Non-Alignment and the Third World Order
Overview
Introduction
While the United States and Soviet Union attempted to fight against one another throughout the world, there were some that attempted to not be aligned with the polarity of these two countries. Another significant problem that occurred during the Cold War was the process of decolonization. This added much fuel to the conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate the role of the Cold War in the process of decolonization.
- Analyze the role of World War II in the role of decolonization.
- Evaluate the differences between Soviet Communism and United States Capitalism.
- Analyze the impact of the end of World War II on the post-war societies.
- Evaluate the role of United States foreign policy in shaping the post World War II world.
Imperialism Following World War II
World War II was a truly world changing war. While the events of the battles and outcomes of those battles had a profound impact during the war, it was the relationship between the European and the colonial worlds that was fundamentally altered in the process. Throughout the war, Europeans needed their colonial counterparts. The colonies provided both resources and soldiers to the war effort. European colonial powers understood that the only way to win this war was to have their colonies helping in a very dramatic way.
The problem with this relationship was throughout the war effort, that there were promises that had been made that the colonial world was expecting to be kept. Looking back at the First World War, Europeans had made significant promises to the colonial worlds for support, in exchange for independence. The best example of this was the British promising the Indian Subcontinent independence for support in World War I. That is why World War I was the only war that Gandhi supported, because of the promise of independence. The problem was, following World War I, that the British did not honor that promise. After the war, the British kept making excuses about how independence was not something that they could support and that the Indian Subcontinent should have close to a one hundred year time line for independence. This was why there was such anti-British protests in India following World War I. That is why it was different following World War II, support from the colonies came with a specific demand that there would be independence following the war. This new direction was important, because World War II changed the relationship between the colonial and the European country. Europeans were forced to stop colonization, which meant that the long plans of decolonization were now removed. There was limited planning for how Europeans thought about leaving. This is a significant problem, because in some cases close to 150 years of European colonization and removal of resources and stripping away goods meant that regions would have significant problems in establishing governments and societies. In many ways, the European process of colonization, of pitting one group against another in the colonial world, meant that newly forming states had significant social and cultural gaps that were from European colonization. This would prove to be a significant problem for the independence movement.
The process of decolonization in many cases was very straightforward. European states promised to leave the colonial world, gave a specific date and then promptly left. While that sounds very simple, the political problems that this created had deep reverberations throughout the Cold War. In many cases, European states provided the political glue that held together many of the colonial states. With Europeans gone, the question became who would be in the government? How would the government function? With a very new economy, how would the economics of this newly independent state work? Having limited funding from the independence meant that weak states emerged, with limited infrastructure in place. All of these problems would manifest to put these newly forming states in the middle of the bigger problem of the Cold War.
The Complications of the Cold War
Not only was there an issue following World War II and the colonial/European relationship, the Cold War made matters worse. In many ways, the Cold War was a process of the United States and the Soviet Union attempting to define their own teams as a way to have political and economic power over the other. This had a deep impact, because the development of each of these teams create a world that had multiple levels. The classic description of these was the “First World, Second World.” Meaning that those friendly towards the United States were in the group known as the “First World.” Those friendly to the Soviet Union was the “Second World.” This division was important because as the Cold War engaged with the process of decolonization had significant set backs because of the tensions of the Cold War. As European states began to remove themselves from the colonial system, the question of how would these new states fit into the world order in the Cold War began quickly. Both the United States and the Soviet Union often looked at these newly emerging states as a way to gain an ally and get resources in the middle of this Cold War system.
Both sides of the Cold War saw independence as a way to gain an ally in the war. The United States had many lenders, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, that promised large loans to newly forming states in exchange for promises of being capitalistic and democratic. The Soviet Union had similar processes to promote more of a communistic government. The problem is that in the absence of a larger government in the newly forming states, that both the United States and the Soviet Union turned to guerrilla warriors as a way to achieve their agenda. This meant that both sides found paramilitary groups that were interested in overthrow of a government that had been established. The United States put weapons, money, and time into training and arming many of these paramilitary groups. This meant that in many cases, the newly independent states were often in the middle of a Civil War following independence.
