Parallels between Cold War Anti-communism and Contemporary Debates about Terrorism - Essay Example

PARALLELS BETWEEN COLD WAR ANTI-COMMUNISM AND CONTEMPORARY DEBATES ABOUT TERRORISM AND BORDER PROTECTION The end of the Cold War heralded the beginning of a new possibility of a new world order. The new world order was anchored on a harmonious triangulation of economic liberalisation, liberal democracy and increased sensitivity for the respect of human rights. It is notable that the episodes that ignited this virtuous cycle-starting from Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait to the human rights abuses witnessed in Albania precipitated various military initiatives spearheaded by the United States. With the backing of the international community, these responses were apparently aimed at protecting human rights by inculcating political sovereignty in the so-called ‘failed states.’ Apart from a few isolated murmurings in the West, these experiments in state-building, humanitarian intervention and policing of wayward nations were neither openly associated to an American empire nor were they labelled as imperialist. The arrival of George Bush at the White House and the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001 reveal the role of the U.S. in the global economy. Furthermore, the war on terror that ensued shortly after September 11 seem to have reversed the world order and ignited a debate on the role of the U.S in fostering international peace. The debate presented in this paper argues that the U.S. role seems to have accorded itself the role of maintaining a check on communism (Bamford, 2004: pp 18-47). The paper aims at exploring the analytical and historical value of the connection between terrorism, war, efforts at border protection and the efforts at taming communism and fostering the extension of the American empire. Some of the historical questions that the paper aims to solve include the role that the Cold War played in shaping a domineering American empire. There is also an attempt to analyze how the nature of this empire was affected by the end of the Cold War. Therefore, the paper aims at presenting a comparison between the prevailing conjecture of border protection measures and the war on terror with the origins of the rivalry between capitalism and communism. Researchers have done a critical analysis of several theoretical perspectives that shed more light on the underlying dynamics in the aggravated efforts to fight terrorism in the world.. These perspectives also highlight how these dynamics serve to entrench border protection measures, especially after the end of the Cold War. The first perspective regards to the theory of realism which emphasizes several motives that are connected to the power, national security, and resources. Most leaders tend to calculate the costs of war and the resulting benefits in terms of their state’s security and power (Chilcote, 2000). The global activities of states tends to reflect the constraints that have been forced on their engagements by their virtual position of power. From this perspective, the shift from a two-superpower distribution during the cold war to the one-superpower U.S dominance may have caused the U.S strategy to shift from deterrence policies to preventive warfare policies. (Clarke, 2004: p. 13-22). The government under President Bush seems to have some objectivity in its pursuit for global hegemony. This describes the power that is so strong that any attempts to challenge it are futile. During his speech at the WestPoint military academy, Bush stated “America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge.” (Bush 2a). Going by this strategic goal, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime can be viewed as an effort to enhance U.S symbolic power and reputation beyond any conceivable challenge. This is more so after the 9/11 attack that may have portrayed the U.S as vulnerable to challenge. When President Bush once admitted publicly that forcing regime change in Iraq was a U.S priority, he made America prone to appear weak (Ann, 2003). This would be confirmed in case the U.S accepted any form of compromise that would ensure the continuity of the Baath’s regime. By staking the reputation of America for his willingness to resort to use of force in enforcing regime change, Bush presented war as inevitable as a result of the national security (White, 2011). From realism point of view, it is evident that leaders result to acts of war and aggressiveness when they believe that it is necessary to safeguard national security (Held, & McGrew, 2007). However, this perspective appears complicated by the America’s exaggeration of the magnitude and imminence of security threat posed by Iraq (Lieberfeld, 2005). It is important to note that the United States emphasized its geopolitical and socio-economic primacy after the end of the Second World War in a global environment where the contemporary territorial empires were at bay (Colas & Saull, n.d.). It is plausible that the global hegemony demonstrated by the U.S after the Second World War was not premised on the relentless expansion of its border frontiers. Neither was it deprivation of political power for the subject masses (Colas & Saull, n.d.). Rather, it was based on the proliferation of competing spaces of political power and the promotion of territorial sovereignty for people who were previously under the mercy of Japanese, European, and