The Cold War and After: Capitalism, Revolution and Superpower Politics (Critical Introductions to World Politics)

266 Pages·2007·1.13 MB·English

by  Richard Saull

THE COLD WAR AND AFTER
Capitalism,Revolution and
Superpower Politics
Richard Saull
LONDON ANN ARBOR, MI
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
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To L. B.
Contents
Series Introduction ix
Acknowledgements x
1 Introduction:History and Theory in the Cold War 1
Radical Theories of Cold War 3
The Cold War as a Global Social-Systemic Conflict 8
2 The International Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution
and the Early Cold War,1917–45 16
Introduction 16
The Bolshevik Revolution and the Constitution
of the Soviet State 18
The USSR and the Capitalist Great Powers,1917–41 25
The Contradictions of Capitalist Development and
International Revolution 35
Conclusions:World War and Social Conflict 45
3 The Cold War Transformed:Geopolitical Restructuring
and a New Wave of Social Revolution,1945–49 49
Introduction 49
The Geopolitical Consequences of War 52
Inter-Capitalist Relations and Cold War 61
A New Wave of Social Revolution and
Communist Expansion 68
Conclusions:The Uneven Socio-economic Consequences
of Geopolitical Transformation 80
4 The Militarisation of Cold War:The Containment of
the USSR and the Emergence of New Revolutionary
Fronts,1950–62 83
Introduction 83
Europe’s ‘Long Peace’:The Consolidation of Cold War
Blocs and the Militarisation of the Cold War 85
Tensions within the Communist World:Threats
to Soviet Power in East-Central Europe and
the Developing Sino-Soviet Split 92
vii
viii CONTENTS
Global Social Conflict and New Revolutionary Fronts 103
Conclusions 116
5 The Final Gasp of Cold War:The Decline of US
Military Superiority and the Expansion of International
Communist Power,1962–80 119
Introduction 119
Vietnam:The Revolutionary Defeat of
Militarised Containment 120
Détente:The Contradictions of Containment
by Diplomacy 130
The Collapse of Bretton Woods and the Onset of a
New Wave of Crisis within Capitalism 132
A New Wave of Revolutionary Crisis and Soviet
International Expansion 138
Conclusions:The End of Détente and the
Revival of US Militarism 151
6 Ending the Cold War:From Militarised Counter-Revolution
to the Collapse of Soviet Communism,1980–91 155
Introduction 155
Reagan and Militarised Counter-Revolution 156
The Debate about the End of the Cold War 165
Conclusions:Ending the Cold War – The Collapse
of Communism in the Soviet Bloc and the International
Defeat of Historical Communism 170
7 Conclusions:Tracing the Paradoxical Ends of the
Cold War and the Origins of Contemporary Conflict
in World Politics 180
Introduction 180
Contemporary Conflict and the Theorisation of
Post-Cold War World Politics 182
The Social and Ideological Character of
Reactionary Resistance 188
The Paradoxical Ends of Cold War,Reactionary
Politics and US Strategy 192
Conclusions 200
Notes 203
Select Bibliography 237
Index 250
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 rela-
tions 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.
ix
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.
x
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 contri-
bution 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,partic-
ularly 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 prima-
rily 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 polit-
ical 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
endsin time and space,associated with the differentiatedcontainment 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 pre-
vailing 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
1
2 THE COLD WAR AND AFTER
theoretical framework and ideational approaches. For Realists2the Cold War is
understood as the bipolar (superpower) relationship based on strategic compe-
tition, which was a consequence of the geopolitical arrangements brought
about by the Second World War. In this understanding the Cold War is classi-
fied 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 subor-
dinate 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 approaches5share with Realist-informed scholars some key theo-
retical 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 cen-
tred on the conflicting post-war objectives of the superpowers. Both, then,
understand the Cold War as the diplomatic history of the post-1945 Soviet–US
relationship. However,in contrast to Realists,ideational approaches emphasise
the importance of domestic political ideas,values and ideology on superpower
behaviour and, consequently, take much more seriously the ideological char-
acter of the Cold War conflict and the way in which domestic political factors
(and change) conditioned the bipolar relationship. In this respect,perception or
misperception played a key role in fomenting conflict as much as conflicting
objective material interests.
Further,domestic political change and the way in which ideas evolved within
each of the superpowers are seen as ultimately determining for the evolution of
the Cold War and its end,highlighted by role of Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘new think-
ing’on Soviet foreign policy changes in the late 1980s. It was a change in the
subjective view of the world of the Soviet leadership,ushered in by the genera-
tional and ideological changes of Gorbachev,that triggered the end of the Cold
War through the impact of domestic political change on Soviet foreign relations.
The Cold War system, then, is not a product of the post-war configuration of
geopolitical power,but rather a social-ideological construction founded on dis-
tinct perceptions of self-identity and the social construction of an enemy.6
However,this recognition of the importance of ideas and values in superpower
relations and the Cold War is rather limited in the sense that it tends to separate
the role of ideology on leadership decision-making rather than examining the
way in which ideological values were rooted in social and political structures