The Cold War was a seminal moment for great power politics, during which the twin superpowers, the US and USSR engaged in a decades-long battle for influence throughout the world. At least, that  is the conventional wisdom regarding this long and tumultuous historical period. In a book talk hosted by  the Yale International Security Studies program on October 20th, Lorenz M. Luthi challenged this narrative that the Cold War was principally a competition between the superpowers. Instead, he argues that we ought to view this period as a time in which both the United States and Soviet Union were largely reacting to developments among middle powers, decolonizing nations, and post-revolutionary regimes. This framework is the centerpiece of Luthi’s new book, Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe. However, Luthi confided during his presentation that his original title was The Cold War Without the Superpowers. This more provocative title helps demonstrate the themes Luthi touched upon in his book, namely the need to question superpower-centric narratives, and incorporate other trends, most notably decolonization, into our understanding of the Cold War. 

Luthi’s approach sits within an ongoing movement to turn away from high-level diplomatic narratives which tend to privilege an American triumphalist narrative. For instance,Paul Thomas Chamberlin’s recent work The Cold War’s Killing Fields suggests that the late 20th century was only “cold” for some countries, while throughout the Middle East and Southeast Asia it was a time of bloody wars, pogroms, and genocidal violence. These new histories of the Cold War therefore challenge us to consider whether the very name “Cold War” is an appropriate characterization for this period. Indeed, Luthi notes that, while 1989 has come to be seen as a watershed moment for many western countries, the international dynamics which would define the post-Cold War era had already been in place since the 1970s in some cases elsewhere in the world. In the Middle East for instance, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat viewed Cold War superpower competition as a hindrance to his efforts to make peace with Israel and grew increasingly convinced he would have to try and ignore the US-Soviet fault line to succeed in his foreign policy goals. Post-revolutionary Iran also rejected the idea of bipolar competition and proposed a new vision for a theocratic world order, the consequences of which still play out in the present day. While, as Luthi was careful to note throughout his talk, this does not mean the superpowers were inconsequential, it complicates our tendency to compartmentalize certain issues as Cold War or post-Cold War. Throughout much of the Middle East and Asia, the battle between Soviet communism and American capitalism took a back seat to questions of how to organize postcolonial society, conflicts of identity, religion, and representation. That these issues were catapulted to international prominence after the collapse of the USSR did not mean that they did not exist before then. Luthi’s arguments in this respect offered a refreshing new take on late 20th century international relations. 

While it is unlikely that the superpower-centric view and terminology of the Cold War will disappear anytime soon, the push led by scholars such as Luthi towards more global scholarship of this period is a welcome one. In particular, it is worthwhile to consider the regions Luthi left out in his talk, most notably Africa and Latin America, which faced similar struggles to define themselves amid ever-present neo-colonial and interventionist threats from the superpowers. Hopefully the attendees at this event and the readers of Cold Wars, Asia, the Middle East, Europe will themselves be inspired to draw upon Luthi’s work and fill in these persistent regional gaps in our understanding of the Cold War.

Written by: Henry Suckow Ziemer, Silliman College ’21

This piece was published as part of our YMUN Pegasus series.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” 

This was the sentiment that struck me as I listened to the opening remarks during a special event at the Friday session of the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF). The focus of the workshop-syle meeting was Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Relative to many of the other goals, the presenters said, SDG 16 had received significantly less attention and funding. Yet despite this apparent lack of interest, achieving peace and justice and crafting strong institutions is essential to the achievement of practically every other development goal. State fragility in particular is a major impediment to obtaining any form of meaningful progress with respect to the SDGs. A combination of factors, from exploitative regimes, inequalities, and armed conflict, contribute to state fragility. According to the Fragile States Index, the majority of the worlds’ countries exhibit symptoms of state fragility to a worrying extent. 

When it comes to peace and stability, the security community may represent an unlikely ally. Too often it seems that a mutually reinforcing wall exists between the theorists and practitioners of international security, and those looking to advance the cause of sustainable development. The former see international institutions as cumbersome and largely ineffective, lacking concrete mechanisms for following through with their grand pronouncements. The latter can often see national militaries as part of the problem, not the solution. Both criticisms are not unfounded, and strike at the heart of very real issues with both the international development and security architectures. However, the isolation between professionals in both disciplines has led to what speakers at the HLPF termed “siloed” discourse, each expert remaining confined to their specific area of focus and not venturing beyond. Siloes are detrimental to progress on the SDGs, which are by their nature cross-cutting and interdisciplinary. Yet there is a burgeoning consensus that the two disciplines enjoy a symbiotic, rather than adversarial relationship. The 2011 World Development Report centered around issues of conflict and security. This report noted that, “no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single United Nations Millennium Development Goal”. Furthermore, Kathrine Sikkink in her book Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century notes that one of the most significant methods for improving human rights compliance is reducing the incidence of armed conflict.

While Sikkink emphasizes the need to restrain foreign interventionist instincts as one method for decreasing violence, it will take a more comprehensive strategy to meaningfully resolve current wars, and prevent the outbreak of new ones. Measures such as reevaluating UN Peacekeeping Operations, increasing funding for transitional justice initiatives in post-conflict states, and supporting professional, accountable security forces in fragile states all represent useful tools to this end. A fundamental first step however, is elevating SDG 16 to begin with. This is an area which the United Nations is uniquely suited. As a high-profile international institution, it can help bridge the gap between security, human rights, and development silos and encourage sharing of best practices and crafting new strategies to safeguard peace. 

