The Cold War and After

Richard Saull

Description

The Cold War is often presented as an international power struggle between the Soviet Union and the US. Richard Saull challenges this assumption. He broadens our understanding of the defining political conflict of the twentieth-century by stressing the social and ideological differences of the superpowers and how these differences conditioned their international behaviour.



Saull argues that US-Soviet antagonism was part of a wider conflict between capitalism and communism involving states and social forces other than the superpowers. The US was committed to containing revolutionary and communist movements that emerged out of uneven capitalist development.



In highlighting the socio-economic and ideological dimensions of the Cold War, Saull not only provides a richer history of the Cold War than mainstream approaches, but is also able to explain why revolutionary domestic transformations caused international crises. Tracing the origins of new resistance to American global power, Saull's book provides an ideal alternative perspective on the Cold War and its end.

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: History and Theory in the Cold War

2. The International Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and the

Early Cold War, 1917-1945

3. The Cold War Transformed: Geopolitical Restructuring

and a New Wave of Social Revolution, 1945-49

4. The Militarization of Cold War: The Containment of the USSR 4

and the Emergence of New Revolutionary Fronts, 1950-62

5. The Final Gasp of Cold War: The Decline of US Military Superiority and the Expansion of International Communist Power, 1962-80

6. Ending the Cold War: From Militarized Counter-Revolution to the Collapse of Soviet Communism, 1980-91

7. Conclusions: Tracing the Paradoxical Ends of the Cold War and the Origins of Contemporary Conflict in World Politics

Select Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Political Science
• Histoire
• Iron Curtain
• Europe-Asia Studies
• Superpower (disambiguation)
• Cold War
• General officer
• Theory
• General
• History
• Guerre froide

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783719426
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE COLD WAR AND AFTER
Capitalism, Revolution and Superpower Politics
Richard Saull
First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Richard Saull 2007
The right of Richard Saull to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2095 3 ISBN-10 0 7453 2095 3
Paperback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2094 6 ISBN-10 0 7453 2094 5
ePub ISBN 978 1 7837 1942 6
Kindle ISBN 978 1 7837 1943 3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in India
 
 
To L. B .
Contents

Series Introduction
Acknowledgements

1   Introduction: History and Theory in the Cold War
Radical Theories of Cold War
The Cold War as a Global Social-Systemic Conflict

2   The International Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Early Cold War, 1917–45
Introduction
The Bolshevik Revolution and the Constitution of the Soviet State
The USSR and the Capitalist Great Powers, 1917–41
The Contradictions of Capitalist Development and International Revolution
Conclusions: World War and Social Conflict

3   The Cold War Transformed: Geopolitical Restructuring and a New Wave of Social Revolution, 1945–49
Introduction
The Geopolitical Consequences of War
Inter-Capitalist Relations and Cold War
A New Wave of Social Revolution and Communist Expansion
Conclusions: The Uneven Socio-economic Consequences of Geopolitical Transformation

4   The Militarisation of Cold War: The Containment of the USSR and the Emergence of New Revolutionary Fronts, 1950–62
Introduction
Europe’s ‘Long Peace’: The Consolidation of Cold War Blocs and the Militarisation of the Cold War
Tensions within the Communist World: Threats to Soviet Power in East-Central Europe and the Developing Sino-Soviet Split
Global Social Conflict and New Revolutionary Fronts
Conclusions

5   The Final Gasp of Cold War: The Decline of US Military Superiority and the Expansion of International Communist Power, 1962–80
Introduction
Vietnam: The Revolutionary Defeat of Militarised Containment
Détente: The Contradictions of Containment by Diplomacy
The Collapse of Bretton Woods and the Onset of a New Wave of Crisis within Capitalism
A New Wave of Revolutionary Crisis and Soviet International Expansion
Conclusions: The End of Détente and the Revival of US Militarism

6   Ending the Cold War: From Militarised Counter-Revolution to the Collapse of Soviet Communism, 1980–91
Introduction
Reagan and Militarised Counter-Revolution
The Debate about the End of the Cold War
Conclusions: Ending the Cold War – The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Bloc and the International Defeat of Historical Communism

7   Conclusions: Tracing the Paradoxical Ends of the Cold War and the Origins of Contemporary Conflict in World Politics
Introduction
Contemporary Conflict and the Theorisation of Post-Cold War World Politics
The Social and Ideological Character of Reactionary Resistance
The Paradoxical Ends of Cold War, Reactionary Politics and US Strategy
Conclusions