course, American imperialism (Posen & Ross, 2001). Thus, one can conclude that the post-war hegemony demonstrated by the United States was founded on an environment of closed frontiers. This was in terms of territorial sovereign nations and open doors in terms of capitalist markets (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2008). Those who have been close to the initial comprehension of the historical characteristics of US foreign relations point at the persistence of directly coercive militarised interventions across the globe by forces allied to the United States and its allies. To this extent, it remains arguable that the formal or informal foreign policy of the U.S has remained imperialist from as early as the nineteenth century. This can be explained by virtue of the country’s violent imposition of American values and interests on states that were unwilling to consensually and peacefully accept this benevolent hegemony (Halliday, 2002: pp. 4-8). In this regard, it is notable that, in the absence of the September 11 attacks, the ensuing war on terror coupled with the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have happened (Kaplan, 2000). It remains equally convincing that the election of George Bush in 2000 opened the gates of White House to a neo-conservative cliché of democratic non-communists. This cluster used the outcome of 9/11 as a perfect chance to trigger an ideologically-driven belligerent foreign policy. The policy exposed the long pedigree in American intellectual history and demonstrated that the aggressive policy had been a long-time preparation (Stephens, 2004). In a manner reminiscent to Truman’s establishment of a national security state following the World War II (with its culmination in the ‘loss of China’), the Bush administration was able to turn the tragic events of September 11 into a precise chance to secure the endorsement of the American populace to engage the enemy on a war. It is this new strategy that eventually metamorphosed into the catchphrase “war on terror.” It is notable that the new strategy was formulated by an influential and highly experienced group of advisers. The Bush advisers who had deep knowledge of the prevailing stand-off between Washington and Moscow made it possible for the country to defend itself (Williams, 2008). The apparent re-invigoration of US imperialism was built upon the long-standing institutional and ideological foundations of the American people and society (Victor, 2001: pp. 5). However, the administration required well-calculated political manoeuvring by skilled political entrepreneurs in a process that would involve a nationalist mobilization of the US populace by various organs of the state. To the political cohorts surrounding President Bush, the renewed acts of terrorism on American soil created a perfect platform for politicisation of fear. This was done through initiating an ideological establishment of a homogenous wariness in the form of “terrorists” and “Reds.” Most importantly, it is worth some emphasis that as a liberal democracy, the reactions of the US to the terrorist attacks were the origins of the Cold War. The War was greatly conditioned by domestic political dynamics and forces. Attacks by Islamist terrorism forces against the US had been predicted by the country’s security and intelligence organs for a long time. Once the attacks happened, the country, just like any other nation, had a right to initiate self-defence responses. However, the proclamation of war on terrorism and the quick resort to military action were not inevitable result of the terror attacks themselves, as pointed out by some US lawmakers from the beginning. Thus, the nationalization of the war on terror as the only solution to respond to 9/11 attacks and protect US borders was the foremost achievement of the Bush administration. Therefore, his diehard allies in the Congress, civil society and mainstream media had to do their part of the bargain to make the war successful. A big proportion of the gross of this crusade appears to have been eroded by the beginning of the war on terror as an illegal incursion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq without any tangible anti-terrorist victories. Hence, when the above campaign is weighed from a historical perspective, it is important to remember that the US emerged from the Second World War into a global platform of closed frontiers (Bacevich, 2002). Thus, the major task after the war was to continue opening the country’s doors to capitalist markets. Whenever the establishment of closed frontiers and open doors was threatened, Washington was ready to project its coercive global domination in attempts to shore up capitalist social relations and state authority. Moreover, whenever the sovereignty of an allied nation was under threat of imperialism, the U.S would show up support in solidarity. However, the outstanding rivalry between US allies and Russia following the end of the Second World War made it hard for the US to exert this hegemony. Hence the long period of Cold War between the West and the East (Dobbins, 2003: 16-20). Many people in the US believed that Communism was still a threat to the extension of capitalist ideologies. However, the ailing state of the US economy, as well as those of its allies meant that this threat could not be confronted openly. The best opportunity for confronting the threat of Communism was heralded by