++ what makes a historical moment significant?
- how does one write the history of such a moment?
Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?"
"cold war": the name given to the relationship that developed primarily between the United States and the USSR after WWII. Dominated international affairs for decades + many major crises occurred - the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Hungary, and the Berlin Wall. the growth in weapons of mass destruction was a major concern.
[via - historylearningsite.co.uk]
"the Cuban missile crisis": the closest the world ever came to nuclear war.
U.S. vs. Soviet field commanders in Cuba (building missile installations in order to 1| double their arsenal 2| deter the U.S. from attack) --> crisis averted by JFK + Premier Nikita Khrushcher
1962 Soviet Union behind U.S. in the arms race.
soviet missiles were only powerful enough to be launched against Europe but U.S. missiles could take out the entire Soviet Union.
[via - library.thinkquest.org]
Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union, which included not only Russia but countries such as the Ukraine + Georgia which are independent states today.
US + USSR shared a common enemy: Nazi Germany
Cold war [1945-1980]
- no actual fighting
- fought belief systems via client states who fought for their beliefs on their behalf
(e.g.) 1. South Vietnam
- anti-communist
- supplied by the U.S. during the war
2. North Vietnam
- pro-communist
- fought the South (and the Americans) using weapons from communist China
3. Afghanistan
- the U.S. supplied the rebel Afghans after the USSR invaded in 1979 but never physically involved themselves (thus avoiding a direct clash w| the USSR)
So why were these two super powers so distrustful of one another? -->
America
- free elections
- democratic
- capitalist
- 'survival of the fittest'
- richest world power
- personal freedom
- freedom of the media
VS.
USSR
- no elections or fixed
- autocratic/dictatorship
- communist
- everybody helps everybody
- poor economic base
- society controlled by NKVD (secret police)
- total censorship
[via - historylearningsite.co.uk]
"Mikhail Gorbachev" (b. 1931): soviet official, the general secretary of the communist party of the soviet union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991, and president of the soviet union in 1990-91.
His efforts to democratize his country's political system and decentralize its economy led to the downfall of communism + the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In part because he ended the Soviet Union's postwar domination of Eastern Europe, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1990. - brittanica.com
"kremlin": a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. during the cold war the government of the USSR was located in Moscow kremlin. - wikipedia.org
"ayatollah": a religious leader among Shiite Muslims - used as a title of respect - merriamwebster.com
"paroxysm": 1| a sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity 2| a sudden recurrence or attack of a disease; a sudden worsening of symptoms
"absolutism": 1| (a) a political theory that absolute power should be vested in one or more rulers (b) government by an absolute ruler or authority: "despotism"
"bolshevism": 1| the doctrine or program of the Bolsheviks advocating violent overthrow of capitalism 2| Russian communism
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20th c. developed world =
- sudden expression of ideological violence
- liberalism vs. absolutism (despotism)
- bolshevism + fascism + marxism
the "triumph of the west" =
evidenced by the total exhaustion of viable systemic alternatives to western liberalism
Karl Marx + George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Alexandre Kojeve (French-Russian) --> "universal homogenous state"
"solipsism": a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing; extreme egocentrism
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++ the meaning of Hegelian idealism:
- consciousness is cause and not effect, and can develop autonomously from the material world; hence the real subtext underlying the apparent jumble of current events is the history of ideology.
Marx adds,
* the entire realm of consciousness is relegated to a "superstructure" that is determined entirely by the prevailing mode of production
* marxists are often disinclined to believe in the autonomous power of ideas.
++ Max Weber:
according to economic theories that posit man as a rational, profit-maximizer, raising the piece-work rate should increase labor productivity. but in fact [...] raising the piece-work rate actually had the opposite effect of lowering labor productivity.
* because he values leisure over income
(contrary to)
vs. Marx:
the material mode of production, far from being the "base, was itself a superstructure w| roots in religion + culture, + that to understand the emergence of modern capitalism and the profit motive one had to study their antecedents in the realm of the spirit.
pre-condition for capitalist economic growth =
1| free markets
2| stable political systems
Q: Could ideological incentives replace material ones in stimulating a highly productive modern economy?
++ consciousness will ultimately re-make the material world in its own image.
+ man's very perception of the material world is shaped by his historical consciousness of it.
"the common ideological heritage of mankind"
"anomie": social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards + values; also personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from lack of purpose or ideals.
20th C. - two major challenges to liberalism =
1| fascism 2| communism
[...] the root causes of economic inequality do not have to do w| the underlying legal + social structure of our society, which remains fundamentally redistributionist, so much as w| the cultural + social characteristics of the groups that make it up, which are in turn the historical legacy of premodern conditions. thus, black poverty in the U.S. is not the inherent product of liberalism, but is rather the "legacy of slavery and racism" which persisted long after the formal abolition of slavery.
++ Japan follows in the footsteps of the U.S. to create a truly universal consumer culture that has become both a symbol + an underpinning of the universal homogenous state:
+ does economic liberalism promote political liberalism?
(ideological)
communism = threat to liberalism
"perestroika": the policy of economic + governmental reform instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union by the mid-1980s.
+ Russian "perestroika": literally, restructuring.
"anachronism": the state or condition of being chronologically out of place.
"sanguine": confident, optomistic
there is a virtual consensus among the currently dominant school of Soviet economists now that central planning + the command system of allocation are the root cause of economic inefficiency, + that if the Soviet system is ever to heal itself, it must permit free + decentralized decision-making w| respect to investment, labor + prices. after a couple years of initial ideological confusion, these principles have finally been incorporated into policy [...]
"subsidy": money granted by state, public body, etc. to keep down the prices of commodities, etc.
subsidies are often regarded as a form of protectionism or a trade barrier by making domestic goods + services artificially competitive against imports. subsidies may distort markets, and impose large economic costs.
++ what would be the social consequences of ending consumer subsidies + other forms of dependence on the state sector?
Q: If we admit for a moment that the fascist + communist challenges to liberalism are dead, are there other ideological competitors left?
+ are there contradictions in liberal society beyond that of class that are not resolvable?
(contradictions)
1| religion
- religious fundamentalism
- modern-liberalism = a historic consequence of the weakness of religiosity-based societies
2| nationalism + other forms of racial + ethnic consciouness
---
While they [the world's nationalist movements] may contribute a source of conflict for liberal societies, this conflict does not arise from liberalism itself so much as from the fact that the liberalism in question is incomplete. Certainly a great deal of the world's ethnic + nationalist tension can be explained in terms of peoples who are forced to live in underrepresented political systems they have not chosen.
IV. What are the implications of the end of history for international relations?
"mired": stuck
Hobbesian view of politics = aggression + insecurity are universal characteristics of human societies rather than the product of specific historical circumstances
Q: Is ideology a superstructure imposed on a substratum of permanent great power interest?
A: The way in which any state defines its national interest is not universal but rests on some kind of prior ideological basis, just as we saw that economic behavior is determined by a prior state of consciousness.
Explicit foreign policy legitimizing expansionism
- the legitimacy of imperialism:
whatever the particular ideological basis, every "developed" country believed in the acceptability of higher civilizations ruling lower ones.
+ this led to a drive for pure territorial aggrandizement + the great war.
"aggrandize" (v): to enhance the power, wealth, position, or reputation of...
19th C. imperialism --> German fascism
The death of this ideology [marxism-leninism] means the growing "common marketization" of international relations, + the diminuation of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states.
- wesjones.com/eoh.htm
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