million deaths before the U.N. brokered a halt to the fighting in 1988 Saddam Hussein was not finished in his attempt to promote Iraq as the leader in the Arab world He invaded Kuwait in 1990, and incited the Gulf War in 1991 U.S. President George W. Bush vastly expanded the U.S. war on terror to include a coalition of forces led by the United States who invaded Iraq in order to destroy Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and Iraq’s capacity to harbor global terrorists Hussein was captured by American troops in December 2003 Executed Africa The optimism with which African nations had approached independence soon waned under social, economic, and political pressures The boundaries of many African nations were the result of artificial lines drawn by European colonial powers Lines did not follow traditional ethnic and political divisions Political institutions failed to thrive amidst inadequate political administration Military pressure Increasing, grinding poverty The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 to address these issues in hope of preventing intervention by former colonial powers While the political lines of these African nations have continued, problems and conflicts were not addressed Military coup and ensuing dictatorial one-party rule became commonplace Ironically, South Africa has become a model for multiethnic African transformation Years of “apartheid,” or separateness, instituted in 1948 when the Afrikaner National Party came to power The government designated over 85% of the South African territory for white residents Remaining land as homelands for black and colored citizens who were designated into a variety of ethnic classifications Mixed, or colored Indians Ba n t u Which were then further subdivided into numerous distinct tribal affiliations The system worked well in keeping blacks in positions of political, social, and economic subordination Organizations like the African National Congress (ANC) labored for decades to wrest their freedom from the white-controlled government who branded all such activities as communists and thus enemies of the state Massacres such as in Sharpeville in 1960 Soweto in 1976 Galvanized domestic and international support for the end of apartheid In 1989, when F.W. de Klerk became president of South Africa, he began to dismantle the apartheid system Freed Nelson Mandela from jail after 27 years Legalized the ANC Began to negotiate for an end to white-only rule In 1994, South Africa was proclaimed “free at last” by its first president, Nelson Mandela South Africa’s political stability was not common The former Belgian Congo, reconfigured as Zaire in 1971 and renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1991 This country has seen a litany of rulers all ousted or killed in a series of military coups The death of Laurent Kabila in January 2001 was the most recent Most African nations still struggle as developing nations Though rich in natural resources, an ever-growing population and the lack of capital, technology, Foreign markets, and a managerial class slows economic growth Foreign debt further hinders African economic development A W orld W ithout Borders The Global Econom y Since the collapse of communism in 1990, a new economic order has been organizing around expansion of trade, global investing, privatization of state economies and deregulation of businesses Modern technology in the form of computers, the internet, satellites, fiber optics, and semiconductors have eliminated national borders and made global business possible The International Monetary Fund established near the end of WW II has underwritten most of the progress in free trade and market economies Free trade means that trade occurs without any constraints on it by borders or state-imposed limits Two other agreements have promoted free trade: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) World Trade Organization (WTO) The WTO, formed in 1994, settles international trade disputes and has the power to enforce its decisions World trade since the signing of GATT in 1947 has been marked by continued growth Global corporations have replaced multinational corporations where business sites operated under the laws of each country Today, a corporation has a small headquarters staff making decisions with multiple sites around the world producing its products General Motors Nestle Examples of companies who have transformed from multinational corporations to global enterprises Global companies are no longer tied to labor and tax obligations in one country of city They operate where the costs are lower In the United States, taxes paid by these companies now generate almost 2/3’s less than they once did so not only do workers lose their jobs but governments lose income Asia has been the site of several “economic miracles” since WW II J ap an In the 1960s, they moved from labor-intensive goods like steel and textiles to electronics and motor vehicles “Four Little Asian Tigers” South Korea Hong Kong Singapore Taiwan They shared the basic problems of few natural resources but an abundant labor force Moved into exports By the 1990s, they were strong competition for Japan in the same commodities Ch i n a In the 1970s, gave way to foreign trade and investors Gradually been functioning as a socialist market Its enormous potential has attracted foreign investments and by 2001, it gained entrance into the WTO Pacific Rim economies Thailand Malaysia Indonesia Philippines Hugely successful but there were problems starting in 1997 Affected by an economic downturn Each economy shot downward and recovery has been slow Trading Blocs Groups of nations have joined together to gain more advantages in the marketplace