“We win, they lose” – Wonderful world of Binary categorisations (Refeudalisation of Europe – III Part)

The new Cold War knocks on our doors, suddenly. Why? How did it previously end?

The end of the Cold War came abruptly, overnight. Many in the West dreamt about it, but nobody really saw it coming. The Warsaw Pact, Red Army in DDR, Berlin Wall, DDR itself, Soviet Union – one after the other, vanished rapidly, unexpectedly. There was no ceasefire, no peace conference, no formal treaty and guaranties, no expression of interests and settlement. Only the gazing face expression of that time Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze who circles around and unconvincingly repeats: “we now better understand each other”.

On contrary, Bush (the 41^st US President) calmly diagnosed: “We win, they lose!” His administration immediately declared that the policies, including all military capabilities, will remain unchanged but with a different pretexts – to respond to the ‘technological sophistication of the III world powers’ and to a ‘radical nationalism’ (meaning; any indigenous emancipation). The so-called normative revolution from Atlantic followed shortly, in which the extensive (assertive) rights were self-prescribed to that theater. Thus, the might-makes-right interventions were justified through the new (de facto imperial) doctrines: humanitarian intervention, R2P (incl. Kouchner-Lévy bombing for a noble cause), doctrine of preemption, uninhabited access to or beyond grand area, as well as the so-called Afroasia forward deployment, as a sort of the enlarged Brezhnev and Monroe doctrines combined both together, etc.

Simultaneously, that time Washington darling Fukuyama published his famous article The End of History? and the book which came soon after. To underline how sure he was about this claim he even dropped the question mark into the title of the book.

Was this sudden meltdown of the Soviet colossus and the day after intrinsic or by design?

Brutality respected ?
Generous support, lavish and lasting funds that Atlantic-Central Europe extensively enjoyed in a form of Marshall Aid has never reached the principal victim of WWII – Eastern Europe. Despite being set on a weak ethical grounds, it was due to ideological constrains in the post-WWII period. Total WWII devastation of the East and their demographic loss of 36 million people (versus only 1,2 million of the West), was of no help.

Moreover, only 8 years after the end of WWII, West brokered the so-called London Agreement on German External Debts (also known as the London Debt Agreement or Londoner Schuldenabkommen). By the letter of this accord over 60% of German reparations for the colossal atrocities committed in both WW were forgiven (or generously reprogramed) by their former European victims, including – quite unwillingly – several Eastern European states. The contemporary world wonder and the economic wunderkind, Germany that dragged world into the two devastating world wars, is in fact a serial defaulter which received debt relief like no one else on the globe – four times in the 20^th century (1924, 1929, 1932 and 1953).

Despite all the subsidies given to the West, East recovered remarkable fast. By 1950s and 1960s, many influential western economists seriously considered communism as better suited for economic advancements, along with a Soviet planned economy as the superior socio-economic model and winsome ideological matrix.

Indeed, impressive Soviet results were a living example to it; Backward, semi-feudal, rural country in 1920s, has won the WWII and in parallel it evolved into a highly industrialized and urbanised superpower – all that in just 30 year-time. Spain needed two centuries (and never completed), Holland 130 years, the UK 110, Germany 90, Japan 70 years to revolve from a backword agricultural cultivator into an industrial giant. Moscow achieved that in only 30-35 years, all alone. Hence, by mid 1950s – besides becoming a nuclear power – the Soviet Union grew up into a pioneer and pivot in deep space exploration, moving the final frontier of mankind deep into the outer space. Sending woman to space while many in the West still struggled with elementary gender equality was an ethical and technological blaster. Morality of communism narrative as well as its socio-economic advancements appealed globally.

Master-blaster
If all the above so, why did than the Soviet Union collapse? Was it really a bankruptcy caused by the Afghan intervention and costly Space program (orbital station Mir)? And finally, if the US collapsed earlier, with the so-called Nixon shock, why did America became stronger afterwards, while after the Gorbachev-era bankruptcy of the SU, Russian historical empire has melted away so rapidly?