The Cold War radically shaped the process of decolonization because in many cases, these newly independent states were then the sites of open war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Remember the fear of the United States and the Soviet Union going to war was that nuclear weapons would be used. If both the United States and the Soviet Union fought through various proxies around the world, this would avoid open fighting between the two states. This idea of proxy wars, which is where the United States and the Soviet Union used local fighters to do the heavy lifting of the fighting of the Cold War. Famous proxy wars include the Korean War and the Vietnam War. These proxy wars pitted not only the Cold War forces, but the newly independent countries against one another that would prove detrimental. To understand the process of decolonization, it is important to begin with key states and their relationship with the broader system of decolonization.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate the role of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the Cold War
- Analyze how the Castro created a new plan with the Non-Alignment Movement.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Bay of Pigs Invasion: a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on April 17, 1961
Fidel Castro: a Cuban politician and revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008 (Politically a Marxist-Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized and state socialist reforms implemented throughout society.)
Moscow–Washington hotline: a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the USSR, established in 1963 after the Cuban Missile Crisis to prevent another dangerous confrontation
proxy war: A conflict between two states or non-state actors in which neither entity directly engages the other. While this can encompass a breadth of armed confrontation, its core definition hinges on two separate powers utilizing external strife to somehow attack the interests or territorial holdings of the other. This frequently involves both countries fighting their opponent's allies or assisting their allies in fighting their opponent.
war of attrition: A military strategy in which a belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material.
cult of personality: When an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods to create an idealized, heroic, and at times worshipful image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.
Bay of Pigs Invasion: A failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on April 17, 1961.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. Navy set up a blockade to halt Soviet nuclear weapons on their way to Cuba, brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day (October 16-28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. Televised worldwide, this event was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.
In response to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961 and the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter future harassment of Cuba. An agreement was reached during a secret meeting between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in July 1962 and construction of a number of missile launch facilities started later that summer.
The 1962 midterm elections were underway in the U.S. and the White House had denied charges that it was ignoring dangerous Soviet missiles 90 miles from Florida. These missile preparations were confirmed when an Air Force U-2 spy plane produced clear photographic evidence of medium-range (SS-4) and intermediate-range (R-14) ballistic missile facilities. The United States established a military blockade to prevent further missiles from entering Cuba. It announced that they would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the weapons already in Cuba be dismantled and returned to the USSR.
After a long period of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev on October 27. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a U.S. public declaration and agreement never to invade Cuba without direct provocation. Secretly, the United States agreed that it would dismantle all U.S.-built Jupiter MRBMs, which were deployed in Turkey and Italy against the Soviet Union unbeknownst to the public.
When all offensive missiles and Ilyushin Il-28 light bombers were withdrawn from Cuba, the blockade was formally ended on November 20, 1962. The negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union pointed out the necessity of a quick, clear, and direct communication line between Washington and Moscow. As a result, the Moscow–Washington hotline was established. A series of agreements sharply reduced U.S.–Soviet tensions during the following years.
Background
The United States was concerned about an expansion of Communism, and a Latin American country allying openly with the USSR was regarded as unacceptable given the U.S.-Soviet enmity since the end of World War II. Such an involvement would also directly defy the Monroe Doctrine, a U.S. policy which, while limiting the United States' involvement in European colonies and European affairs, held that European powers ought not to have involvement with states in the Western Hemisphere.
The United States had been embarrassed publicly by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961, launched under President John F. Kennedy by CIA-trained forces of Cuban exiles. Afterward, former President Eisenhower told Kennedy that "the failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do." The half-hearted invasion left Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers with the impression that Kennedy was indecisive and, as one Soviet adviser wrote, "too young, intellectual, not prepared well for decision making in crisis situations... too intelligent and too weak." U.S. covert operations continued in 1961 with the unsuccessful Operation Mongoose.
In May 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was persuaded to counter the United States' growing lead in developing and deploying strategic missiles by placing Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, despite the misgivings of the Soviet Ambassador in Havana, Alexandr Ivanovich Alexeyev, who argued that Castro would not accept the deployment of these missiles. Khrushchev faced a strategic situation where the U.S. was perceived to have a "splendid first strike" capability that put the Soviet Union at a huge disadvantage.