European Union (EU) Formed by six nations in 1957 as the European Economic Community It has grown to include all western European nations and many eastern European nations in 2004 The former Soviet Republics are still negotiating for membership while the Balkans and Turkey also have high hopes The EU has agreed on a common currency, the Euro, used by 11 member nations Agreed to dismantle all trade barriers between members Southeast Asia has set up its own Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has done the same in the Americas The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a cartel formed in 1960 that controls much of the world’s oil production It has reacted to political events by embargoes such as during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 The result was a global recession that affected not only large countries but much smaller underdeveloped countries as well Critics of globalization are often nongovernmental organizations who are interested in indigenous peoples and environmental causes and feel globalization threatens those interests They claim that only a few benefit and most become impoverished by global business Believe it threatens the sovereignty of nations by sending political power into the hands of business They also hold it responsible for the widening gap between rich and poor Homogenization of world culture Cross-Cultural Exchanges and Global Communications While the fall of the Berlin Wall represents specific examples of the disappearance of borders, the process started happening long before that with the erasure of cultural borders brought on by television and consumer products like Coca-Cola The local traditions of the early 20th century have been augmented and sometimes replaced by global culture Barbie McDonalds Wal-Mart Coca-Cola Western musical artists Clothes As industrialization mass-produced products in the 19th century, consumption increased Later, products became an expression of personality and inclusion in the world cultural scene People throughout the world drink Coca-Cola, eat at McDonalds, and listen to western music At the same time, they have a heightened awareness of local culture; hence, the production of a local Barbie local Coca-Cola recipe vegetarian items on McDonalds menus in India Not only do American products have global appeal but so do Swiss watches Italian designer clothes Perrier water Evita The 20th century had an explosion of communication technologies R ad i o Television Fax machine Networked computers Satellite dishes However, access requires capital expenses, so the more impoverished regions have fallen behind the rest of the world Critics of mass communications see it as a form of imperialism English has become the universal language of global communication Internet Some places, like China, object so much that they have put up a large firewall in their computer access systems to prevent its spread into China Great Wall Television has been controlled successfully by the most restrictive governments like Myanmar, and North Korea In most places, satellite dishes have made that virtually impossible Global Problems Enormous population increases since the 19th due to improvements in sanitation, food crops, and disease control are now a large global problem The world increased by five times during the 20th century and that population of 5.5 billion people has put pressure on the world’s resources However, the AIDS crisis and a falling fertility rate seem to have slowed the growth Human expansion has added more pollution Eliminated other species Consumed more resources Global warming from emissions of greenhouse gases seems evident As nations enter into more prosperity, they purchase more cars Heat their homes with fossil fuels In 1997, the Kyoto Agreement was signed by 159 countries who agreed to cut their emissions China and India, the most densely populated countries seeing new prosperity, were not required to cut their emissions Population control China has the one-child policy that has been draconian but effective in reducing population Hindu India still sees fertility as a cultural value and has a much harder time reducing it growth rate Developing areas of the globe have appalling rates of poverty where malnutrition and starvation are common The poor have been forced to live without adequate hygiene, clean water, and sewage disposal There is a misdistribution of the world’s resources that favor wealthy nations Globalization has not helped as it generates more wealth for wealthy nations and less for poor nations Labor servitude similar to slavery is a feature of many poor regions Child labor is particularly abusive in south and southeast Asia where children between 5 and 14 work in agriculture, family businesses, domestic service, and the sex trade Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery in which people are bought and sold across international and national borders Usually, a person is tricked into servitude with promises of legitimate jobs but find that once they get to their destination, the job does not exist There is a bustling trade in Russian and Ukrainian women Most victims are low-status young women who find themselves caught in distant regions as servants or prostitutes with no ability to escape Often, in south Asia and other areas, impoverished families still find it necessary to sell their family members Sadly, trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal activity in the world today Environmental Problems Rachel Carson – Silent Spring AIDS Global Terrorism 09/ 11/ 2001 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Red Cross Greenpeace Amnesty International Human Rights Watch World Health Organization (WHO)
