The Order and Its Two Shifts

The international political order is the pattern of power, rules and relationships that governs how states behave at a given moment. Since 1945 that pattern has shifted twice over.

Two shifts, one unfinished transition. 1945–1991 · Bipolar (Rivalry of the USA and the USSR — the Cold War) → 1991– · Unipolar moment (Collapse of the USSR leaves the USA sole superpower) → Today · Diffusion (Power moves from the trans-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific — multipolarity? new bipolarity? disorder?)

The question that runs through the unit: did the Cold War’s end bring a new order — or a new disorder?

The Cold War: Meaning and Origins

An intense ideological, political and strategic rivalry between the USA and the USSR after the Second World War.

Meaning

• “Cold” because it never escalated into direct military conflict between the two superpowers — yet the whole world was shaped by their competition.
• Term first used by George Orwell (1945) for an “undeclared state of war”; popularised soon after by Walter Lippmann and Bernard Baruch.
• Winston Churchill (1946) gave it its imagery — the division of Europe as an “Iron Curtain”.

Origins

• No single start date; tensions hardened around 1945 as the wartime alliance broke down.
• Post-war shift from a multipolar to a bipolar system dominated by the USA and the USSR.
• Spheres of influence carved out in Europe at Yalta and Potsdam; Germany and Berlin divided into a Soviet-controlled East and a Western-controlled West.

Phases of the Cold War

Four movements, from confrontation to thaw and back to confrontation.

The arc of the rivalry. 1 · 1945–1962 (Confrontation and containment — Berlin, Korea, Suez) → 2 · The Crises (Berlin Wall (1961); Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)) → 3 · Détente (1962/69–79 — Ostpolitik, SALT, Helsinki) → 4 · New Cold War (1979–89 — Afghanistan, Reagan, SDI)

First phase (1945–62): confrontation and containment

• Europe — Berlin Blockade (1948–49): the USSR cut ground access to West Berlin; the Western Berlin Airlift supplied the city — the first major confrontation. Marshall Plan (1948): US aid to rebuild Western Europe; the USSR answered with COMINFORM and the Molotov Plan. NATO (1949): US-led mutual defence pact → the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact (1955). Containment formalised in the Truman Doctrine (1947). Berlin Wall (1961) — the Iron Curtain in concrete.
• Asia — Korean War (1950–53): North Korea crossed the 38th parallel with Soviet approval; the USA intervened under the UN banner; Mao Zedong sent Chinese troops to aid the North; stalemate at the 38th parallel. Vietnam War: rooted in Eisenhower’s fear of the domino effect; the USA formed SEATO (1954).
• Middle East — Suez Crisis (1956): Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal; Britain, France and Israel intervened; the USA and the USSR pressed them to withdraw — exposing the declining weight of the old European powers. The USA formed CENTO.
• Latin America — Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): Soviet missiles in Cuba brought the world to the brink. Khrushchev sought to protect Fidel Castro and offset US missiles in Turkey. The settlement: the USSR to remove its missiles from Cuba; the USA not to invade Cuba and, secretly, to withdraw its missiles from Turkey.

Cambridge histories of the Cold War read these episodes as proof that the superpowers were willing to fight through proxy wars (Odd Arne Westad), and that Berlin and Cuba dramatised the era’s dangers (James G. Hershberg, Douglas Little).

Second phase: the crises

• Followed Stalin’s death (1953) and the rise of Nikita Khrushchev.
• Berlin Crisis (1961): East Germany built the Wall to stop the exodus westward; John F. Kennedy chose not to confront the USSR militarily. Then the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) — the peak of nuclear brinkmanship.

Third phase — Détente (1962/1969–1979)

• A thaw, as both sides recognised the costs of overstretch.
• Charles de Gaulle (France) and Willy Brandt (West Germany) sought better ties with the East; Brandt’s Ostpolitik aimed to normalise relations with East Germany and the USSR.
• Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger pursued détente with the USSR and opened relations with China, working the Sino-Soviet split (Jussi M. Hanhimäki).
• Helsinki Accords (1975): the West acknowledged Soviet control over Eastern Europe; the USSR accepted human-rights commitments.
• Arms control: SALT talks and the ABM Treaty.
• Détente was partial — proxy wars continued (1971 India–Pakistan war, Arab–Israeli wars).

The Sino-Soviet split

• USSR–PRC relations deteriorated in the late 1960s over ideology and strategy, producing border clashes (Zhang Shu Guang).
• The split opened the door to US engagement with China, shifting the balance of power (Sergey Radchenko).

New Cold War (1979–1989)

• Triggered by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), read by the USA as expansionism.
• Jimmy Carter imposed sanctions; the USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
• The fall of South Vietnam (1975) had already signalled détente’s failure and raised US domestic pressure to confront Soviet influence (Fredrik Logevall).
• Ronald Reagan took a hardline stance; his rhetoric and military build-up were read by the USSR as aggressive (Beth A. Fischer). Reagan combined two pressures — backing Islamic fighters against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and launching a renewed nuclear arms race.
• The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the Malta Summit marked the end.

The Arms Race during the Cold War

Cause and casualty of the rivalry at once.

Definition

An arms race is the competitive acquisition and advancement of military capability among two or more powerful states.

The nuclear race

• The US use of the atomic bomb in 1945 opened the nuclear age and bred mistrust; the USSR tested its first bomb in 1949.
• The missile gap perception of the 1950s drove US spending.
• Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI / “Star Wars”), proposed by Reagan in 1983 — a space-based missile defence. Never realised, yet the USSR read it as a major threat and the race intensified.