Khrushchev also wanted to bring West Berlin—the American/British/French-controlled democratic enclave within Communist East Germany—into the Soviet orbit. The East Germans and Soviets considered western control over a portion of Berlin a grave threat to East Germany. For this reason among others, Khrushchev made West Berlin the central battlefield of the Cold War. Khrushchev believed that if the U.S. did nothing over the missile deployments in Cuba, he could muscle the West out of Berlin using said missiles as a deterrent to western counter-measures in Berlin. If the U.S. tried to bargain with the Soviets after becoming aware of the missiles, Khrushchev could demand trading the missiles for West Berlin. Since Berlin was strategically more important than Cuba, the trade would be a win for Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was also reacting in part to the nuclear threat of obsolescent Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles that the U.S. installed in Turkey in April 1962.
American Blockade and Deepening Crisis
Kennedy met with members of Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) and other top advisers on October 21, considering two remaining options after ruling out diplomacy with the Soviets and full-on invasion: an air strike primarily against the Cuban missile bases or a naval blockade of Cuba. McNamara supported the naval blockade as a strong but limited military action that left the U.S. in control. However, the term "blockade" was problematic. According to international law a blockade is an act of war, but the Kennedy administration did not think that the USSR would be provoked to attack by a mere blockade. Admiral Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations wrote a position paper that helped Kennedy to differentiate between what they termed a "quarantine" of offensive weapons and a blockade of all materials, claiming that a classic blockade was not the original intention.
On October 22, President Kennedy addressed the nation, saying:
To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.
The crisis continued unabated, and on the evening of October 24, the Soviet news agency TASS broadcast a telegram from Khrushchev to President Kennedy in which Khrushchev warned that the United States's "outright piracy" would lead to war. However, this was followed by a telegram from Khrushchev to Kennedy in which Khrushchev stated, "if you weigh the present situation with a cool head without giving way to passion, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot afford not to decline the despotic demands of the USA" and that the Soviet Union views the blockade as "an act of aggression" and their ships will be instructed to ignore it.
The U.S. requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on October 25. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson confronted Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin in an emergency meeting of the Security Council, challenging him to admit the existence of the missiles. The next day at 10 p.m. EST, the U.S. raised the readiness level of SAC forces to DEFCON 2, indicating "next step to nuclear war," and one step away from "nuclear war imminent." For the only confirmed time in U.S. history, while B-52 bombers went on continuous airborne alert, B-47 medium bombers were dispersed to various military and civilian airfields and prepared for takeoff, fully equipped with nuclear warheads, on 15 minutes' notice.
At this point, the crisis was ostensibly at a stalemate. The USSR had shown no indication that they would back down and in fact made several comments to the contrary. The U.S. had no reason to believe otherwise and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in case it responded militarily as expected.
Crisis Resolution
The crisis continued with Cuba preparing for invasion until October 27 when, after much deliberation between the Soviet Union and Kennedy's cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in southern Italy and in Turkey, the latter on the border of the Soviet Union, in exchange for Khrushchev's removal of all missiles in Cuba. At 9 a.m. EST on October 28, a new message from Khrushchev was broadcast on Radio Moscow in which he stated that "the Soviet government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at the building sites for the weapons, has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as 'offensive' and their crating and return to the Soviet Union." Kennedy immediately responded, issuing a statement calling the letter "an important and constructive contribution to peace." He continued this with a formal letter:
I consider my letter to you of October twenty-seventh and your reply of today as firm undertakings on the part of both our governments which should be promptly carried out... The US will make a statement in the framework of the Security Council in reference to Cuba as follows: it will declare that the United States of America will respect the inviolability of Cuban borders, its sovereignty, that it take the pledge not to interfere in internal affairs, not to intrude themselves and not to permit our territory to be used as a bridgehead for the invasion of Cuba, and will restrain those who would plan to carry an aggression against Cuba, either from US territory or from the territory of other countries neighboring to Cuba.
The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Khrushchev went to Kennedy thinking that the crisis was getting out of hand. The Soviets were seen as retreating from circumstances they had started. Khrushchev's fall from power two years later was in part because of the Politburo embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the U.S. and his ineptitude in precipitating the crisis in the first place. According to Dobrynin, the top Soviet leadership took the Cuban outcome as "a blow to its prestige bordering on humiliation."
