Principal pillars of cold war

Introduction

The cold war was a moment of political tension between The united states and the Soviet

union which resulted from the enmity between the two nations. Now the Soviets, also

referred to as the united social soviet republic had a lot of grievances against the united states

one of them including the delay of the Americans in delaying entering the second world war

and also the failure of the united states of recognizing the Soviet Union as part of the

international community. This as a result angered the Soviet Union and strained their

relationship with the Americans. The two nations therefore fell into a period of tense

rebellion against one another. This led to the world to be divided into two distinct boundaries,

one supporting the Americans and Russia. There was virtually no exchange in terms of trade

between the two countries because of the alleged stand off. The then ruler of Russia, Josef

Stalin, held a great grudge with the president of the united states. The cold war can also be

mentioned as a war of ideologies as the two super power nations brought in communist

ideology by the soviet union where the government was to control all the monetary and

material resources of is citizens and the capitalist ideology by the united states which

advocated for freedom of people in producing goods and services without restrictions and

people decided where to live and work. These two nations thereby planned to spread their

ideas all over the world in a race to influence the other nations in their ideologies. The cold

war was centred on various principal pillars by the nations;

1. Defending the homeland

This was a policy introduced by the American s to first protect the physical location of the

Americans before embarking into defending its territories during the cold war. This was first

initiated by the then president of the united states George Washington and John Adams who
founded the creation of The department of national security and homeland defence to counter

any threats of terrorism within the united states and keep the land safe generally. The roles of

these departments are very closely linked to what is today called homeland security in the

united states which was to secure the physical location of the United states. The united states

radically chose this pillar because of the history of wars it has been facing since it was

founded by its first president. The homeland defence back then was very serious and not as it

is referred today because American had enemies preying on them on all directions. Right

from history, American have been attacked. This is because of its physical location that its

right in the middle of two oceans with several super powers around it like the Soviet Union.

Example, the united states army previously led campaigns before civilization to chase away

the American natives who resisted its expansion into those territories. During the WW1 The

united states created its first intelligence agencies that were dedicated to examining any

internal threats that may be available within the united states and stamping it before it can

spread further. This organization was the disbanded and the (FBI)federal Bureau of

investigations took over the control of this responsibility and examine these cases of

espionage. Another example of some of he efforts taken by the united states to promote its

security is that in 1924, the united states Congress established the US Border control Patrol to

regulate the entry of immigrants into the united states of America through its border. This

was to control the entry of people into the united states during and after the world war as

people may enter and harm its citizens later. To beef up the homeland security, the united

states also established a military based intelligence community on a worldwide network of

global surveillance capabilities so that they could prevent any surprise attacks like the pearl

harbour type. In 1961, NORAD also know as the North American Aerospace Défense

Command (NORAD) was established to provide detection, validation, and warning of any

attack against North America whether by plane, missiles, or by space vehicles. In 1983, The
then president of the united states, President Ronald Reagan initiated efforts to develop a

ballistic-missile defence system (Paul D. Miller, 2012). This was established to counter the

threats of nuclear attacks from the Soviet Union who had already established a nuclear plant

in the race to the territory having the strongest arms and weapons. Every stage of developing

homeland security was more heightened as a result of the threats from the American enemies.

These strategies are still active and running up to date and have been improved to suit todays

threats like the cyber security threats and others like the impending terrorists threats every

now and again. In response to these new threats the united states has come up with various

new defence measures to make sure these threats against its citizens are not fulfilled by

coming up with border and port control and cyber security measures For example, the United

States protects against terrorist organization like the al-Qaeda who may seek to be in physical

violence with the American citizens on its soil and by enforcing border security and enforcing

strict border control rules, the united states tries to curb all of these conflicts.