Other examples

• UK–Germany (pre-WWI): naval race; the launch of HMS Dreadnought (1906) set off rapid expansion and fed the tensions behind the First World War.
• India–Pakistan: continuing missile competition and a persistent nuclear standoff in South Asia.

Assessment

• Francis J. Gavin: the race heightened tension but also built a deterrent that prevented direct superpower conflict.
• On balance the effects are negative — heavy economic cost, debt and dependency (worst for arms importers), heightened hostility, and a measurable rise in the risk of war. The strain of the race contributed to the collapse of the USSR, leaving the USA as sole superpower.

Interpretations of the Cold War

Who is to blame? Three schools, and the standard three-mark opening of any Cold War answer.

The Arms Race, Nuclear Order and Disarmament

Nuclear weapons still shape power politics, alliances and regional security after the Cold War.

The persistence of deterrence

• Thomas Schelling: coercion as the credible “power to hurt”.
• Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a “balance of terror”, resting on second-strike capability and the nuclear triad, and extended to allies (Japan, South Korea) through extended deterrence.
• Kenneth Waltz: nuclear weapons helped keep the Cold War “cold” — a logic many realists apply to great-power restraint after 1991.
• Henry Kissinger: reliance on deterrence assumes rational actors, which is unsafe.
• Morton Kaplan’s “unit veto” system projects a world where each actor can destroy every other.

Disarmament

Definition

Disarmament is the reduction or elimination of military forces and weapons through cooperation, treaties and oversight. Four components: reduction in quantity; formal negotiation and treaties; focus on weapons and tools; an oversight body. The United Nations has mediated disarmament since the 1960s through resolutions, committees and monitoring.

Armaments make war physically possible and politically probable; disarmament can reduce tension and redirect spending to human welfare. The Arms Trade Treaty seeks to prevent transfers that enable rights violations.

The instruments

John Simpson: the non-proliferation agenda has not worked sufficiently after the 1990s — Iran and North Korea continue to pursue capability; a universal, verifiable and non-discriminatory process is needed for non-proliferation in the short term and disarmament in the long term.

The contemporary nuclear order

• Renewed nuclear competition between the USA and Russia, both modernising arsenals.
• New domains complicate the old idea of an arms race: hypersonic missiles, cyber capabilities and AI for defence.
• China’s expanding arsenal adds a third major actor; regional races persist — India–Pakistan; Iran–Saudi Arabia in West Asia.

Why a nuclear-free world remains distant

• Moral authority has limited effect on states like Iran and North Korea.
• Great-power unanimity is fragile — China has no plans to scrap its weapons.
• Technical verification of warhead elimination is hard.
• A perverse risk: disarmament could turn conventional wars nuclear again, and a weakened US nuclear umbrella could push Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Gulf states to reconsider their non-nuclear status (George Perkovich and James Acton).

The Korean Peninsula

• North Korea is a self-declared nuclear power; ICBMs able to reach the US mainland shift the regional balance and undermine the perceived invulnerability of the USA; extended deterrence loses credibility as Seoul and Tokyo doubt the umbrella and move toward self-reliance.
• “The North Korea Paradox” (Max Fisher): US relative strength is paradoxically a weakness — knowing it would lose a full conflict, North Korea’s only option is rapid escalation to nuclear use, which constrains US choices.
• Singapore Summit (June 2018): the first meeting of sitting US and North Korean leaders; a joint statement on security guarantees, new relations and denuclearisation. Symbolic diplomacy versus substantive progress (Scott Snyder); critics warned symbolism is insufficient without concrete steps (Daryl Kimball, Arms Control Association); no clarity on the actual process of denuclearisation (Sue Mi Terry).
• Collapse: the 2019 Hanoi Summit failed over sanctions sequencing; North Korea resumed missile tests in 2019 (Victor Cha). The summit elevated North Korea’s stature without meaningful concessions, at a cost to US non-proliferation credibility (Bruce Klingner).
• The China factor: the only power able to rein in Pyongyang is China — but US–China rivalry makes Beijing likely to keep the North as a strategic buffer; recall the earlier failure of the Six-Party Talks.
• Way forward (Frank Aum): a functionalist “peace by pieces” approach — an end-of-war declaration first, then NPT re-entry, IAEA safeguards and CTBT ratification. Incremental denuclearisation, global sanctions and US–China cooperation; all-or-nothing approaches will fail.

Why disarmament has stalled

• The gains to recall: Cold War strategic parity produced SALT, the ABM Treaty, the hotline and later START — the largest arms-control reductions in history; the non-aligned helped bring about the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963).
• The reversal: renewed US–Russia competition and modernisation; New START undermined as it nears expiry; great powers taking sides in regional conflicts.
• Regional conflict as disruptor: the Russia–Ukraine war has dismantled the very mechanisms that enabled détente — parity, dialogue and institutions — making fresh cooperation harder than in the 1970s. West Asia: Iran’s programme, Saudi–Iran tensions and external arms supplies; Israel treats Iran’s ambitions as existential. South Asia: the India–Pakistan standoff and periodic missile tests.
• The balance: bloc alignment and treaty erosion have jeopardised past progress, but India’s No First Use and credible minimum deterrence show that restraint remains possible; a verifiable, non-discriminatory, cooperative framework is the way forward.