THE PATTERNS OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL ORDER

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
V. T. Yungblud

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.


Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney

The end of the Cold War left the USA as uncontested hegemon and shaper of the globalization and international order. Yet the international order has been unintentionally but repeatedly shaken by American interventionism and affronts to both allies and rivals. This is particularly the case in the Middle East as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the nuclear negotiations with Iran show. Therefore, the once unquestioned authority and power of the USA have been challenged at home as well as abroad. By bringing disorder rather than order to the world, US behavior in these conflicts has also caused domestic exhaustion and division. This, in turn, has led to a more restrained and as of late isolationist foreign policy from the USA, leaving the role as shaper of the international order increasingly to others.


2021 ◽  
pp. 187936652199975
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa

The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the beginning of the unification of Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev talked in terms of a “Common European Home,” an idea that continues in the guise of the project for a “Greater Europe.” However, right from the start, the transformative idea of Greater Europe was countered by the notion of “Europe whole and free,” whose fundamental dynamic was the enlargement of the existing West European order to encompass the rest of the continent. This was a program for the enlargement of the Atlantic system. After some prevarication, the enlargement agenda proved unacceptable to Moscow, and while it continues to argue in favor of transformation its main efforts are now devoted to creating some sort of “greater Eurasia.” There remains a fundamental tension between Atlanticist and pan-continental version of the post-–Cold War international order in the region. This tension gave rise to conflict and war: in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian War) and again from 2014 (Ukraine), and to what some call the Second Cold War. The continent is once again divided. However, pan-continentalism is far from dead, and although Greater Eurasian ideas have thrived, some sort of Greater European continentalism remains on the agenda. Is this, though, no more than a “sad delusion” or a genuine possibility?


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Mearsheimer

The liberal international order, erected after the Cold War, was crumbling by 2019. It was flawed from the start and thus destined to fail. The spread of liberal democracy around the globe—essential for building that order—faced strong resistance because of nationalism, which emphasizes self-determination. Some targeted states also resisted U.S. efforts to promote liberal democracy for security-related reasons. Additionally, problems arose because a liberal order calls for states to delegate substantial decisionmaking authority to international institutions and to allow refugees and immigrants to move easily across borders. Modern nation-states privilege sovereignty and national identity, however, which guarantees trouble when institutions become powerful and borders porous. Furthermore, the hyperglobalization that is integral to the liberal order creates economic problems among the lower and middle classes within the liberal democracies, fueling a backlash against that order. Finally, the liberal order accelerated China's rise, which helped transform the system from unipolar to multipolar. A liberal international order is possible only in unipolarity. The new multipolar world will feature three realist orders: a thin international order that facilitates cooperation, and two bounded orders—one dominated by China, the other by the United States—poised for waging security competition between them.


Author(s):  
Robert Weiner ◽  
Paul Sharp

Scholars acknowledge that there is a close connection between diplomacy and war, but they disagree with regard to the character of this connection—what it is and what it ought to be. In general, diplomacy and war are assumed to be antagonistic and polar opposites. In contrast, the present diplomatic system is founded on the view that state interests may be pursued, international order maintained, and changes effected in it by both diplomacy and war as two faces of a single statecraft. To understand the relationships between diplomacy and war, we must look at the development of the contemporary state system and the evolution of warfare and diplomacy within it. In this context, one important claim is that the foundations of international organizations in general, and the League of Nations in particular, rest on a critique of modern (or “old”) diplomacy. For much of the Cold War, the intellectual currents favored the idea of avoiding nuclear war to gain advantage. In the post-Cold War era, the relationship between diplomacy and war remained essentially the same, with concepts such as “humanitarian intervention” and “military diplomacy” capturing the idea of a new international order. The shocks to the international system caused by events between the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have intensified the paradoxes of the relationship between diplomacy and war.


