IR231- INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - Part 2 The idea of how existing post world war order aims achieving

peace failed to produce desired results. Many people see the reason of WW2 in the WW1 and post world war settlement. Many people see the period btw 1914-1945 as a continuation of each other. may people underlined appeasement policy for Germanys expansionist policies based on correcting some of wrongs of Versailles. What is important for us is the collapse of collecting security idea and collective security system at large in the interwar years. The fact that collective security did not function, the fact that existing league has proved to be a huge talking club rather than stop the aggressor is what interests us more. The members of the league have failed one by one in each time when there was an aggression. And many people argued about the failure of the league by basing them into realist understandings and explanations. The idea which was emphasized here when states left alone would not sacrifice for an ideal of peace. States it was argued would not sacrifice for far away conflicts and would not come to help people which live hundreds of thousands of kilometers away for the sake of peace. the idea was that the league, although having this ideal of transforming states' behavior through collective security understanding, what we have witnessed is that states, even great powers, who are suppose to have responsibility in the working of the system all think about their national interests rather than making sacrifices. The league showed that there was unwillingness in the countries to come to help of people who were subject to aggression in other continents, other places. The ideal of peace was not strong enough to bring deep sacrifices in terms of economy, soldiers, and politics for the "peace loving states." So this failure of the idea, the failure of the league to bring peace to stop aggressors became important in the post ww1 period. The world as we knew it until 1945 has become a very different world after ww2, 1945, with the emergence of the bipolar world order and almost perfectly working of balance of power in world alt large. So we were at the balance of power system for a hundred years in the concert of Europe until 1914, we witnessed the war, understanding changed to collective security from balance of power but when collective security failed again with the failure of the lauge and the beginning of ww2 we came back into the balance of power system from 1945 to 1990. What is significant for us the force is this time unlike the multicentered balance of power of Europe in the 19th c. we had a bipolarity and what we called as cold war has emerged at this period. 1945 is important because the international organization that was formed after 2ww was again based on this idea of collective security, maintaining peace and security in the world at large. However, barrowing some of the mistakes of the League because made another chamber, the security council but with the emergence of the cold war UN could not really function in this context until 1990. So btw 1945 and 1990 two blocks the Western and Eastern block mainly maintained their balance based on collective defense system which was made NATO and Warsaw Pact which aimed at committing to peace and security and defense of its members from another target. What kept the cold war cold is the antagonism btw the two blocks led by soviet and the
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US and it was an open ideological confrontation at the same time. Why was there no hot war? Because the existence of the nuclear armaments and the fear of this total destruction of humanity experienced in Japan kept the cold war cold. One of the best movies looking at this nuclear issue is failed safe. The beginning of the cold war let us to think about alliances, blocks, defense but also spies about intelligence. Debates about the origin of the cold war is very much there starts from 1945 onwards, many people says cold war started in 1917 with Bolshevik revolution, some other say it was even ended before, in somewhere 1944, some says it was only after the Marshall plan and the Truman doctrine so it is not until 1947 that we can talk about the cold war. For the lecture, we talk about cold war after 1945. -The height of cold war btw 1945 and 1953 -period which will lead after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the hottest point in the cold war where the two parties would come to break war -period of Dtente -There were many other wars which are going to remark discussions in world politics. ORGANIZATIONS: When we look at what was going on at this period especially in terms of organizations, the League, we have to be careful when analyzing in terms of what the legacy of the league provided us in terms of our new organizations, institutions which is the UN. We have learned a lot from the experience of the league in terms of getting some lessons in this context. Why we call the interwar years debates as idealist is because the realists later like E. H. Carr looked at that period and thought of them as utopian, nave idealists who thought pace could be achieved while peace is something that was impossible as long as the nation states survived as the main actors. The idea with the United Nations was born from the ashes of the league and it was a continuation of the league because the aim of the UN just like the League was to create international security and maintain