31. In The Shadow Of Empire: Reflecting On The Political-Strategic Position Of The Small States In Europe And The Caribbean Basin During The Cold War
- Author:
- Mitchell Belfer
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
- Institution:
- Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
- Abstract:
- Any evaluation of 20 th century international political and socio - economic engagements inevitably draws heavily on the literature depicting the relations between and within the Cold War blocs. Such cognitive benchmarking has become so extensive that even the earth - shattering World Wars, which preceded US - Soviet brinkmanship, have been sewn together to the Cold War so as to produce a meta - narrative as a means of understanding the dynamics of international relations themselves. For instance, WWI has not merely entered the history books for what it produced; it has also come to be seen as producing the right conditions for Russia's communist revolution and the US's rise to inherit the position of Western leadership — two necessary prequels to the half century of Cold War. But not before these two ideologically opposed blocs join forces to rid the world of fascism and the German pivot in European affairs. WWII has come to represent three chapters in the story of civilisation: the story of genocide (re: Nazi Germany's quest to exterminate world Jewry), the story of non - nationalistic secular ideological struggles and the story of power beyond the pale of power (re: the nuclearisation of power). In other words, WWII has also, largely, been included as a necessary chapter to the Cold War. And certainly it was. Without WWII it is difficult to imagine how, or if, the USSR would have driven west and occupied Central Europe, whether the West European states would not have deployed East, if the US would have deepened its engagements to Europe or any number of dynamics would have unfolded. It is clear that the Cold War is a defining period of international relations history.
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Europe, Soviet Union, Germany, and Caribbean