Cold Wars are hydra-headed creatures
In New York this week, the UN is meeting. On Tuesday, the session will concern itself with “rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity.” Chance would be a fine thing.
It is easy to mock, as well as expressing scepticism about the use of language. Ignition: surely there are enough fires already throughout the world? Yet in 1945, when the whole enterprise began, there were cautious grounds for hope. The principal one was that the Western allies had prevailed. Europe was still full of shattered cities and refugees while the Soviet Union felt entitled to impose not only reparations but also ethnic cleansing. Victor’s justice: the Soviets certainly put the emphasis on “victor.” Loser’s justice was not a pleasant affair. Yet there was an air of idealism, especially among younger officials and soldiers. Many of them had been in combat but even among those who had fought bravely there was a feeling of “soldier no more”: a devout wish that mankind should order its affairs better. Those who had lived through wars and had witnessed the aftermath were ready to dedicate careers and lives to ensure that two World Wars in one century was enough.
Even then, the wise found every reason to qualify their optimism. Ancestral voices were prophesying war. The post-war settlement was founded on the betrayal at Yalta. Churchill, brooding over the vastness of events, was gearing himself up to speak in Fulton, Missouri.
Yet the West had already benefited from a stroke of luck. By the time he died in April 1945, Roosevelt was almost as unfit to be President as Joe Biden is now. But he had bequeathed a precious legacy. To the end, Roosevelt seemed to retain some faith in Stalin, partly because he used his cosiness with Uncle Joe to taunt Churchill. Until the previous year, his Vice-President had been Henry Wallace, a man of some charm but greater naivete. He did not appeal to conservative-minded voters so FDR dumped him from the ticket. His replacement was Harry Truman who had almost no background in foreign affairs and who had not even been told about the Manhattan project.
Roosevelt clearly regarded the Vice-Presidency as a dignified part of the constitution, not an efficient one. His first Veep, John Nance Garner of Texas, gave a Texan assessment of the post. “The Vice-Presidency is not worth a pitcher of warm spit.” (Some versions have that as piss.) Truman seemed entirely unqualified to lead the Western world at a most hazardous juncture. That turned out to be the opposite of the truth. Truman had three invaluable assets: steadfastness, judgment and patriotism. As President, he was not only Commander-in-Chief. He took command. Following on from Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, Truman enunciated the Truman Doctrine: crucial intellectual momentum as the West prepared itself for the Cold War. If only on quantitative grounds, it is hard to deny FDR’s claim to be the greatest President from the Democratic party. Truman runs him close.
Three-quarters of a century after those dangerous and inspiring years, where are we? The Cold War for which Churchill and Truman served as God-parents was won. But Cold Wars appear to be hydra-headed creatures. We now seem to be facing at least two of them, involving Russia and China. Indeed, any Ukrainian – and a fair number of Russians – would dispute the term ‘Cold’. Heavy fighting is taking place, and one side is not only equipped with nuclear weapons: their use is part of Russian military doctrine.
It must also be remembered why the Cold War stayed cold. This owed little to idealism, and everything to cautious calculation, reinforced by the threat of mutually-assured destruction. Throughout the post-war years, there was a massive amount of dry tinder in potential conflict zones. Without the restraint of MAD, mankind might indeed have gone mad. European civilisation could not have survived a third world war.
As it is, however, Europe did remarkably well. Few would have predicted the scale of the recovery in the post-war years. But there is a longer-term consequence. After 1945, Western Europe thrived under America’s benign aegis. Yet the geopolitical tectonic plates were moving. The Mediterranean is no longer the sea at the centre of the earth. Long ago, it lost its commercial supremacy to the mighty oceans. More recently, it lost its empires. The French still have dreams of a reparation for the end of empire: that the EU should be run by a French jockey on a German horse. That will never happen, and the EU conundrum which no-one wants to face remains unsolved. How can one have a single monetary policy without a single fiscal policy, and how can one have a single fiscal policy without political union?
Admittedly, the French did find a substitute for imperialism and colonialism in a skilled neo-colonial policy, which gave them around five decades of covert influence in West Africa. But that seems to have collapsed under the combined threats of Wagner forces, the Chinese and assertive locals. The very last phase of European rule in Africa has now ended.
As for the rest of the world, everyone seems to be playing three-dimensional chess, and the emerging Imperial powers, India and China, are keen to assert themselves. There is even talk of new alliances. Narendra Modi obviously enjoys twisting the West’s tail rather in the way that FDR treated Churchill in the final period. But India has unresolved border disputes with China: hardly a sound basis for a happy relationship. The Chinese also regard the Treaty of Aigun signed in 1858 as an unequal treaty which made unfair territorial concessions to the Russians. There could be a lot of lebensraum north of the Amur River,
Under Xi Jinping, who must be obeyed, the Chinese leadership has been offering the people rising living standards and national pride. It is a powerful combination, but is the economic growth sustainable? If not, would the seizure of Taiwan be an alternative?
The world has rarely been more uncertain, and nothing that transpires in New York will alter that. There will of course be good will, in copious quantities. “Peace on earth, good will to all men.” If only.
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