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Series Introduction
Critical Introductions to World Politics
Series Editors: Alejandro Colás (Birkbeck College, University of London) Richard Saull (Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London)
 
 
World politics in all its socio-economic, cultural, institutional and military dimensions affects the lives of billions across the globe. Yet international relations is still an area of study associated with the ‘high politics’ of statecraft, strategy and diplomacy, or with distant and seemingly uncontrollable global flows of money, people and commodities. Critical Introductions to World Politics aims to reverse this prevailing elitism by illuminating and explaining the causes and consequences of these diverse aspects of international relations in an accessible way, thereby highlighting the impact of international processes and developments on the lives of ordinary people. The series will bring together a range of theoretical and empirical studies into the workings of world politics, while also identifying areas for political intervention by those seeking not just to interpret the world, but also to participate in political struggles to change it.
The series engages with key areas, providing succinct, informative and accessible overviews to central debates in global affairs. It draws mainly, although not exclusively, on Marxist approaches to international relations concerned with the analysis of, among other issues, transnational class formation, the role of international organisations in sustaining global capitalist hegemony, the sources of violent conflict and war, and the nature and evolution of state sovereignty. Empirically, it focuses on such issues as the origins of the modern international system, the Cold War and the consequences of its end, globalisation, and the character of American global power.
Critical Introductions to World Politics builds on a new, distinctly historical-materialist approach to global affairs, serving as a key reference point and resource for those studying and teaching international relations from a critical perspective, as well as those involved in the various movements for a more just, equal and sustainable world.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alejandro Colás for his very useful and probing comments on the whole manuscript. I would also like to thank Roger van Zwanenberg, the Publisher at Pluto Press, for his support and, above all, patience in seeing this project through to completion. There are many other people, too numerous to mention, with whom I have discussed different aspects of the argument in this book at conferences, workshops and over a drink, for which I am also very grateful. Finally, I would like to thank my partner, Liza Burdett, for her support throughout this project.
1
Introduction: History and Theory in the Cold War
This book provides a theoretically informed historical survey of the Cold War and the nature and consequences of its end. It seeks to offer a distinct contribution to the theorisation of the Cold War as a form of international (social) conflict, as well as providing a comprehensive examination of the principal historical developments within the Cold War. Further, the book seeks to trace and explain the origins of contemporary resistance to US global power, particularly as manifested by the rise of Islamist movements and their violent/terrorist offshoots, by highlighting the paradoxical character of the Cold War’s end. The argument outlined in this book challenges the intellectual consensus on the understanding of the Cold War within the disciplines of International Relations (IR) and Diplomatic History in four ways:
• through offering an alternative periodisation of the Cold War understood as the ‘short twentieth century’, 1917–91; • by stressing how geopolitical conflict between the superpowers was primarily a consequence of their contrasting domestic socio-economic properties; 1 • by arguing that the Cold War was a form of global social conflict associated with the revolutionary and communist consequences – in the form of political movements and states – of a shifting, contradictory and uneven capitalist development; • by arguing that the Cold War did not have a singular ending focused on the collapse of the Soviet communism in 1989–91, but rather had a series of ends in time and space, associated with the differentiated containment and defeat of historical communism as a political and socio-economic challenge to capitalism.

The principal intellectual justification for the book is a dissatisfaction with prevailing accounts of the history of the Cold War and the theoretical assumptions that have tended to dominate such accounts.
The theoretical understanding of the Cold War and the explanation of its end have been dominated by the debate between scholars drawing on a Realist theoretical framework and ideational approaches. For Realists 2 the Cold War is understood as the bipolar (superpower) relationship based on strategic competition, which was a consequence of the geopolitical arrangements brought about by the Second World War. In this understanding the Cold War is classified as a typical great power conflict based on the utility of military power and distinguished by the strategic currency of nuclear weapons. 3 From this perspective ideological and socio-economic factors are seen as largely subordinate to the material (military and economic) interests of each superpower; having more explanatory significance for accounts of the domestic political relations of each rather than their respective international relations. 4
Consequently, the end of the Cold War occurred because the USSR was forced to make strategic concessions (withdrawal from east-central Europe, arms control concessions and ending political-military support for allies) to preponderant US material power. Following this explanatory logic, the social and political developments within the Soviet bloc that altered the domestic socio-economic, ideological and political character of communist states are seen as being of secondary import.
Ideational approaches 5 share with Realist-informed scholars some key theoretical assumptions about the Cold War: that it was a post-war conflict derived from the consequences of the Second World War, and that it was a conflict centred on the conflicting post-war objectives of the superpowers. Both, then, und