the onset of terror attacks on the US and its allies in Eastern Europe. Thus, the ensuing pursuit of terrorists, in the guise of self-defence, entailed nothing more than a well-choreographed plan to attack states that had expressed open discontentment with capitalist ideologies. Another factor that best explains the apparent aggressive campaign by the U.S in the guise of homeland security entails the utmost desire to dominate global politics. In a post-colonial world environment of discrete territorial jurisdictions, the United States had an interest to act as the sole global coordinator of capitalist states. Thus, it would do this through their economies, mainly through institutions and mechanisms that favoured collective power (Dean, 2001). Hence, the deployment of American military under the guise of war on terror could only be parlayed into a durable and stable political leadership. The U.S would succeed when it advanced the coordinated interest of a growing yet still liberal capitalist order. Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the American primacy had never been secure. Rather, the world political environment remained in a transitional moment. The transition was characterized by opposing ideas of capitalism and communism (Harvey, 2005). Thus, the core task of the Bush administration was to initiate ways of re-configuring world politics and orientate the US on a renewed path that would bring the transition period to a conclusion. In order to implement such a strategy, the administration under Bush had to find ways of succeeding where the two previous administrations had failed, that is, finding a formidable way of generating nation-wide politics for primacy. After failing to find the perfect opportunity of initiating this strategy, the events of 9/11 gave the administration the much-needed opening to initiate domestic politics for an aggressive political-military drive to safeguard national borders. Washington could only re-invigorate its drive for privacy by tapping into the galvanizing power created by the terror attacks and the perceived threat for such further attacks (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2008). The length to which the threat on US foreign policy rested upon the successful manipulation of a Soviet-communist threat has remained open to criticism. Ii is notable that during the Cold War, the threat of communism served as key external motivating factor for marshalling economic and political cooperation among the main capitalist states under the US military protection and political hegemony. Furthermore, the existence of a global alternative to liberal forces and capitalism in the form of communist and other revolutionary forces added further to the prevailing US discomfort with the status quo (Robinson, 2002). The pronounced mediation of American interests through capitalist markets and sovereign states further enforced the possibility of a democratic substantiation of sovereignty and the subsequent concomitant subversion of social relations that favoured capitalism. In fact, the Cold War can be perceived as an end-result of the weak link in the American empire after the Second World War. The revolutionary and communist movements continued to seize state power and attempted the reconstruction the forms of political sovereignty modelled from the USSR (Haynes, 2005: 468-475). These attempts would significantly seal-off these states from the American economic and political hegemony. Additionally, many countries which fell under the Cold War aegis of the US, such as Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey, followed the models of capitalist accumulation. This scenario was based on the concepts of protectionism, local industrialization and a prevalence of state regulation on market-directed investments (Ellen, 2002: pp. 242-245). In order to remain on the safe side, the US developed a complicated matrix of military agreements that would ensure its political influence over its core allies. This strategy was anchored upon the establishment of base rights. The strategy also relied on the establishment of other military relationships through formal alliances and defence treaties in the most strategic Cold War theatres. In so doing, the US established itself as the crucial external influence on these countries. Turning to a political level, one can perceive how the US turned the several repercussions that it suffered during the start of the Cold War into sources of geopolitical support over its Soviet and revolutionary enemies. The US opted for an offensive strategy to overturn the numerous Soviet-revolutionary victories in the Third World (Wang, 2000). However, numerous military advances by the Soviet military, coupled with a public suspicious of attempts to re-establish a new imperial presidency prevented a repeat of strategic competition experienced at the onset of the Cold War. The initial experience was characterized by the commitment of US military forces to combat missions against revolutionary and communist forces. In light of the challenges highlighted above, the only way to counter the military advances by Communism states, most notably Russia, was to trigger a new arms race (Ted, 2004: pp. 456). This would be achieved through aggressive initiatives in training and funding various right-wing political and social forces, most of which had significant knowledge in the art of terrorism. The necessity of the