Understanding global security - Peter Hough

MILITARY THREATS TO SECURITY FROM STATES
important symbolically because it left the African continent free of European and
European settler rule. In 1945 there were only three independent states in Africa:
South Africa (independent from the UK since 1910), Ethiopia (liberated from Italian
rule in 1941) and Liberia (the only African state never to be colonized). Revolutions
rarely happen in isolation and the process whereby Africa and large swathes of Asia
threw off colonial rule can be viewed as a global phenomenon.
That this wave of decolonization (a previous wave had swept Latin America in
the nineteenth century) should occur at the same time as the Cold War is not merely
a quirk of history. The same balance of power shift that saw Western European
powers fall behind the USA and USSR in the global pecking order and contributed
to the Cold War, gave the colonies of France, the UK and other states the opportunity
to turn the pre-1945 order on its head. This was most explicitly demonstrated
in Vietnam, where anti-colonial war against France was directly succeeded by
Communist war against a new external foe, the USA. In addition, Marxist ideology
saw colonialism as a symptom of capitalism and hence the struggle against colonizers
as something to be encouraged. This appeared to be confirmed in 1961 when Soviet
President Khruschev announced that the USSR would support ‘wars of national
liberation’ throughout the world. This perception of Soviet and Chinese influence
prompted US involvement in Vietnam. In general, however, it was post-colonial power
struggles rather than the overthrow of European rule, which tended to be transformed
into Cold War conflict. In Angola the USSR, along with Cuba, gave backing
to leftist guerillas, while the USA supported the anti-Communist faction. That China
should find themselves on the same side as the Americans in this conflict, however,
gives some credence to the post-revisionist assessment of the Cold War as more of
a plain power struggle than an ideological confrontation.
Indeed, decolonization was applauded not only by governments of the left. The
USA used its position of mastery over the old powers of Europe to assert its moral
support for the principle of self-rule for colonies. One of the few things the two new
superpowers could agree on in the late 1940s and early 1950s was that the age of
colonialism was a part of the old European order which should be swept away. This
was, of course, a somewhat hypocritical view given the USSR’s recent acquisition of
six satellite states in Eastern Europe and the USA’s colonial rule of Puerto Rico and
suzerainty over South Korea, South Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, but it was
clear that the world had entered a new phase of international relations in 1945 in
more ways than one.
A new world order?
President George Bush (senior) is generally credited with having popularized
contemporary usage of the term ‘New World Order’ in a series of speeches in 1990
and 1991 to signify that the UN-backed and US-led allied force sent to Kuwait to drive
out invading Iraqi forces was indicative of a very different world than that seen up until
the end of the Cold War. ‘What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big
idea – a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause
to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the
rule of law’ (Bush 1991). With the dark shadow of Cold War lifted there was optimism
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