Non-Alignment Movement
The Cuban Missile Crisis provided a turning point in the Cold War. While the United States and the Soviet Union continued with the policies of the Cold War and fighting one another, this had a significant impact on Cuba and the process of the Cold War states. Fidel Castro saw the way that the United States and the Soviet Union used Cuba as a bargaining chip between the two powers, that neither the United States or the Soviet Union cared about the issues directly facing Cuba. Castro saw this as a problem and began to band together states against these two different perspectives. He started calling this coalition of states, the non-aligned states, meaning that they were neither on the United States or the Soviet Union’s side of the Cold War. This non-alignment movement was a significant challenge to the system. There were many around the world that felt that they did not fit either in the United States or the Soviet Union’s camp and wanted to rebel against this system of polarity between the two different political and cultural powers. States that joined the non-aligned movement were: Cuba, India, and Egypt.
Egypt-Suez Canal Crisis
The Suez Canal Crisis was a mostly failed invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power.
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate the impact of decolonization on the Cold War.
- Describe how Egyptian President Abdel Nasser’s idea of Arab nationalism affected Arab-Israeli relations from 1956-1973.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Suez Canal: waterway in Egypt that connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas
Suez Canal Crisis: an invasion by Israel, England, and France into Egypt to regain control of the vital Suez Canal that ended in their defeat by Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser: Egyptian military and political leader who was also the president of Egypt from 1956 – 1970
Warsaw Pact: a collective defense treaty among the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War
The Suez Crisis, also named the Tripartite Aggression and the Kadesh Operation, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power. After the fighting started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. The episode humiliated Great Britain and France and strengthened Nasser.
On October 29, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai. Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to cease fire, which was ignored. On November 5, Britain and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal. The Egyptian forces were defeated, but did block the canal to all shipping. It became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent Anglo-French attack were planned beforehand by the three countries.
The three allies attained a number of their military objectives, but the Canal was now useless and heavy pressure from the United States and the USSR forced them to withdraw. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had strongly warned Britain not to invade; he now threatened serious damage to the British financial system. Historians conclude the crisis "signified the end of Great Britain's role as one of the world's major powers." Peden in 2012 stated, "The Suez Crisis is widely believed to have contributed significantly to Britain's decline as a world power." The Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 until March 1957. Israel fulfilled some of its objectives, such as attaining freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran.
As a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian-Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary.
The Suez Crisis in the Context of the Cold War
The Middle East during the Cold War was of extreme importance and also great instability. The region lay directly south of the Soviet Union, which traditionally had great influence in Turkey and Iran. The area also had vast reserves of oil, not crucial for either superpower in the 1950s (which each held large oil reserves on its own), but essential for the rapidly rebuilding American allies Europe and Japan.
The original American plan for the Middle East was to form a defensive perimeter along the north of the region. Thus Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan signed the Baghdad Pact and joined CENTO. The Eastern response was to seek influence in states such as Syria and Egypt. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria made arms deals to Egypt and Syria, giving Warsaw Pact members a strong presence in the region. Egypt, a former British protectorate, was one of the region's most important prizes with its large population and political power throughout the region. British forces were thrown out by General Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, when he nationalized the Suez Canal. Syria was a former French protectorate.
Eisenhower persuaded the United Kingdom and France to retreat from a badly planned invasion with Israel launched to regain control of the canal from Egypt. While the Americans were forced to operate covertly so as not to embarrass their allies, the Eastern Bloc nations made loud threats against the "imperialists" and worked to portray themselves as the defenders of the Third World. Nasser was later lauded around the globe, especially in the Arab world. While both superpowers courted Nasser, the Americans balked at funding the massive Aswan High Dam project. The Warsaw Pact countries happily agreed, however, and signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Egyptians and the Syrians.
Thus the Suez stalemate was a turning point heralding an ever-growing rift between the Atlantic Cold War allies, which were becoming far less of a united monolith than they were in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Italy, France, Spain, West Germany, Norway, Canada, and Britain also developed their own nuclear forces as well as a Common Market to be less dependent on the United States. Such rifts mirror changes in global economics. American economic competitiveness faltered in the face of the challenges of Japan and West Germany, which recovered rapidly from the wartime decimation of their respective industrial bases. The 20th-century successor to the UK as the "workshop of the world," the United States found its competitive edge dulled in the international markets while it faced intensified foreign competition at home. Meanwhile, the Warsaw Pact countries were closely allied both militarily and economically. All Warsaw Pact nations had nuclear weapons and supplied other countries with weapons, supplies, and economic aid.
Attributions
Boundless World History
"Crisis Points of the Cold War"
Adapted from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/crisis-points-of-the-cold-war/
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