There are many views on it. Still, there is nothing conclusive yet - neither popular no scientific consensus is here.

Some years ago, I’ve had an honour to teach at the famous Plekhanov University of Economics of Moscow. It was a block-week with the students of the Plekhanov’s elite program IBS. 12 days in Moscow proved to be an excellent opportunity to ask these questions some of the most relevant economy authorities among academia colleagues.

The line of answers was quite different to anything I’ve usually heard or read in the West. Muscovites claimed that right after Nixon shock the Soviet Politbureau (top Communist party executive) and Gosplan (the Soviet Central Planning Economic Body – overseeing the entire economic performance of the SU and de facto its satellites) have sit jointly in an extensive closed session, as to debate two items only.

1. Could we prevent chaos and global instability by filling the gap after the collapse of the United States (and it eventual partition on 4 to 6 entities), by putting the allied countries – previously under the US sphere of influence – under our effective control;
2. Could we viably deter Chinese economic (and overall Asia’s socio-demographic and politico-military) advancement alone, without a help of the US and its western satellites.

After much debating, answer to both questions was unanimously NO.

Consequently, the logical conclusion was: The Soviets need to save the US as to preserve balance of power. Without equilibrium in the world affairs, there is no peace, stability and security on a long run – a clear geostrategic imperative.

Indeed, right upon the Nixon shock, an era of détente has started, which led to the Helsinki process and its Decalogue (that remains the largest and most comprehensive security treaty ever brokered on our planet). The US was left to re-approach China. Soon after, it recognised the Beijing China and closed the Vietnam chapter. Simultaneously, it (re-)gain a strategic balance elsewhere, like in Latina America and (horn of and western) Africa, with a brief superpowers’ face-off in the Middle East (Yom Kippur War) which – though bloody and intensive – did not damage the earlier set balances.

Why goodbye?
Why, then, instability in today’s world?
Apparently, Americans did not really consider these two questions when it was their turn. Gorbachev altruism was ridiculed and misused. As a consequence, the edges of the former Soviet zone – from Algeria to Korea and from Finland to the Balkans – are enveloped into instabilities. On top of it, Chinese powerhouse is unstoppable: Neither of the Western powers alone nor a combination of them is able to match Sino-giant economically. Asia, although largest continent, is extremely bilateral. It fragile security structures were anyway built on a soft centre precondition.

Bear of permafrost worried about planetary balance and was finally betrayed, while a fish of warm seas unleashed its (corporate) greed and turned the world into what it is today: a dangerous place full of widening asymmetries and unbalances. Climate, health, income, access to food and water, safety and security – each regionally and globally disturbed. Exaggerated statement?

For the sake of empirical test, let us apply the method of sustainability on this short story of geopolitics of the second part of XX century. As per tentative definition, Sustainable Development is any development which aims at the so-called 3Ms: the maximum good for maximum species, over maximum time-space span. (The beauty of the 3M principle is that it makes SD matrix very easily quantifiable.)

How did our superpowers behave? Was our 3M better off before or after 1991?

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi (in his just released Global Trends Report) notifies unprecedented asymmetries of today’s world: “Every 113^th person on this planet is the displaced. Of the 65.6 million people forcibly displaced globally, 10.3 million became displaced in 2016… This equates to one person becoming displaced every 3 seconds – less than the time it takes to read this sentence.”

“You are either with us or against us” is a famous binary platform of Bush (the 43^rd US President). Indeed, our planetary choice is binary but a bit broader.

End of history in re-feudalisation or a dialectic enhancement of civilisation. Cosmos (of order) or chaos (of predatory asymmetries) – simple choice.

Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Vienna, 22 JUN 2017
[email protected]
Author is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He authors four books: FB – Geopolitics of Technology (Addleton Academic Publishers, NY); Geopolitics – Europe 100 years later (DB, Europe), Geopolitics – Energy – Technology (Germany, LAP). Europe and Africa – Security structures (Nova, NY) is his latest, just released book.