This task is daunting, the realm of armed conflict remains one of the most pernicious issues in international politics today. While some promise has come from recent studies which suggest that interstate wars are on the decline, this has been counterbalanced with an uptick in civil wars and insurgencies. While the solution to the ongoing challenge of fragile, failed and fragmented states is not apparent, what is clear is that finding one will require a new way of thinking which can incorporate perspectives from a number of theoretical and practical disciplines. The United Nations has the ability to jump–start such a conversation and raise SDG 16 to the position it deserves, it has a responsibility to do so. 

Written by Henry Ziemer

It is all too easy to view modern international crises as unprecedented or unexpected outbreaks. Or, if an effort is made to trace the historical causes of a hot-button news item, the narrative which emerges tends to be limited in scope and tailored to fit a prefabricated storyline. For this reason, the panel of experts who convened last Friday to discuss the still-unfolding crisis in Venezuela brought a refreshing new perspective on the history of that country, and why the country has fallen into such dire straits in the past few years.

Moderator Blair Nelsen began by correcting the tendency of commentators to almost uniformly begin their narratives of Venezuela’s current woes with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez. The torch was then passed to Dr. Christopher Sabatini who provided a comprehensive walkthrough of the long, slow decline of democracy in Venezuela. While the sheer number of instances was at times intimidating from a newcomer’s perspective, they nevertheless painted a nuanced portrait of how complicated the decline of democracy truly was for Venezuela. From Chavez’s disdain for the country’s “moribund constitution” which he expressed even as he took office under that very document, to the decision of opposition parties not to participate in the 2005 parliamentary elections, to the protests which broke out following the 2017 referendum, it is difficult to identify a single turning point. This contextualized much of the subsequent discussion, which depicted events in Venezuela today, namely the decision of Juan Guaidó and the National Assembly to declare the Maduro government illegitimate, as evolutions, not unprecedented shifts. Against this backdrop, three key points stood out from the discussion that followed.

With respect to recent events, and in particular Guaidó’s claim to be the legitimate representative of the Venezuelan people, Joshua Braver offered a particularly useful analysis of their legal dimensions. Of particular import is Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution which allows the President of the National Assembly to assume the position of head of state if the President is unable to fulfill the functions of their position. Guaidó and his supporters legitimized their declaration largely under Article 233, claiming that Maduro’s breach of trust with the Venezuelan people meant that he can no longer adequately carry out his duties. This interpretation, Braver argued, fails to hold water under any serious legal scrutiny. The article explicitly states that only physical or mental disability, a decision by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, abandonment of office or a popular vote can compel the President to leave. As authoritarian and condemnable as Maduro’s policies may be, Article 233 does not offer a clear pathway to transfer power to the assembly. Nevertheless, its invocation by Guaidó allows him and his party to cover themselves in the trappings of a legal process, a maneuver which has already seen success, the European Union statement which declared Maduro persona non grata even cited it as a cause for their decision. However, more striking than the mere legal debates, was the broader question of democracy, historical memory and the role of the people which was elaborated on by the third panelist, Alejandro Velasco.

Professor Velasco focused on historical memory, or rather the absence of one, in the Venezuelan public sphere. To him, the tendency to operate under narrow time horizons extended not only to global media coverage of Venezuela, but permeated Venezuelan society itself. In a similar fashion to the country’s oil-dominated economy which thrives when prices are high and plunges when they dip, memory of the failures of past democratic experiments is by and large lacking. During watershed moments where the rare opportunity to rework democratic institutions presents itself, the solution, without consultation of history, has been almost uniformly one of greater popular empowerment. This has manifested in another controversial article of the Venezuelan constitution, Article 347 which squarely places the power of the state with the people, providing the Venezuelan citizens with the authority to draft a new constitution should they demand it. But the lesson which has not yet been learned, is that no matter how participatory a constitution may be, in a country lacking proper mechanisms for accountability or checks and balances, these plebiscitary provisions often are the first to go in the establishment of an autocracy. A case in point can be seen in the 2017 referendum held less than two years ago wherein Maduro managed to hold on to power amid a fiercely divided country through a mix of illegal and legitimate tools. Even worse, when confronted with the failure of popular movements to cause the government to budge, opposition politicians often turn to the military as their preferred instrument of reform. Such is the case today, especially among mid-rank officers who feel closer to Guaidó’s coalition than the Maduro regime. While effective at enacting regime change, military coups are unquestionably toxic for democracies, yet the same unfortunate cycle appears to be repeating itself even today.

Ultimately, none of the panelists had any predictions for the outcome of the current crisis. Even with an expert understanding of the historical and political context of contemporary events, the mechanisms at play remain the purview of an elite few politicians and generals as well as with the imperceptible will of the people in the streets. Who will triumph in the ongoing power struggle between Maduro and Guaidó cannot be said, nor is one or the other the only probably option as other candidates muster in the background. Yet however Venezuela moves forward, only the creation of durable, and truly accountable institutions appears to offer any hope for a way out of these cyclical power struggles and a solution to the humanitarian crisis these have provoked.