peace in the world in general. But what we have in the League and the UN are in a way different because of the nature of the security council which will be implemented into the UNs context. Although the similarities might at time be superficial, although this league and UN at time problematic we have to underline we still use collective security as the major understanding in the UN but which became impossible to implement because of this bipolarity and cold war order. Unlike the League of Nations, The UN has given big powers, great role to play in a system. It has brought in this idea that states in general do not have a responsibility of their own unlike the great powers who are suppose to have responsibilities for the working of the system. When medium and small states are left alone to fight with aggression they will not be able to lead the system or play an important role. So the idea here was that great powers in terms of the Security Council should be given important roles in terms of running the int. system. Unlike the league where each power had equal right to vote, in the UN only members of the
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Security Council had veto decisions. Although the Security Council includes more than 5 permanent members in case one of the 5 permanent members voted no, no decision would come out of the UN. It is important because during the cold war because of bipolarity there were no decisions which were taken by UN. There has been at one point a decision which came from UN in terms of sending troops to Korea but that was a time when China was not there in the security council. So different from the league existence of great powers in the UN played a great role in terms of mobilizing the international public opinion and acting in word politics. It was told that states will not sacrifice for far away conflicts but great powers with a responsibility to maintain peace might mobilize the whole international public opinion and other states to maintain peace and act for peace. This driving force of great powers are important for our purposes. ISSUES OF COLD WAR Cold was a period which was an economic, diplomatic and ideological struggle which was accompanied by localized military encounters. Major strategies at the time were espionage (intelligence activities), spying, foreign aid, Marshal Plan which would be materialized by Truman Doctrine. There were alliances, a lot of propaganda, a lot of proxy wars around the world. And cold war has produced on the one hand economic alliances (Comecon for example) and competition but we saw technological competition, arms race, as well as alliances which was out there. Cold war has led to the emergence of two collective defense organizations NATO and Warsaw Pact. Yalta has finished the WW2, what is important here is mainly the division of germany into East and West zones, while Britain, France and US was committed to defend western Germany Soviet Union concerned Eastern. Truman Doctrine is especially important for our purposes. Truman doctrine according to some people is the beginning of the Cold War. There was a civil war in Greece and Turkey was under pressure from the Soviet, especially Stalins ideas mainly prioritized the straits and its open commitment in terms of the possession of straits has made soviets number one enemy at the time for Turkey. So Turkey was under pressure from Soviet for more concessions and passage rights from the straits at Bosporus and Dardanelles so Turkey was seeking alliances from the western block against the soviet threat. US at this point has announced what will be known as Truman Doctrine. The US committed itself to support free peoples throughout the world who were resisting takeovers by armed minorities or outside pressures which are related to the Soviet Union. And Truman also said; we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. Truman doctrine entailed in it an economic help for Greece and Turkey. The aid in total was 400 million dollars. This brought to us to this idea of containment and policy of containment. US policy to contain Soviet drive of communist expansion towards the west became the most important idea. Stopping expansion of communism in the sense was very important. So the US would use military alliances later to Nato to compliment the idea of containment and economic aid (Truman doctrine+ Marshal Plan ) became very important. The USs commitment to stop the expansion of communism will find its way in the wars, Korean war and
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the Vietnam War. From the idealism of interwar years to a whole division of world and coming back of the belance of power system. After the Truman doctrine was announced, we have seen the Marshal Plan being materialized in 1947. Secretary of the state George Marshal announced the plan. There was massive economic aid to Europe to help recover the damages of war and there are two motives for this; 1.Helping Europe to recover it economically would provide markets for American goods. If Europe as an economy is constantly collapsing the world economy would not work 2. it was thought as that a prosperous Europe would be better able to resist the spread of communism. And this is the main motif. Soviets response to the Marshal Plan was Comecon ( Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) which was established in 1949. What other economic institutions established after ww2 were World Bank, IMF, GAT. Post ww2 period has witnessed the emergence of the Breton Wood system in the political economy. Breton Wood system is emphasizing the fix exchange rates. Dollar gold parity was fixed for all currencies around the world. 