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Narratives : The World since 1950 http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sat/texts/narrsince1950.html |
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At the Conferences of Yalta and Potsdam, U.S. president Roosevelt/Truman, British prime minister
Winston Churchill and Soviet secretary general Joseph Stalin could decide the fate of the world.
When the United Nations was founded in 1945 as a successor to the League of Nations, the number
of members was comparatively small - the countries of Europe, North and Latin America, a few
countries in Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Most of the Caribbean, of Africa, much of Asia was
still under colonial rule. During the war, the capitalist-democratic U.S. and Britain found themselves in a Natural Alliance with the Communist USSR. With the defeat of Nazi Germany, their natural alliance lost its raison d'etre, and the Cold War unfolded. Europe, the Far East divided into East Bloc and West Bloc, were divided by the Iron Curtain or the Korean DMZ. The Berlin Blockade and Air Lift, the Chinese Civil War and Korean War indicate the tension between the two blocs. In 1952, French sociologist A. Sauvay coined the terms of the First (industrialized, west), the Second (industrialized, communist) and of the Third World - non-industrialized, backward. After World War II, the entire world was in an economic crisis; the U.S. supported the economic recovery of Europe by the means of the Marshall Plan. The Third World, at that time, for the larger part was still under colonial rule, and, if independent, primarily an agricultural economy. The 1950es saw a tendency toward independence of the former colonies. Pro-independence movements were supported by the Communist camp, by leftist intellectuals in the western countries, by the U.S. (who saw their companies at a disadvantage because colonies were protected markets). Newly independent nations regarded the former colonial powers, and capitalism in general, with suspicion and tended toward socialism. Many of the first-generation political leaders blamed the backwardness of their countries' economies on the ill will of the colonial administration who had artificially kept their country at the level of producers of raw material and consumers of imported manufactured goods; large-scale schemes would help turning their countries into industrialized nations, they hoped. Among the newy independent nations there was the desire for establishing an independent position, neither siding with the capitalist west nor with the communist east - the Non-Aligned Movement, established in 1961. However, many Third World states sought to acquire financial, technological and military aid, either from the west or the east. An African border conflict such as the Ogaden conflict, between Ethiopia and Somalia, fit into the Cold War because Somalia adopted Communism and received Soviet aid; Ethiopia in turn was a recipient of US aid. Then the monarchy in Ethiopia was toppled by a coup (1974) and now Ethiopia received Soviet aid (the USSR dropped Somalia). Somalia, still communist, turned into a recipient of Soviet aid, and the war continued. Without the support of either Cold War power, the war might have been shorter in duration and less destructive. The Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and 1973 saw US made weapons on the Israeli side face off against Soviet made weapons on the Egyptian and Syrian side. Many Third World conflicts were integrated into the Cold War pattern. Cold War propaganda was made for a European readership/viewership/audience. The establishment of a socialist state did have a limited impact on the population of Somalia, mostly pastoral nomads; the country hardly had a working class worthy to mention. The argumentation of capitalism and democracy being indicators of the freedom the people in the west could enjoy would not have been understood by an illiterate Indio campesino in Guatemala, earning 1 $ 50 a day, from which he had to support a family with 8 children. In the 1950es and 1960es the USSR attempted to create Communist model states in the Third World, North Korea, but most notably Cuba - with an excellent health care system, sports facilities (Cubans did well at Olympic Games) and free, quality education; this was achieved by indirectly subsidizing Cuba. The USSR bought all of Cuba's sugar production at an inflated price. By the 1960es, the term Third World did not longer describe the situation. Japan had rapidly recovered from the damage of WW II and caught up with the industrialized world; South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore began to industrialize; even the PRC had entered on a communist-style path of industrialization. The Oil Crisis of 1973 brought a sudden change to the situation; the Third World was divided in countries with oil and countries without oil (by some called the Fourth World). In the latter countries, the optimism of the first years after independence was replaced by pessimism; most countries were burdened with debt and had difficulty even to pay interest. There were a few issues which could rally the Third World to common action, such as Apartheid South Africa, which was diplomatically isolated. Since the Oil Crisis of 1973 the East Bloc was herself struggling economically, no longer able to waste resources in an active foreign policy. The Sino-Soviet Rift, apparent since 1968, further weakened the communist camp. The PRC found a few supporters, both among the communist countries (Albania, Cambodia) as well as among the non-communist nations (some African countries implemented an adapted version of the Cultural Revolution). The PRC financed a railroad line connecting the Zambian copperbelt with Daressalam, to make the country economically independent from Apartheid South Africa. The US supported rightist dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, who (in order to obtain or maximize US aid) labelled their opponents communists and brutally suppressed any 'communist' rebellion, real or imagined (Dirty Wars, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala etc.). Reaganomics (1980es) - the sudden raise of US interest rates stimulated the US economy, but did significant harm to countries of the Third World who suddenly had to pay double the amount of interest on their national debt, which in a number of cases made up more than 50 % of the national budget. Of course, inexperience with government, socialist dreams, lavish spending on over-ambitious development projects, extravagant lifestyle of dictator-presidents, unchecked population growth, natural disasters and a host of other factors had contributed to the economic malaise many states now found themselves in. The 1980es saw a decrease in tension between the Cold War Powers; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, realizing that the USSR could no longer financially afford to play the role of a great power, gave up Soviet control over the nations of Eastern Europe, pulled Soviet forces out of Afghanistan. Cuba, North Korea had to learn to live without Soviet subsidies; the conflict at the Horn of Africa Africanized. With the Fall of Communism in Europe, Africa experienced a decrease in aid money; a number of states in Africa are at the verge of disintegration (Somalia, DR Congo etc.). |
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