ABSTRACT
Why another book on the Cold War? 2009 seems a good place to take a look back at the superpower rivalry which dominated nearly half of the twentieth century. There is no gainsaying the fact that the international order today seems bewildered, bemused, clutching at straws and certainly ‘without a clue’, faced with the economic meltdown which has overtaken the world. Within the space of a year, all the new challenges which have hobbled the institutional structures in place since the Treaty of Westphalia – terrorism, climate change, economic crisis – seem to have come to a head. And yet in 2009 it does not seem inconceivable that all kinds of new possibilities are suddenly available to change the international system ‘beyond every utopian illusion’. A new president’s term in the US spells the possibility of change and if only the rest of the world could seize the moment to work towards ‘resetting the button’, change instead of the status quo, cooperation instead of conflict, could still transform the present harsh international system along more equitable lines. There are many reasons behind evolving the concept for this book. Clearly, a
book on world politics as seen from what may well be the economic focus of the twenty-first century international system – and almost certainly the locus of
its conflicts including armed conflicts – seemed feasible. Second, a survey of the vast literature on the Cold War shows a predictably occidentalo-centric take on international relations. Therefore, it seemed necessary to present an alternative perspective in the voices from countries which had willy-nilly been embroiled in the ColdWar as mere ‘pawns’. That they did not all get crushed in the process speaks volumes for the indomitable spirit of the developing world – and hence the importance of hearing those voices, especially as the contours between the developed and developing world seem to be suddenly getting blurred. This volume has been planned as a sequel to the earlier War, Peace, Hege-
mony in a Globalized World: The Changing Balance of Power in the Twentyfirst Century,4 which had sought to hold a mirror to the international order as it evolved after the Second World War and its perceptions of the manner in which the sole superpower was playing its role after 1989. It seems appropriate to take the enquiry further by examining the fallouts of the Cold War and to seek what could be learnt from that experience in managing international relations at the end of the first decade of the new millennium. Standing back from a distance of two decades since the end of the Cold
War, its trajectory provides a fascinating study. Very aptly described as a tennis match, it became an institution in the last century marked by a kind of warped stability.5 However, what is also quite apparent is that while Europe, the crucible of the Cold War, maintained an uneasy peace, the vast bulk of the Cold War’s fighting and dying took place in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.6 The authoritative Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis writes on a congratulatory note, ‘what never happened despite universal fears that it might, was a full-scale war involving the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies’.7 Gaddis lists all the wars that did take place in various theatres around the world after 1945: in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, the four wars between 1948 and 1973 by Israel and its Arab neighbours, the three India-Pakistan wars of 1947-48, 1965 and 1971, or the long, bloody and indecisive struggle that consumed Iran and Iraq throughout the 1980s. And yet, for Gaddis, ‘for all of this and a great deal more, the Cold War could have been worse –much worse. It began with a return of fear and ended in a triumph of hope, an unusual trajectory for great historical upheavals’.8