1 ounce of gold was fixed to 35 dolars and this dolar-gold parity based on this fixed exchange rates would become major working of the international monetary order. IMF was supposed to help countries to anchor their currencies into gold, its function to fix and arrange currencies in this fixed exchange rate system . But international bank for reconstruction and development which would later take the name World Bank was also built an established at Breton Wood by 1944 and the aim of international bank was also to help war torn economies of Europe to flourish and recover. However as the cold war started and half of the Europe came under the control of the Soviet, the World Bank and IMF and GAT mainly worked for the western block and not for the eastern block. But this idea of recovering European economies anchoring Germany into European economies. As the cold war has started and with the Marshal plan we see major confrontation in the cold war for the first time which came with the Berlin airlift, three western controlled zones of Germany united and they grow in prosperity due to the Marshal plan. Berlin was divided as west and east, what the west wanted was the east Berlin to join into the west Berlin and make it a one city although it was in the middle of eastern block. Stalin was concerned that this would tempt other of its satellites to join the west and Stalin decided to get control over west Berlin as a result, the roads were cut and all kinds of links to western Berlin and it was thought that putting a swage on the west, the west would surrender and join the east of the city. But for 11 months the west has commited themselves to sending aid through the plains to west Berlin and tried to keep city alive for around 11 months. At the end of the day Soviet has excepted to defeat and Berlin remained as a divided city in the heart of the Europe. What is significant about Berlin is that it was the first
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confrontation btw the East and the West in the Cold war. In the cold war we have a lot of arms race in order to balance each other two countries constantly watched what they were doing and tried to balance the other party and it necessitated constant building of arms in both parties. According to some it was not about balance of power but it became balance of terror in general. Cold war tensions were increased in the meanwhile, US was concerned when Soviet have acquired its first nuclear bomb in 1949 and US as a show off has exploded its hydrogen bomb in 1952. What was happening is the emerging of concept of MAD (Mutually Assured Distruction) that both parties tried to gain mutually assured destruction capacity during the cold war. The idea was to strike first and completely destroy the enemy before they could respond back. This first strike strategy became very important. There was also the space race. The US and Soviet Union competed with each other also in terms of getting satellites and news technology in to orbit for investment in future espionage and spying. Space race has started in late 1950s, both countries wanted to explore space. Soviet union was the first to launch a satellite into space Sputnik, and the two countries get launching men and rockets into space in the hopes to undo each other in this competition and US put first man on the moon in 1969 as a show off superiority in this race. There are many turning points in the cold war. Although there are no hot war conflict btw US and Soviet Union, we see a lot of war happening elsewhere. There was the Korean war, Vietnam War, Afghan War and the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet Union. There were many other proxy wars like Greek civil war, Arab-Israeli Conflict starting from 1948 until today, Cuban revolution which took place in 1953 and 1959, Guatemalan civil war, crisis in Congo, Bay of Pigs invasion which brought the two superpower to closest to war, Cuban missile crisis, Iran hostage crisis with the beginning of Iranian revolution in 1979 where the US embassy people kept hostage for 444 days, Iran-Iraq war btw 1980-1988 where both parties are secretly selling weapons to warring sides because they want the war to continue, Iran contra affair where US was secretly selling weapons to Iran and those weapons going into Nicaraguan rebels. There were many conspiracies and attempt of confrontation with the other party in other parts of the world. Because both parties had mutually assured destruction they stayed away from meeting each other but fought their wars over their proxies which was very important. Cuban missile crisis was one of the most important turning points in terms of bringing the parties to the edge of war. It was also important for Turkey because the deal included the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. As a result of the settlement of the missile crisis the idea was that soviet would withdraw the possible missiles from Cuba and the US would withdraw the Jupiter missile in Turkey. Thats how the Turkish public knew about the USs nuclear weapons on Turkish soil which led to a crisis in Turkey as well. The government of the time had a lot of trouble to explaining this to the public. This issue bought the questions of sovereignty and security which was the priority of the Turkish policy at the time.
