The Cold War Part 6

Epilogue

The Fall of the Empire

Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Successor States

Unrest in the Russian Federation

Fading Hope for Arms Control

Europe After the Fall

France’s Ideal

Development of the Community

The European Idea

The Quest for Security

Resurgence of Ethnic Conflict

Even with the end of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, things were about to get a lot worse for the USSR. The process that began with liberalization and the liberation of the satellites ultimately resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and much chaos for its successor states.

Even with the recent reforms, the Soviet economy continued to not only stagnate, but actually declined. Meanwhile, as political liberalization took place, long suppressed peoples began to agitate for even more radical change.

Several of the non-Russian republics that made up the Soviet Union began to agitate for independence, and the leadership of the USSR began to fear for the future of the nation.

One politician who called for radical reform was Boris Yeltsin, who in the middle of 1991 would become the president of the Russian Republic (the largest and most populous of the constituent republics).

To frame it broadly, Gorbachev sought to reform the communist system, while Yeltsin wanted simply to abolish it and begin anew. In the summer of 1991 a cabal of hard-liners attempted a coup to end the recent reforms, but Yeltsin managed to rally the people and military to back him and defeat this usurpation.

The final death knell came in December of 1991, when as opposed to a reformed union a new organization of loosely affiliated nations called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was formed, joined by 11 of the 15 old Soviet republics.

On Christmas day Gorbachev resigned as President of the now defunct USSR, and the next day the Soviet Union, after almost 7 decades of existence, ceased to exist.

It was decided by the CIS that the Russian Federation would inherit the Soviet Union's seat on the U.N. Security Council, while also taking charge of the nuclear arsenal. From here Russia and the U.S. began a series of talks to further reduce their respective nuclear arsenals, as the impetus for maintaining such stockpiles was no more.

When the borders of the constituent republics of the USSR had been drawn in the 1920's, the principle of 'divide and rule' had been applied. Significant minorities in each of the republics had ensured that none could consolidate and rise up against Moscow's rule.

Now on their own, the existence of restive minorities led to all manner of problems. In the Caucasus a convoluted web of ethnic groups struggled for various goals.

Meanwhile in the old Central Asian republics the secular governments had to deal with internal challenges from Islamists while contending with foreign powers such as Iran and Turkey, who might try to utilize their ethno-linguistic connections there to expand their influence.

Ultimately however, Iran and Turkey failed to make any political gains, and Russia, in exchange for backing the secular leaders of the Central Asian republics, effectively established a hegemony in the region.

Another big complication was the some 20 million ethnic Russians living in the new non-Russian successors, who were often marginalized by the ethnic majorities of the new nations. Sentiment in Russia naturally favoured their countrymen in the Near Abroad, the term increasingly used in Russia to refer to the states of the old Soviet Union.

In the early years of the Russian Federation economic turmoil and rampant corruption increased popular discontent greatly. The prestige Yeltsin had won by his heroic stand against the coup plotters was eroded by the emergence of this egregious kleptocracy.

At the same time, right wing sentiment saw people pine for the days of Russian power and enraged by the abuses of Russians in the Near Abroad.

As well, internal discontent in constituent parts of the Russian Federation were a source of trouble. In Chechnya, one of the 89 constituent parts of the Federation, insurgents fought to separate, and Russian troops were unsuccessful in quashing the rebels.

But terrorist attacks against Russian cities and neighbouring republics in the late 1990's saw Russian troops return for a third time, and under the direction of Russia's new President, Vladimir Putin, the insurgency was crushed and Russian control restored in the year 2000.

Russian nationalism was likewise enflamed by two major issues involving the United States: the application of many former Soviet republics and allies to join NATO, and the desire of the administration of President George W. Bush to develop a National Missile Defence System (NMD).

Despite the end of the Cold War, simmering tensions led to difficulties in the field of arms control. The extension of an indefinite NPT came with the non-binding provision that the various nuclear powers commit to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), an end to all testing of all nuclear devices.

While the U.S. and Russia worked admirably to reduce their respective stockpiles, as well as striving to police the old Soviet Union's nuclear forces, American politicians have as yet to ratify the CTBT.

While Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) have seldom been utilized, the expansion of the nuclear powers to include India, Pakistan, North Korea, and possibly Israel, U.S. insistence in creating a NMD system, and difficulties in verifying the possible development of biological weapons mean that not only is arms control a contentious issue, but that WMDs will likely be with us for a long time to come.

With the end of the Cold War and the division of the continent into hostile blocs, a new Europe was in the making. This culminated in the birth of the European Union and the return of the old scourge of ethnic nationalism to the continent.

With the realization that it would suffer from considerable economic consequences if the EEC erected a united tariff against non-members, Britain applied for membership in 1961, along with Ireland, Denmark, and Norway, and for a time the prospects of expanding from 6 to 10 members seemed good.