2. Maintaining the balance of power

This is a pillar that was initiated by the united states of America. The pillar advocate for

pursue of interlocking and suited strategies of balancing and its engagement with the great

powers like the Russian Britain and German forces. This rivalry of great powers is a feature

that has lasted for quite sometimes in the global politics. Right from history of the first

decade of existence of the united states, it advocated for a balance between the United

Kingdom and France. The united states created an alliance with the French against the British

in order to gain its independence but then created talks again with Britain on the other side

which was in violation of its French agreement. Presidents Washington and Adams then

distanced the country from France by introducing a Proclamation of Neutrality (1793),

signing the Jay Treaty with the British (1794), and fighting a small naval ‘quasi-war’ with

France (1798–1800) to maintain its right to neutrality. Presidents Jefferson, Madison and
Monroe then joined France and they banned the British trade (1807) in a dispute over neutral

rights, which then contributed to another war (1812–15) with the United Kingdom over the

Britain’s impressments of American sailors. The balance of power struggle by the united

states went on with consistent goal being to prevent either European power from gaining

unacceptable influence over American interests and its independence. During the twentieth

century, the united states participated in two wars plus one cold war. The goal was to prevent

the material possessions of half the world from being into the hands of a rival. Between the

Second World War and the Cold War the United States exchanged certain key enemies and

partners, first allying with the Soviets against the Germans and Japanese before then allying

with the Germans and Japanese (and others) against the Soviets in a typical example of power

balancing.

Coming to the unadventurous cold war itself, there arose power struggle between the two

outstanding powers of the mid-twentieth century. It did not vary greatly from the conflicts of

the multipolar world that heralded it, except in the number of those who were participating in

it. Indeed, the apparently bipolar Cold War competition was strongly influenced by the

independent initiatives of other powers. The People’s Republic of China was originally

associated with the Soviet Union because of their shared communist ideology. The unites

states swapped enemies and allies fought against the United States in the Korean War (1950–

53) and attained nuclear weapons in 1964. The Chinese not wanting to be a Soviet Union

satellite and mistrustful following the border clashes in 1969, shifted away from the Soviet

Union and towards the United States following President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1972. This

move that was done by the Chinese altered the global balance of power on a global scale

towards the united states of America. Likewise, India and the Non-Aligned Movement

(NAM) embodied a substantial proportion of states in the international system that hoped to

resist pressures to join either side, compelling the superpowers to vie for the developing
world’s loyalties through aid, investment and sometimes coercion. The movement thus

formed of balance of power by the Global South against the North. A foreign procedure

based on power balancing may strike some scholars and policymakers as out of touch or out-

dated. It has been trendy in security studies to argue that conventional war is dead, great-

power conflict is over, competition now occurs through trade instead of war, ‘wars amongst

the people’ constitute the new face of war, and non-state actors define world politics. These

intellectual fashions tend to take a small spectacle, such as the rise of non-state players, and

over-generalise them as if they were the overriding feature of the system. This tendency has

led analysts to vastly under-appreciate the persistence of old-fashioned, predictable, state-

centric threats, particularly great-power rivalry and conventional war. An example of Russia,

still one of the world’s leading dictatorships. While Russia no longer claims to be leading a

global revolution to overthrow all capitalist states, modern Russia cannot be said to have

responsive or peaceful intentions towards the United States and its associates. Russia’s

contemporary ideology, which could be described as authoritarian and nationalist, mixed with

a soft imperialism, remains highly concerning. Russian officials have been fairly clear about

their intent to balance against the United States, oppose unipolarity and revive Russia’s

domination over its near-abroad. The unites states and Russian interests clash most clearly in

Eastern Europe, particularly the Baltics and Ukraine. Russia was probably responsible for a

cyber-attack on Estonia, a NATO ally, in 2007, and in 2008 it invaded Georgia, which had

been promised future NATO membership. As President Vladimir Putin’s popularity at home

wear down, it is not hard to imagine him allowing a foreign catastrophe to spiral dangerously

to win nationalist recognitions.

China clearly poses a greater threat today than during the Cold War. Sino-US relations went

through two stages during the Cold War. From 1950 to 1972, the United States and China

were declared enemies and fought to a very bloody deadlock in the Korean War, but the
evident hostility was less dangerous because of China’s crippling economic weakness. From

1972 to 1989, the countries’ mutual aggression lessened considerably, but at the same time

China’s power began to grow rapidly as it liberalised its economy and reorganised its armed

forces. So far, the United States has never faced a China that was both powerful and hostile,

but China’s economic and military modernisation has clearly made it one of the great powers

of the world today. Among the Chinese qualifications for this grade are its nuclear weapons,

a ballistic-missile aptitude and aspirations for a blue-water navy. Chinese policymakers, like

their Russian counterparts, continue to speak openly about their commitment to oppose