administration’s promotion of anti-communism terrorism provides a very different understanding of the end of the Cold War. This understanding supersedes the triumphalism associated with the spread of liberal democracy and proliferation of capitalist states (Blurn, 2004). On one end, the final years of the Cold War witnessed the extension of America’s political and socio-economic interests into the former Soviet strongholds. On the other end, the complexities of absorbing and consolidating the unstable regions of the world under the structures of the American empire were made harder by the prevailing illiberal political movements. The administration remained aware that the fundamental principles of American imperialism were the systems of closed frontiers and open doors in the form of territorially bounded states. But in the prevailing environment after the Cold War, the structural incapacity to exert direct control over territories emerged as the weakest link in the US imperial order (Griffiths, & O’Callaghan, 2002). It is worth noting that the foreign policy of the United States after the Second World War failed to achieve its goals and behaved in a counter-productive manner. In the ensuing aftermath, military actions trampled negotiations. Force took the place of diplomacy and counter-insurgency efforts bred even more insurgents (Burchill, 2009). The United Sates and its allies figured out the control of communism as the fundamental aim of the foreign policy during the Cold War. However, it is notable that the policy persisted even after the end of the Cold War and the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union. As the sense of balance of trepidation subsided, the US decided to confront global terrorism. The engagement required the world power to initiate a new form of war, the “war on terrorism” (Heywood, 2010: pp. 16-34). The foreign policy of the US across Europe during the Cold War period can be considered successful. However, a critical analysis of the American foreign policy towards states in other regions, including post-Cold War Europe demonstrates the ineffective methods of international diplomacy and a prevailing disposition for use of military force. The US is regarded as the winner of the Cold War. However, the ever-growing European Union, Latin America and the formation of an association of Southeast Asian states are challenging the economic leadership and political hegemony of the superpower (White, 2011). As such, there has been an upsurge in debates about border protection. In addition, the re-invigoration of state security measures and sometimes, imagined threats has topped debate in mainstream media (Earl, & Klehr, 2003: pp. 73). The US viewed the threat of terror as the most significant threat that had the potential to weaken the US economy and military power, thus taking away its credit as the guarantor of world peace and stability. With Russia and China doing well economically and militarily, the US viewed communism as the epicentre of the renewed threats against it. As such, there are urgent need to diffuse the threat of terrorism. Therefore, this could only be achieved by destabilizing the major states that aligned themselves to the communist ideologies (Kegley, 2009: pp. 56). It is plausible that there was no major reason to attack the major communist states such as Russia as this would spell dire political and economic consequences for the already ailing economy. Thus, the only way to tame the spread of communism was to destabilize the states that did not buy into the capitalist ideologies propagated by the US imperialism. The strategy was to label the countries as “rogue” and seek regime change. When terrorists attacked the US on 9/11, the most awaited opportunity to carry out the strategy availed itself (Hoggett, 2005: pp. 418-428). Military forces were sent to Afghanistan without much debate; preparations to effect regime change in Iraq got underway, and Iran was labelled a threat to world peace and stability. Ever since then, the world has witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of anti-communism laws, only that the current laws have crossed out “communism,” and replaced in with “terrorism.” In summary, it is plausible that some clear parallels exist between debates about border security and war on terrorism on one hand and the contemporary anti-communism sentiments that have persisted since the end of the Cold War. A critical analysis of the numerous counter-terrorism missions and combat operations undertaken by successive US provides crucial insight into the broad range of perspectives that precipitate these measures. It is notable that liberalism, ideological influences, realism, and elite interests to halt or tame the spread of communism provide the core premise for these aggressive maneuvers. This paper has made critical attempts at analyzing how the nature of the American empire after the Second World War was affected by the prolonged period of the Cold War. The paper has also demonstrated the appalling need to compare the prevailing conjecture of border protection and the war on terror with the origins of the rivalry between capitalism and communism. References Ann, C., 2003. Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. London: Three Rivers Press. Bacevich, A., 2002. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy. London: Harvard University Press. 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