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DTENTE PERIOD After the Cuban missile crisis there was a relaxation in the cold war and in the meanwhile the beginning of the Vietnam war has shaken a lot in the US domestic system. Dtente, after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, we have entered a new era in the cold war. Both leaders after the missile crisis had put direct phone contact with each other, the red telephone lines, and they agreed to talk to each other when there was a crisis. This continued until 1969 but mainly btw 1969 and 1979 we talk about a growing new era which we called Dtente. Dtente was a time when we were talking about lessoned called war tensions, and there is a relaxation in relations, the idea of dialogue emerging rather than willingness to go to war. Although the idea of containment was continuing Soviet was also trying to increase its power we see reduced tensions in the relations during this time. This reduced tensions would be especially important when the two parties to agree to limit their nuclear war heads and weapons as a result of this dialogue. We see this idea of limitations of strategic arms that the both parties have starting with dtente period. SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty) which was signed in November 1969 brought Nixon and Kissenger having the ideology of ..? with the other side if it would serve both parties interests. This was not something we saw before but the idea was that if it would not change the balance, the number of war heads could be limited on both parties. The agreement puts limits on both maritime submarine launch of an intercontinental nuclear missiles and the second round of the meetings have been concluded in 1979. At the same time the US opened a dialogue with China, Nixons visit to china became important. And although there are essential differences btw the two parties there is somehow normalization in the level of threat. It would be hard to call it as normalization of relations but it was normalization of threat to some extent where two parties open the door of dialogue in certain strategic issues. This period has come to an end with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan where we saw a new spiraling of cold war and spiraling of cold war and threat from both sides. Afghanistan has been very troubled since the end of the ww1, even before the British had to leave Afghanistan due to variety of different peoples, leaders and politics in there. Many people turned Afghanistan as a graveyard of empires. This was used for Britain ( the end of British Empire) where Britan had to withdraw with embarrassment from Afghanistan and many people see the soviet invasion of Afghanistan as bringing an end to the Soviet Empire. There is this idea that once you go into Afghanistan you cannot get out of it and the soviet invasion of Afghanistan is important because it led to heightening of cold war, the end of the dtente period and raporchman(?) bwt the two parties but it also led to the invasion that was never over until the Soviet had to leave in vane without any success by the end of the decade. 1979 is an important year for the US because 1-the Soviet invasion 2-Iranian revolution which also affected USs middle east foreign policy; as Iran seen as the most important allies until 1979. After 1979 US lost one of its most important allies in the
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Middle East. Some people makes the analogy, The US getting stuck at Vietnam and soviet Union getting stuck in Afghanistan. Many people arguing that the US helped the Afghan Mujahidin to fight with the soviets and later created its own region as well as in Afghanistan. Many people at this time talked about the green belt project of the US as a way to contain a new policy of containment of the spread of communism by supporting armed Islamic groups in order to help, find fighting solutions with the communists became important in this period. So the Afghans initially when the Soviet invaded in 1979 were supplied with US weapons and they became important in terms of army, and later it led to the creation of Taliban especially in refugee camps in Pakistan which were formed as a result of this Afghanistan invasion by soviet. So US was sending a lot of arms to protect oil supplies in the middle east at the same time, this invasion became an and of dtente. After 10 years of occupation, soviet had to withdraw, at the same time in this ten years ahead there will be Iran-Iraq war which started after one year from Iranian revolution in 1979. We come to a new era, a new decade with the 1980s where we were thinking that the Soviet is so strong, nobodys expecting the demise of it but we see a very heightened of conflict in terms of the star wars idea. From 1980 onwards there was a new period called second cold war. There are many military interventions in this time but we have actually a retreat from strategic arms limitations and retreat from dialogue. With Reagan comes to power, the star war project has started. This strategic defense initiative was launched in 1983 to protect America against enemy missiles. Although there were tensions about it, it revealed the strength and power of the US to do this project. Soviet at the same time, when Gorbachev came to power ting become a little bit different. GORBACHEV AND HIS POLICIES: Although we are going to see a rapid decline of Soviet power by mid 1980s and we are going to see Soviet Union collapsing by the end of the decade, international relations did not guess at all that the Soviet were in a decline. People was thinking at the time that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was an important sign of Soviet strength and they were thinking that the reforms were all targeted to further strengthen the Soviet. It is interesting that no Sovietologists has predicted the end of the cold war at the stage and not even it was collapsing. When Gorbachev came to power in 1985 he made a series of reforms. He wanted to encourage social and economic changes in the Soviet Union, he instituted policies which would create financial stability in the soviets and we have seen that he embarked an economic reform called as perestroika and what we have in this context has been restructuring of economy to revive the Soviet economy. And there is also the policy of glasnost meaning openness, allowing greater freedom of expression and criticism of soviet policies. Gorbachev some argued wanted to