However, Charles de Gaulle vetoed British entry, and attempted to reorient the EEC into a less federalist structure, and more along the lines of cooperating independent states; a so-called ‘Europe of States’.

A staunch opponent of federalism, de Gaulle hoped that in this new Europe France would effectively lead as Hegemon. While France did not get its way in this regard, it did succeed in preventing federalists from enhancing the supranational character of the EEC, deferring to Gaullist sentiments of national sovereignty.

The fall of de Gaulle in 1969 paved the way for the expansion of the EEC. In 1972 Britain, Ireland, and Denmark joined.

As trade barriers came down and economies continued to meld, the long envisioned European Parliament (EP) was established, though it lacked the powers to introduce legislations, to enact said legislation, and to raise revenues through taxation.

In the 1980's Greece, Portugal, and Spain joined even as some became sceptical of the European project after the economic difficulties of the 1970's.

In particular, European plans to foster closer economic integration were derailed by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970's and the world oil crisis refocused attention elsewhere.

In order to stabilize inter-European exchange rates, the European Monetary System (EMS) was formed, which moved to establish a narrow zone in which currencies would remain in relation to one another, and prepare for the day that an ultimate solution could be put forth: a single European currency.

The integration of Europe entered high gear with the passing of the Single European Act (SEA), prompted by the need to compete with large economic powers like the U.S. and Japan, and the desire to further enmesh the newly reunited and powerful Germany into the European system.

The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 ushered in a new era of political integration to complement the recent economic movement, setting the goal of a European currency and defining the conception of a common European citizenship.

The SEA and the Maastricht Treaty had changed the original conception of the EEC so greatly that the name was changed in 1993 to reflect this new reality: it became the European Union (EU). After this, expansion was swift compared to the decades before.

Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined in 1995.

Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, and Malta joined in 2004.

With the admission of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, the EU had expanded from 12 to 27 nations only 14 years after its birth.

The latest addition came in 2013 with the admission of Croatia into the Union.

While additional candidates have since come to the fore, the most troublesome one has been Turkey, which has been in discussions since the 1980's. Due to a number of issues, Turkey's application to join the EU has been long held up, and it remains doubtful that it will become a member anytime soon.

Inside the Union itself, despite great progress in recent decades, attempts to create a European Constitution have proven most difficult, and the issue of the Euro currency (only adopted by 17 of the 27 members) has demonstrated of late the dangers inherent in such a large and diverse currency union.

While Europe had been happy enough to compromise on currency control, two other hallmarks of national sovereignty, foreign relations and military forces, were much more difficult to get a handle on.

The reduction of American military power on the continent after the Cold War led many to realize that Europe must depend on itself for protection, while the pathetic showing of all but a few European militaries in the Gulf War demonstrated the inadequacy of existing security protocols.

By the end of the 1990's the EU involvement in the Kosovo War (a conflict actually IN Europe!) was likewise an embarrassing affair, and while since that time the EU has declared its long planned rapid reaction force to be ready for global deployment, the possibility of a Pan-European army as envisioned in the EDC decades ago remains a distant goal.

While the re-emergence of ethnic nationalism was by and large dealt with in such a way as to preserve stability in Europe, there were two notable exceptions.

Czechoslovakia, after a long history of disputes between the Czech and Slovak populations, agreed to an amicable dissolution of their country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

This bloodless affair was nicknamed the Velvet Divorce, after the equally bloodless Velvet Revolution that had ended communist rule there (evidently Czechs and Slovaks are eminently reasonable people).

Unfortunately for the second state to dissolve amidst ethnic recriminations, Yugoslavia, things were not bloodless... not at all.

After decades of suppression, the Serbian government in Yugoslavia moved to strengthen the federal government (which they dominated) at the expense of the constituent republics.

This drove the other republics to move towards independence, with Macedonia and Slovenia getting away relatively easily.

The republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina ended up battling their own Serb minorities, whom were heavily backed by the Yugoslav government, which by that point consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro.

While in 1995 the war ended with the independence of those two republics (with Bosnia consisting of a Croat-Muslim state and a Serb state), the cost had been enormous: at least 215,000 people died in the Yugoslav Wars, and 2.5 million became refugees, while Bosnia itself was devastated. Moreover, the absolute brutality inflicted by the fighting factions on each other and the various civilian populations left relations between peoples and nations poisoned for many years after.

The conflicts had not yet ended however, as the late 1990's saw an autonomous province of Serbia known as Kosovo and Serbia proper battle over the issue of Kosovo's independence.

Only with NATO intervention was the Serbian military expelled from the province (where it had been engaged in pushing as much of the ethnically Albanian population out of the country as possible).

While a declaration of independence by Kosovo in early 2008 was met with mixed responses (to say the least), the increasing involvement of the EU in stabilizing the Balkans showed that the European Union was finally willing and able to shoulder an increasing responsibility in its proverbial backyard.