3.6 The cold war and the bipolar order
3.6.4 The end of the cold war and the unipolar order
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Expectedly, a crisis ensued – the Cuban missile crisis – with the possibility of a nuclear confrontation between the two super powers. The origin of the crisis could be linked to a couple of months before October when Nikita Khrushchev had the idea of installing a missile facility in Cuba while preparing for a trip to Bulgaria where he delivered speeches condemning United States missile sites in Turkey, a neighbouring country of the Soviet Union. USSR also believed that the site in Cuba would deter the possible United States invasion of Cuba that would prevent the Cuban revolution and dismantle the spread of communism in the Western hemisphere (Rosenau & Durfee, 1995). However, owing to the United States display of military arsenal and the apparent determination to risk a nuclear war, Khrushchev decided to remove the missile facility with the conditions stated in two letters to the United States. In the first letter, he wrote that the missiles would be dismantled if the United States would pledge not to invade Cuba but before Kennedy replied the letter, a second letter was sent demanding that the United States destroy its missile facility in Turkey (LaFeber, 1994).
On 28 October President Kennedy disregarded the second letter but replied to the first letter stating the United States would not invade Cuba, if the Soviet Union dismantled and removed the missiles from Cuba. Kennedy’s response signaled the end of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963 the United States removed the missile facility from Turkey, a decision believed to have been influenced by negotiations between the two super powers (Rosenau & Durfee, 1995).
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reform meant that the USSR commitment to sustain the communist regime in Eastern Europe plummeted. Accordingly, in 1989 the Berlin wall fell and East and West Germany became united. Between 1989 and 1990 elections were held that ousted the communist regimes in power across Eastern Europe and in 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 independent states (Kaarbo & Ray, 2011). These incidents marked the end of the war.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, two major positions dominated scholarly and journalistic theories regarding the power configuration that would emerge. Firstly, it was speculated that the United States would withdraw from global politics and possibly once again embrace its isolationist policy. By implication, other great powers would exert their influence on international politics owing to the vacuum created by the two super powers. Alternately, the United States would exert its influence as the sole surviving super power and would strive to establish global hegemony (Smith, 2002), which is what ultimately happened
The end of the cold war and the war on terrorism are the two major events that have significantly shaped the post-1989 patterns of global politics. The end of the cold war and the subsequent disintegration of the USSR catapulted the United States into the position of the sole super power in the global arena. The United States emerged as the only state that could singlehandedly deploy its military arsenals in all strategic parts of the world. In addition its economy was second to none. Given these realities, scholars and commentators were quick to label the structure of power in the immediate period after the cold war as a “unipolar order”. Krauthammer (1990) argued that the most important characteristic of the post-cold war period was the unipolar configuration.
While he argued that multipolarity would eventually emerge when other great powers developed capabilities that could challenge the dominance of the United States, it was likely that this would take a generation. He described the period immediately following the end of cold war as a
“unipolar moment”. He identified Germany and Japan as economic powers. He also recognised diplomatic relations and military capabilities as the sources of power for Britain and France.
Russia continued to wield military, political and diplomatic powers but rapid decline was the common characteristics of these great powers. The implication of this is that while other great powers may challenge the United States in one component of power, no great power matches the completeness of the United States’ capabilities. Consequently, Washington enjoys preponderance in all components of power – military, economic, diplomatic, technological and
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soft power. With this reality, Washington can act decisively across the globe sometimes with the aid of its Western allies. Krauthammer wrote:
Perhaps it is more accurate to say the United States and behind it the West, because where the United States does not tread, the alliance does not follow. That was true for the reflagging of Kuwaiti vessels in 1987. It has been all the more true of the world's subsequent response to the invasion of Kuwait.
American preeminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself. In the Persian Gulf, for example, it was the United States, acting unilaterally and with extraordinary speed, that in August 1990 prevented Iraq from taking effective control of the entire Arabian Peninsula. Iraq, having inadvertently revealed the unipolar structure of today's world, cannot stop complaining about it. (1990, p. 24)
Contrary to the conventional belief that Washington’s foreign entanglement could erode its economic strength, Krauthammer was of the opinion that it was strategic in that it enabled the super power to create a stable international system in which it could meaningfully pursue its economic interests. Therefore, it goes without saying that United States dominance in all components of power is the most salient feature of post-cold war international politics. The
“perceptions, calculations, and possibilities available to all other states, as well as to other consequential international actors” are determined by Washington’s position (Walt, 2009, p. 93).
Walt further argued that in today’s world, states are not only being influenced by America’s capabilities but by its geographical location, institutional arrangement that emerged during the cold war and Washington’s liberal ideals. Fukuyama (1992) argued that the end of the cold war signified the triumph of Western liberalism which manifests in the economic realm as capitalism and the political realm as democracy. The disintegration of the Soviet Union marked the end of communism – an ideology which had rivaled the liberalism championed by the United States during the cold war. Therefore, states had no alternative to Western liberalism after the cold war.
The unipolar structure enabled the United States to take decisions with little or no concern for the perception of other great powers, a position that was not possible during the cold war. For instance, the United States was cautious in the Korean and Vietnamese wars because of the opposition of the USSR (Walt, 2009).
The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. Even at its height Britain could always be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. Britain had a smaller army than the land powers of Europe and its navy was equaled by the next two navies combined. Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries combined. Its navy, air force and space power are unrivaled. Its technology is irresistible. It is dominant by every measure: military, economic, technological, diplomatic, cultural, even linguistic, with a myriad of countries trying to fend off the inexorable march of Internet-fueled MTV English. (Krauthammer, 2003, p. 6-7).
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