The inevitability of the Cold War

The other day I read a book review about the Cold War. The book was entitled “For The Soul Of Mankind” by Melvyn P. Leffler. I’ll comment on what I learned from the review.

Leffler’s premise is that the Cold War, which existed between the Soviet Union and the United States for over forty years, didn't necessarily have to happen or last as long as it did. It ended in 1989 with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. He argues that it was not inevitable, “that it could have been avoided at the outset and stopped on at least three occasions before Mikhail Gorbachev.” Nevertheless, I think history made it inevitable and necessary.

As the book reviewer noted, two themes underline the Cold War, the fear of a reunified Germany, especially among the Soviet leaders, and the mission that the leaders of both the Soviets and Americans felt they had, “to save mankind through the triumph of [their] ideology, whether that was liberal democracy or Communism”.

The book has an appropriate title for an event that propelled the world to a more peaceful and secure placed. Prior to the Cold War and for much of its duration the world was a tense and divided place. But the book's title, “For the souls of Mankind”, suggests this was a period of progress and healing, with the conversion of souls working to defuse a potential dangerous global situation. During the Cold War souls and attitudes were changed, making the world a more harmonious and peaceful place. However, the way Leffler writes it, about it not necessarily being an inevitability or that it might have ended sooner, shows a lack of appreciate for this event and its duration. For instance, if it hadn't lasted as long as it did it couldn't have converted and won over as many souls as it did to make the world a more peaceful place. Winning souls is a time-consuming endeavor and the Cold War, by not being hot, afforded the time for leveler heads and reason to eventually prevail.

Leffler mentions the fear of a reunified Germany as one big reason for the Cold War. Well, Germany eventually did reunify but only after the collapse of communism and when it was clear that Germany no longer posed a threat to the rest of the world as it once did. Accepting the reunification of Germany was certainly a soul-converting event that couldn't have happened if the Cold War had not afforded the years needed to digest and convince people that a unified Germany was no longer a threat.

I think there was another reason why the Cold War was inevitable and lasted as long as it did. It had an important mission to accomplish, if you will, that of defining the political and economic system that would run the world in the future. The Cold war, in other words, was necessary in order to fashion out what governing system would eventually govern all of humankind, whether it be liberal democracy or communism. A unified, standard system of human governance and organization was essential because, as history observed, humankind was becoming more homogenous and interdependent. Under such circumstance two compete forms of governance would have been inefficient and self-defeating. Also, this period was a time for the world to work out still outstanding issues that plagued the world, such as the illusiveness of world peace. WWII had not completely eliminated the desire for wars between nations. The Cold War was a necessary event and a stopgap period in which the world could learn to divest itself of its still war like instincts. The standoff, tense but ostensibly peaceful, that existed between the two nuclear power, the Soviets and Americans, gave the world the opportunity and breathing space to develop and entrench mutually peaceful agencies like the United Nations.

The Cold War kept a world war from becoming hot. After the Second World War there were those in America, staunch anti communists, who thought that America should militarily engage the Soviet Union because they saw its newfound power a threat to democracy and America’s influence in the world. Fortunately, there were those in the administration who were more pragmatic and realized that this stance would inevitably lead to another great world war, this time with the prospects of having no world left. The pragmatists won and instead developed a policy of containment that would contain the Soviet Union’s expansionist ambitions around the world. This policy did contribute to the length of the Cold War because the Soviet Union was just as determined to carry on and wasn’t going to be put off in their expansion efforts by U.S. policy. Another thing that made the Cold War a cold war is that both sides were basically matched in their nuclear capability and their going to war would have been a no win situation for everybody.

During the Cold War liberal democracy developed into the preeminent governing system it is today. The competition it got from communism during those years only strengthened it while showing communism to be the fraudulent and incapable system it was. During those years America tried harder to resolve its racist problems because of the antagonism it got from the Soviets in showing the U.S. as a racist nation, as inferior and undemocratic in its human relations. Liberal democracy in turn, through the economic development that was occurring in Western Europe, was really contrasting itself against the much lower living standards of Eastern Europe that communism offered. During this time it became quite clear that the Soviet Empire had to use force to keep its citizens in line whereas the liberal democracy gained in stature and support by being an open society, which required no force to keep it so. During the Cold War the West made it abundantly clear to skeptics around the world that liberal democracy was the superior system. It had sustainability, whereas the communist economic system, it became obvious, was inherently fraught with waste, inefficiencies, ineptitude, corrupt and unsustainiblity.

Alexandre Kojeve, a Hegelian philosopher, speculated that communism and liberal democracy rivaled each other to determine the nature of the system of governance that would eventually govern all humankind. He may have imagined a homogeneous human race somewhat the globalism we see today, in need of a standard, unifying governance. Moreover, in a complex, tightly woven world like was emerging two competing and feuding forms of governance would have complicated things and hindered progress. The Cold War afforded liberal democracy the stage for convincing the world it was the right system, which could also do things communism promised to deliver but couldn’t. Communism couldn’t address people’s needs and aspiration. Liberal democracy not only proved that it could, and provide economic sustainability for the modern world, but it also could deliver on the freedom and recognition that all people of world desired and wanted.