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transform the foreign policy and relations with the US. So although there was the idea of change in the Soviets, we have seen that this was only a step to maybe go back to dtente but it was not seen as an issue of weakness. When Gorbachev came to power he was proposing change, advocated change. The aim of change and reform was not dismantle in the Soviet Union it was rather reforming the Soviet Union in order to strengthen it but it led to the demise and collapse of the Soviet Union. There were economic problems, he tried to address economic problems with perestroika and there were political problems as well, he tried to made glasnost, leaving the control of media, press, dissemination of knowledge to more looser perspective and frameworks. Within the glasnost, there was an increase in freedom of expression which was growing in the Soviet Union at the time. There were of course those who happy with the reforms but there were those who unhappy because they were not quick enough. So there was a rapid demand for further change and reform in the system which was important. Gorbachev has made important legislative reform, many people has argued that the change in legislative-- law only 1/3 of the seats will be reserved for communist party and all other seats in the legislation would be left for others-- have changed radically the way the parliament and the system worked. We know that before one has to be a member of the communist party to be the part of the legislation. So when the number of communist party was reduced to 1/3 it gave a lot of room for others and newly emerging society groups who were making use of this glasnost but also perestroika which has brought local managers gaining greater autonomy and people being allowed to certain small businesses in workshops. So in a way it worked to diversify both economy and the politics but once things were diversified it quickly got out of hand. Gorbachev faced with two important questions at the time, 1.Nationalist questions and cessationism. He was according to many people ready for reforms and ready for some change but he was not ready for cessationism and he didnt know what to do with it. But the idea was that when he was faced with cessationism, this time different than before in the former decade he did not use military force to curve the cessationist movements. When Baltic States decided to go independent, how he did not suppress them by violence and military power became important. This idea of whether to suppress change of go with the change became important to Gorbachev and some argued that if he for example suppress the movements in Eastern Europe it would mean that his domestic reforms would be completely irreconcilable with each other and differences would be impossible to keep. So why the cold war ended was mainly because the Soviets had let the republics go their own way and it was the reform s in the Soviet Union imposed from top made the road to collapse open. But once the change from top as a top down reform process has been initiated, it generated its own supporters and created a revolutionary situation in a very short time. The eastern Europeans in general, when Gorbachev started to give people reform in Soviet, they also started to demand same reforms and once they were granted with this new legislation reform things changed in a short time and made
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difference. There was already important ground for reform and underground institutions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc. there was the movement of solidarity, revolutions, call for reform has been crashed harshly in Poland in 1956 and later in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Therefore Gorbachevs reforms attracted many to be in the favor of reforms.

It is possible to make certain conclusions about our understanding of the collective security, the balance of power, anarchy and the way we talk about the theories of international relations. Realism with the advent of the cold war has become especially as the main theory of international relations. All these ideas of collective security, change, liberalism, idealism, they all became important ideas and created an important debate as an alternative to realism. However they have soon been discredited with the idea of another war and the beginning of the cold war. When we look at how the idea of anarchy has evolved from WW1 to end of the cold war, some of the points that come to our minds are (what happened to anarchy in this time period); -Anarchy has been the guiding principle of international order since Westphalia. Anarchy as a system, idea refers to nation states functioning all alone in the system because of a lack of higher authority. It creates a power game in the system and it created a self help system where states are alone to help themselves when they threatened by a force. In Interwar years, there was the idea that anarchy can be mitigated. Because anarchy is the problem in international system, states left alone in a balance of power system. The idea during interwar years was t change this anarchical system. How to do it was first to built a collective security institution ( the League) which might in time turn to a world government. The idealists had this perspective of building a world government step by step and get rid of anarchy and duality of orders ( domestic vs international order). For 20 years, world faced with a process that people thought wars can be prevented because anarchy can be mitigated. And the way to get rid of anarchy is building of international organization. With the beginning of the WW2 this idealists we have understood that this could not be materialized and we have seen the prominence of the idea of realism and almost perfectly working of balance of power system with the beginning of the cold war. Realism which prioritizes the power, states, anarchy as the major principle of international system gained prominence in the context and couple of decades without question (until 1980s) we have seen the prominence of realism as an idea and balance of power took over the issue of collective security. The UN had also role in this. How the division, bipolarity has kept UN from implementing its collective security functions has been very important in this context. We know that because of bipolarity the logic of UN could not be functioning whenever the Soviet would bring an issue to the security council US would veto or vice versa. So there was no effective working of UN during this period.

With the end of the cold war there was a beginning of a new era where were going to question issues of -war and peace, -actors of international politics -thinking about international politics and relations in different ways. What was significant was that one of the important aims of theories was to give us important clues, tools, concepts in order to understand what was going on and to help us predict to some extend how different states would act at different times and in different contexts and systems. So when the cold war ended and took all international relations scholars by surprise when have seen that realism to some extend was shaken because it was the dominant theory but also we have seen Marxism according to some people going into the dark corner of the history as an international relations theories. We are going to see that non of this became true. We tend to question the idea of collective security, different possibility of cooperation more than we use to do before cold war and therefore seem to be a new area.

Jeton Dukagjini

J.D

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