Peace and Security Review, Vol.1 No. 2 - International Centre for ...

S. Mahmud Ali Post-Cold War Great Power Security Dynamics 27
Peace and Security Review
Vol.1, No.2, Second Quarter, 2008, pp.27-47
Post-Cold War Great Power Security
Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific Region
S. Mahmud Ali *
I. INTRODUCTION
The end of the Cold War and the coterminous implosion of the Soviet Union
in the early l990s marked a dramatic transition at the global strategic ‘centre.’
The Cold War, with its danger of superpower nuclear deterrence always
lying on a knife-edge with each party ⎯ the USA and the USSR ⎯ seeking to
gain a little unilateral advantage and generating that extra frisson for members
of the Realist school, was a potentially unstable system. There was a constant
risk that either party, perceiving a temporary superiority, could launch a first
strike, thereby destroying the stability born of deterrence, and begin the
uncontrollably escalatory process of global nuclear catastrophe. The fear of
that unacceptable horror at the global centre maintained a measure of ’horrible
stability’ at the core of the security system, but pushed many conflicts to the
periphery, or regions outside the trans-Atlantic heartland of global security
discourse. The sharpness of the nuclear threat and the acute danger it
appeared to represent not only created a whole generation of scholars and an
academic tradition focused on the tiniest detail of the Euro-Atlantic strategic
dynamic, it also provided a structure and lent clarity to the set of objectives
Super- and great-powers could pursue in the periphery without setting fire
to the system, as it were.
The Cold War’s sudden and largely unanticipated end robbed the system
of that acute clarity and bipolar structure. Uncertainty injected fluidity into
* S. Mahmud Ali moved to the academia and media after serving in the Pakistani and
Bangladeshi armies. He spent 1981 studying the ATO-Warsaw pact conventional and
nuclear stand off at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies (RUSI), in London.
After completing post-graduate studies and doctoral research in ‘War Studies’ at King’s
College, London, he published several books on regional and international security affairs
including a recently-concluded trilogy on great power relations focused around US-China
security and strategic interactions. Since 1989, he has been working with the BBC World
Service, serving since 2001 as Editor, Asia-Pacific region.
Vol.1, No.2 2008 pp.27-47