Political freedom

Political freedom has certainly developed from economic liberalization. This is how it came about in America, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Political freedom is also slowly emerging in China due to growing economic freedom. In Russia and China, after the fall of communism, people are allowed to travel and move around freely. This mobility adds to people's political freedom because they become more conscious of things, gaining an awareness that later translates into thinking and the deliberative process that democracy so much depends on.

Ironically, blacks in America got their freedom mostly from economic development. Blacks on plantations were slowly replaced with farm machinery because it cost less to maintain than slave labor. Blacks then moved to the factories in the north that were booming and needed labor. This contributed to their emancipation because they were now making real money and buying property. With property in hand blacks gained recognition and respect in the community, thus in time acquiring a political voice, because, for one thing, they paid taxes.

In China economic development has improved communications and thus individual involvement in political affairs. The growth of cell phone use has challenged the party line and held governments there accountable. One instance occurred with the outbreak of SARS. The government's line to world health organizations was that SARS was not a problem in China. But individuals saw things differently, that SARS was a growing health problem, and were able to communicate this message to the outside world, thus forcing the Chinese authorities to seriously address the problem. This event and the response to it be the government has chipped away a little more at China's political authoritarianism.

This is why I say humankind develops and progress through perverse means. Logic and reason dictates that freedom and respect should come to people without question. It should be sacrosanct. But as we know things are backwards, people have to fight for it and use material means, like property and wealth to achieve it. This emancipation of people was once labeled "dialectical materialism".

Don't believe it when people say economics is irrelevant. Not only does this discipline put food in our mouths, roofs over our heads and cloths on our backs, but it also has the power to politically emancipate.

The economic axiom

Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post questioned, in an article, the old axiom that economic liberalization leads to democracy. I think it eventually does.

The idea that economic freedom leads to democracy first found life in the U.S., before it was the U.S. The axiom started in New Amsterdam, which is now New York. It was the governor of the then Dutch colony, Peter Stuyvesant, who, in the early 17th century, made economic activity the institution of freedom it is today. He made economic activity the religion of America, as a way to neutralize the religious divisions that existed in those days. Up to that point religious differences were constraining people’s freedoms, mainly because of the imposition of the founding religion, the Quakers, on the other religions. The removal of such a barrier unleashed economic activity and gave people a freedom they never had before. This newfound freedom gave people a voice, which later translated into political freedom. This too was the birth of religious freedom and the secular state America is today. And as most of us know, without secularism real democracy is not possible.

It is not so much that Stuyvesant was aware that religion and religious feuding was constraining economic development in the New World. Perhaps at the time it wasn’t. Nevertheless, in his wisdom, and that of his employer, the Dutch East Indies Company, he used economics activity to muzzle religious fervor. Religious tolerance is something he had learned in the old country, the Netherlands, which at the time was the most advanced and tolerant nation in Europe. He picked economics to be the religion of the New World, as the common denominator all could subscribe to. There was no alternative.

Krauthammer questions this axiom because economic liberalization has not helped in democratizing China and Russian, two countries which otherwise have pretty healthy economic activity. People in those two countries are essentially free to own property, consume what they want and be mobile. However, the problem is that other institutions, which help turn economic freedom into political freedom, have either not developed or have not kept pace. For instance, the freedom of the press that holds governments accountable and at arms length has not developed sufficiently enough. Neither have the laws that protect individual rights; people there have little or no recourse if treated unfairly economically or politically. Also, there still isn't the feeling of freedom among the people of those nations. They have to learn how to feel free because it is something they are not used to, because they have been denied it for a long time.

Krauthammer mentioned that America and its allies were successful in instilling democracy in Germany, Japan and South Korea. He is making a comparison here, to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where U.S. influence has had little impact in encouraging the development of democracy. But he doesn't stop to think that democracy took hold in those countries precisely because they were first industrial nations. Workers in those nations had a stake in the industrialization of those nations and participated directly in it. They developed unions and similar institution that counterbalance and challenged governments. In time the citizens of those countries leveraged that participation into more individual rights. Industrialization in those countries gave people a voice and the leverage because without them industrialization could not have continued. Industrialization also created wealth for these workers which in tern they invested in property, further enhancing their stake in their countries and their prospects for more democracy.

It is interesting, though, how capitalism and the freedom of individual economic activity have taken hold in Russia and China in comparison to the Muslim world. The economic dynamics are totally different. I think the difference has to do with what happen under communism in those two countries. Communism discouraged and band religion. When communism collapsed religion did not exist as a hindrance to individual economic activity as it has done in the Muslim world. In Russian and China men and women equally participate in economics. In creating secular states communism readied countries for individual economic participation, which one day will lead to political emancipate.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. made this cleaver observation: "Democracy is impossible without private ownership because private property - resources beyond the arbitrary reach of the state - provides the only secure basis for political opposition and intellectual freedom."

I think that observation, with what occurred in Germany, Japan and South Korea provides ample evidence to the axiom that economic liberalization eventually leads to democracy. Democratization is slowly occurring in Russia and China because people there are becoming wealthier and individual property owners.