American unipolarity, revise the global order, and command a superior share of global

prestige and influence. There are several flashpoints where their revisionist aims might lead

to a militarised crisis with the United States or its allies, including Taiwan,8 the Korean

Peninsula and the South China Sea (Routledge, 2008)

Moreover, US relations with China are prone to regular downward spikes, as during the

Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the 1996 Taiwan crisis, the EP3 episode in 2001 (in

which an American signals-intelligence aircraft crashed with a Chinese fighter jet), and the

anti-satellite missile test in 2007, to say nothing of yearly US weapons sales to Taiwan. A

militarised crisis with China is more likely today, and would carry bigger consequences, than

at almost any point since the Korean War.

Besides Russia and China, there are now up to three more nuclear tyrannies hostile to the

United States. North Korea and Iran are confirmed opponents of the United States, while

Pakistan is tottering on the brink. Pakistan and North Korea tested nuclear weapons in 1998

and 2006, respectively, and Iran is almost certainly going to develop a nuclear-weapons

ability. All three states have invested in medium- and far ballistic missiles that could hit

united states allies; and, despite the failure of North Korea’s recent missile test, the United

States must take seriously the possibility that

any of the three countries will soon be able to produce missiles that could hit the US

homeland. Additionally, because of their technological inferiority and absolute conventional

weakness, the Iranians, North Koreans and Pakistanis have worked to level the competition

by investing in unconventional and terrorist capabilities. Power balancing is thus an essential

and vital instrument in the united states policy instrument. The goal of American balance-of-

power efforts should be to prevent any of the rival states from acquiring enough power to

impend the existence of the United States, its allies or the liberal world order. In practice, that

means, firstly, forestalling an Axis-like alliance between any two (or more) of them, such as a

Russo-Chinese or Sino-Pakistani alliance. Such a blend, while unlikely at the moment, would

seriously compromise the United States’ freedom of action and threaten the liberal world

order. Secondly, and more relevant for day-to-day policymaking, it means preventing any of

the nuclear absolutisms from unlawfully expanding their influence through conquest,

subversion or intimidation.

The nuclear autocracies have long records of pursuing such guidelines, including Russia’s

invasion of Georgia in 2008 and its use of gas supplies to bully Ukraine; China and North

Korea’s regular intimidating of Taiwan and South Korea respectively; and Iran and

Pakistan’s continual support for militants and deputations across the Middle East and South

Asia. Allowing these policies to succeed would reward aggression, thereby ‘constructing’ an

global system in which aggressors accrue power and eventually govern non-aggressors. The

clear solution is to construct a different kind of system, one in which aggression is met with

collective struggle. Thus, the United States and its allies must stabilize against efforts by the

nuclear autocracies to expand their influence. The most cost-effective means by which the

United States seeks to balance the other great powers is by upholding alliances with fellow

democracies around the world. America balances Russia through NATO, and balances China
and North Korea through a network of alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New

Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan.

These alliances anchor regional steadiness and threaten unacceptable cost to Russia, China

and North Korea for any aggression or imperialism. Both sets of alliances are deep and long-

lasting, and maintaining and deepening them has rightly been, and should continue to be, part

of normal business for the US national security establishment. Both, however, face

challenges. NATO has been watered down by taking on ever more missions, including cyber

defence, counter-piracy and peacekeeping, and weakened by irregular burden-sharing in out-

of-area operations in Afghanistan and Libya. It risks drifting into an all-purpose talk-shop

whose chief effect will be to grant the positive glow of multilateralism on American

initiatives. Refocusing the Alliance on its main mission – European defence – should be an

importance.

Meanwhile, the Pacific patchwork of criss-crossing bilateral and trilateral treaties is

uncoordinated and suffers from disunity, a potential weakness in America’s position in that

theatre. American policymakers might explore the possibility of formalising a general Pacific

Treaty Organisation (PTO) to mirror the North Atlantic one. That would require overcoming

understandable historical grievances between, for example, the South Koreans and Japanese,

which, as the example of post-war Franco-German rapprochement illustrates, would be

difficult but not impossible.

