World History: Daily Assignment

Unit 7: The World Since 1945

Chapter 32: Superpowers in the Modern Era

67. Thu, May 15, 2014

For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s (which includes me, DrMcM), and can recall the spectre of the Soviet menace — the frequent air raid drills at school, the James-Bondian notion that Soviet agents were everywhere, gathering information and sowing disinformation — the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemed something little short of miraculous, though there were some at the time who were a mite suspicious that it was not all going to be quite as suddenly rosy as some claimed. The fall of the Soviet Union, which also accompanied the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany, was a drama generations in the making, that had its denouement (without ever as much of a crisis as we had feared) in the space of about two years.

As one might well have suspected, there have been good and bad results, and we still don’t know which one will have the upper hand, if we can even speak in those terms. The fall of any great state — especially a totalitarian one — leaves an enormous power vacuum that has its own implications. It may be that at the end of The Return of the Jedi everyone on a thousand planets has a fine old time and celebrates with fireworks and upbeat music, but the fall of the “Evil Empire” (as some had characterized the Soviet Union) was neither so colorful nor so unambiguous. Soviet bloc states — the old Warsaw Pact nations — were suddenly free to govern themselves as they had not been for well over a generation. One might well recall Tacitus’ comments about the emperor Augustus — namely, that as he had lived so long and ruled so long, by the time he died, there were few or any left alive who really remembered the old Roman republic as a functional unit at its height. The same held true here: like the colonies of European powers in Africa and parts of Asia that had grown unaccustomed to governing themselves, these nations had once again to take up the reins of self-government, and they did so with variable success. Some of the better examples were quite inspiring. The worse examples were grisly. Tribal animosities erupted with horrific ferocity in Romania, for example, and the idea of “ethnic cleansing” — basically a National Socialist ideal that hadn’t appeared much in Europe since the days of Hitler — re-emerged with a vengeance. Centuries-old animosities that had been kept in forced check by the dominance of dictatorial powers erupted explosively and almost (from the point of view of outsiders) without warning.

Meanwhile Western Europe moved much closer toward unification as a kind of single state, with the consolidation of the European Union, maintaining over much of its area a single currency, passporting system, and the like. The benefits of this were immediately apparent to just about everyone. Only recently have some of the liabilities begun to manifest themselves, as some countries have begun to feel that others in the European Union aren’t really pulling their weight, but are dragging them down economically. This issue is the topical stuff of today’s newspapers. Keep your eye on it.

From Mr. Christiansen, a few extra thoughts:

Here's my rough breakdown of how the USSR fell.

The important thing to note is that there may be other factors — sometimes I go with five, sometimes with six — and the other important thing is that I don't rank them.

Afghanistan. It's called the Soviet Vietnam for a reason: a guerrilla war against a hostile population that sucked down money, soldiers, and funds.
The Arms Race. Trying to keep pace with President Reagan's expenditures, the Soviets had to spend even more money, hand over fist.
Chernobyl. The third massive expenditure, it was almost a whole second war, with hundreds of thousands of troops and massive expenditures required to seal up the reactor and clean up the mess... somewhat. The Soviets, as it turns out, did not skimp or cut corners: it was just so appalling a crisis that even a nation of that power could only do so much.

Those were the big immediate expenses. The remaining two were more slow-building:

Nonviolent resistance movements. Particularly in Czechoslovakia and Poland, there were growing dissident groups, inspired by the Czech nonviolent resistance in 1968, that were giving the Soviets more and more headaches. Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the USSR in those days, had been in Czechoslovakia in 1969, and watched how the nonviolent response was actually causing more problems for the USSR than an outright battle. Thus when the Berlin Wall fell, Gorbachev knew he couldn't send in the tanks; all the citizens of the Warsaw Pact would have stopped cooperating with him, and he couldn't shoot them all.
Soviet agriculture. Also centrally-planned and quota-based, with no regard for differing climates or weather. The results were catastrophic. Before 1917, Russia's only real export was grain: they grew a lot of food, and shipped it out. The Soviets planned on doing the same, and using the profits to help industrialize. But instead their agricultural planning led to year after year of poor harvests. The USSR, to my knowledge, had to import food every year of its existence (including some from the US). This meant that the Soviets were always spending money to feed people, a permanent drain on the economy. Sometimes they just let people starve, too.

Thus the Soviets were increasingly broke, their army was increasingly battered, irradiated, and useless, and the people had to line up for bread... combine that with Gorbachev's "glasnost" or "openness" policy which allowed critics to speak, and the whole system came down quite quickly indeed.

What are some of the natural implications of a power vacuum anywhere? What happens? Where can you plug this into the old Aristotelian cycle of states (or can you)? What should we look for to come from it?
What are some of the internal implications of the breakup of the Soviet Union? Can we expect to see a particular kind of government emerging in the next generation? Will it be stable? Strong? A repsonsible player on the world stage?
What are some of the external implications of the breakup of the Soviet Union? How does one deal with re-emerging nations and cultures? What kind of relations can we as a remaining superpower (formerly considered an enemy to most of them) have with them?
What are the implications of a world with only one superpower? Is it safer or likely to be more wisely ruled than a world with two?

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