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 852-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Moore

In light of seemingly growing divergence between the so-called ‘West’ and the Rest regarding the maintenance of international order, this paper seeks to sort through the conceptual muddle of ‘internationalism’ that still characterises much discussion of foreign policy today, especially with reference to emerging states. The leading states of the Global South have sought to respond to the crisis of conceptualisation and implementation that has attended Western practice of internationalism since the end of the Cold War. This paper seeks to analyse the alternative they claim to propose.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cox

Like nuclear weapons, the literature on the end of the Cold War continues to proliferate. Much of this work it has to be said has been limited in its depth (if not range) by the simple fact that the structure of the new international order has yet to assume a finished form. Writing meaningfully about a constantly evolving subject is no easy undertaking. There is also the added problem of perspective. In many ways we are still living too close to recent events to say much that is particularly profound about them. Finally, understanding the new world has been made all the more difficult by the sheer scale of the changes that have occurred since 1989. Because of the triple collapse of communism as an ideology, the Soviet Union as a European power, and the USSR as a united country our known political universe has fallen apart. Making sense of the global results is no easy job; indeed it is turning out to be an extraordinarily difficult task—one for which we may not yet have the proper conceptual tools.


2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Borneman

In 1995, as a Fulbright professor, I taught a seminar on “culture andinternational order” at Humboldt University in Berlin. There Ireached the conclusion that, in order to analyze Kultur in Germany,one also had to take into consideration the work of Schweinerei. In thefive years between the opening of the wall and my seminar, there hadbeen an explosion of interest in the concept “Kultur”—defined quiteconcretely in public discourse as an element that united (or divided)East and West Berliners, or as a substance that had been damagedduring the cold war and now needed restoration.1 Irrespective of thespeaker, Kultur was always something good, a positive ordering. Onenever needed less Kultur. Either one argued, as a proponent of Multikulti,for more of them, more cultures, or, as a monoculturalist, formerely better (more refined, more pure) Kultur and the value of adistinct German culture. The decision reached in 1991 to move thecapital from Bonn to Berlin as a means of unifying Germans also casta kind of Klieg light on Kultur, as the relocation itself drew manynew visitors, who, having only construction sites of the future capitalto view, spent the rest of their time enjoying Berlin’s numerous (oftenduplicate) cultural institutions and industries for the first time.2 At thisvery moment of general good will, inclusiveness, and prominence,these Berlin cultural institutions had the most to lose (or gain), asministers of the newly unified state promised more selective supportfollowing a round of rationalizations if not eliminations.


1997 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett

The end of the cold war and the attendant security vacuum unleashed aflurryof intellectual activity and international commissions that reflected on the world that was being left behind and the world that should be created in its place. The reports under review are among the best and most influential of the lot. This article focuses on three issues raised by these reports. First, the portrait of the new international order offered by these reports is a liberal international order. Second, the concept of legitimacy appears in various guises, and the UN is considered the site for the legitimation of a particular order. Few international orders are ever founded or sustained by force alone, something well understood by the policymakers who drafted these reports and wisely heeded by international relations theorists who attempt to understand their actions and the international orders that they construct and sustain. Third, these reports envision the UN as an agent of normative integration. As such, it contributes to the development and maintenance of a liberal international order by increasing the number of actors who identify with and uphold its values.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12(48) (4) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Alla Kyrydon ◽  
Sergiy Troyan

Conceptual approaches to understanding the current stage of the evolution of international relations were put in place during the destruction of the bipolar world of the Cold War and the formation of new foundations of the world and international order. The distinctiveness of this process is that the collapse of the postwar system took place in peaceful conditions. Most often, two terms are used to describe the interconnectedness and interdependence of world politics after the fall of the Iron Curtain: the post-bipolar (post-westphalian) international system or international relations after the end of the Cold War. Two terms, post-bipolar international system and international relations after the end of the Cold War, have common features, which usually allows them to be used as synonyms and makes them the most popular when choosing a common comprehensive definition for the modern international relations. The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the global bipolar system put on the agenda issues that cannot be resolved within the traditional terms “poles,” “balance of power,” “configuration of the balance of power” etc. The world has entered a period of uncertainty and growing risks. the global international system is experiencing profound shocks associated with the transformation of its structure, changes in its interaction with the environment, which accordingly affects its regional and peripheral dimensions. In modern post-bipolar relations of shaky equilibrium, there is an obvious focus on the transformation of the world international order into a “post-American world” with the critical dynamics of relations between old and new actors at the global level. The question of the further evolution of the entire system of international relations in the post-bipolar world and the tendency of its transformation from a confrontational to a system of cooperation remains open.


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