The American position in the Middle East and South Asia is punier than in Europe or East

Asia. Washington has moderately fewer reliable allies there with which to partner against Iran

and, potentially, Pakistan. Israel is a rich, powerful and democratic Major Non-NATO Ally in

the Middle East, but the US–Israeli alliance has limited freedom of action and regional

influence because of Israel’s poor relations with the Arab world; and despite Israel’s
technological dominance it may be simply too small to contribute meaningfully to a major war

with Iran. Saudi Arabia might be willing and able to gather a coalition of Arab states to

cooperate with the United States against Iran, but the kingdom may be an unreliable partner:

its refusal to liberalise at home risks political uncertainty, while its inability to differentiate

away from an obsolescing natural resource risks economic stagnation. Almost a half-dozen

other states in the region – Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Kuwait and Bahrain – are designated US

allies, but are unlikely to be able or willing to anchor a regional strategy. Indeed, the usefulness

of any of the Arab states as a US ally is increasingly questionable considering the declining

importance of the Middle East and regional states’ general refusal to side openly with

Washington on any major issue owing to their fear of their own populations.

If the Arab Spring proves to be the hoped-for dawn of tolerance in the Middle East – something

that remains to be seen – it may be a benefit for the United States’ ability to secure its interests

in the region. President Obama was right when he (somewhat defiantly) told the Arab world in

May 2011 that ‘we support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the

freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule

of law; and the right to choose your own leaders – whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus;

Sanaa or Tehran.’ That is why, Obama said, ‘it will be the policy of the United States to

promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy’.10 Unfortunately,

it is uncertain what tools the United States has to affect the course of the Arab Spring aside

from rhetorical support, civil-society training programmes and elections monitoring. Having

used up its political capital on the war in Libya, the United States and its Western allies seem

unable to muster a coalition to intervene in the much more strategically important war in Syria.

For now, at least, the key event in the Middle East for a generation is principally beyond the

United States’ influence. Washington’s partner in South Asia is, ostensibly, Pakistan, but

Islamabad has clearly been diffident to support US interests in the region and, in fact, has often
acted against them. Elements within Pakistan have encouraged the production of weapons of

mass destruction, while others continue to back militant and terrorist groups and to play an

unhelpful role in Afghanistan. Nor is it clear that the civilian government that took power in

2008 has full control over Pakistan’s foreign and defence policy. In 2011 US–Pakistan relations

worsened sharply ensuing the shooting death of two Pakistanis by an American contractor in

January, the unilateral American raid against Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in

May, and the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO air-strike on a border outpost in

November The American strategy of relying on supposedly moderate or pro-US elements

within Pakistan is increasingly questionable.

To hedge against a possible collapse of support for the United States within the Pakistani

government and the latter’s slide into open hostility, Washington should seek to diversify its

position in South Asia by cultivating and strengthening ties with other states in the region. For

example, Washington’s close relationship with Kabul – newly formalised by the US–Afghan

Strategic Partnership Agreement and Afghanistan’s designation as a Major Non-NATO Ally –

and its growing ties with New Delhi suggest that the United States has alternatives for basing

key facilities and sharing intelligence. Afghanistan, for one, would be just as good a location

for basing assets to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance of militant networks in South

Asia, and a greater one for basing assets oriented towards Russia and Iran. Bolstering ties with

India, the world’s largest democracy and a rising economic superpower, presents an almost

irresistible wealth of benefits for the United States in both South and East Asia. Democracy

and the great powers A critic may question why the United States should balance only against

the autocratic powers, such as Russia and China, and not the emerging democratic ones,

including India and Brazil. After all, the United States does not have an established alliance

with any of these states and, in the case of India, has a history of cold, aloof relations, if not

outright diplomatic rivalry. Theoretically speaking, in the traditional realist’s view, domestic
politics and ideology do not affect state behaviour, and alliances are formed on the basis of

interest, not belief. If that is true, India’s rise to power could be seen as a potential threat equal

to China’s; and a grand strategy premised on partnering with democracies against autocracies

as dangerously naive and the traditional realist case is overstated, however, and it is not even

clear if realists actually believe it. Stephen Walt, a prominent international relations scholar

and self-proclaimed realist, rightly noted decades ago that states do not balance against raw

power, but against power that they perceive to be threatening. Threat, in turn, comprises in part

a state’s perceived intentions: states that Washington believes have an intention to harm the

United States are a threat; those that lack hostile intent are not a threat. This is a classic case of

scholarship confirming common sense.

The United Kingdom is one of the most powerful states in the world today, with one of the

largest economies and most sophisticated technological industrial bases in the world, a blue-

water navy, nuclear weapons and an expeditionary military capability. Yet US policymakers

have not seen a need to balance against Great Britain since the end of the Napoleonic Wars,

rightly believing that the United Kingdom does not have hostile intentions towards the United

States. What realists miss is that policymakers understand ideological solidarity to be a signal

for friendly intent, and thus common interests. US–UK relations are an example of the

democratic peace theory in action: democracies do not fight each other in part because they see

the world and define their interests in similar ways and apply their domestic norms of peaceful

dispute resolution to international relations between democracies. Therefore, what is true about

US–UK relations can be said about democratic powers generally. Policymakers interpret power

as threatening or non-threatening depending on whether they believe it is rightly or wrongly

wielded; that is, according to the ideology that governs its exercise. Illegitimate power is

threatening, while legitimate power is safe. Policymakers’ definition of what counts as an

‘interest’ or what constitutes a ‘threat’ is itself partly shaped by ideology. American

policymakers thus believe, with good reason, that Indian power is in the safe, legitimate, just

hands of the democratically elected Indian government, while Chinese power is in the

untrustworthy hands of the unaccountable, autocratic Communist Party dictatorship. That is

why American policymakers understand Indian power to be safer than Chinese, and why they

should seek to partner with India but balance against China. Nor is this a uniquely American

or democratic inclination: many regime types tend to promote their own system of government

and ideology to increase their influence in other states. Catholic and Protestant powers did so

during the Wars of Religion, as did France during the Napoleonic Wars and the Soviet Union

in Eastern Europe after the Second World War.

Iran has attempted to do the same in its neighbourhood since 1979, long before the United

States and United Nations undertook democratic peacebuilding in the post-Cold War era to

spread global liberalism. As I claimed in my earlier article, ‘the growth of democracy abroad

alters the balance of power in the United States’ favour’.16 It does so by producing new

democratic allies. The first wave of democratisation (in Western Europe in the late nineteenth

century) converted the United States’ original great power rivals, the United Kingdom and

France, into allies during the First World War. The democratisation of post-war Germany and

Japan, and their conversion into allies of the United States during the Cold War, achieved the

same thing in the twentieth century. Later, the spread of democracy in Eastern Europe after the

Cold War again expanded the list of American allies, many of whom contributed to the

multinational coalition against al- Qaeda after 2001.

3. Do no harm

A warning note is in order. In pursuing a constructive balance of power, American

policymakers must be on guard lest they create the very problem they seek to avert: an anti-

American alliance among two or more of the nuclear autocracies. Too aggressive a bearing
towards America’s rivals could push them into one another’s arms. Balancing, understood

rightly, tolerates and accepts other powers’ legitimate interests. American policy towards the

Soviet Union, the most powerful and overtly intimidating enemy the United States ever faced,

never aimed at forced regime change, and American policymakers accurately sought at almost

all costs to avoid war rather than provoke it. In some cases, the United States even pursued

creative engagement with its rivals, as when skilful American diplomacy helped peel China

away from the Soviet Union and facilitate its rapprochement with the United States, an example

of a classic divide-and-conquer approach to great-power politics

 References

1. Paul D. Miller, ‘American Grand Strategy and the Democratic Peace’, Survival, vol.

54, no. 2, April–May 2012, pp. 49–76.

2. For a broadly similar conception of five pillars of US strategy, see Peter Feaver,

‘American Grand Strategy at the Crossroads’, in Richard Fontaine and Kristin M. Lord

(eds), America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration (Washington DC:

Center for a New American Security, May 2012), pp. 57–70.

3. David Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, in Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph

A. Maiolo (eds), Strategic Studies: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 326–

41

4. For a longer exposition of this argument, see Paul D. Miller, ‘Be Afraid’,Foreign

Affairs, vol. 91, no. 4, July– August 2012, pp. 146–51.