United States

U.S. governmental incentives on semiconductors are central to Great Power Competition

May 6, 2021 by Martina Bernardini

Microchips, also called semiconductors or integrated circuits, can be thinner than a human hair and smaller than a postage stamp, but their power can be immeasurable. They play a significant role in the advancement of the consumer technologies sector and, most importantly, in the development of more sophisticated branches of technology with potentially significant implications for national security, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. Therefore, although domestic and foreign policy might not always be connected, in the case of the U.S. semiconductor industry, domestic decisions are vital both for U.S. national security and for the evolution of great power relations in general, and U.S.-China relations in particular.

The largest chipmaker in China, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), was added to the U.S. Entity List by the Trump administration in late December 2020 as a final move of the toughest measures taken towards Beijing, fearful that the Biden administration would soften the policy towards China. Biden, however, has not only dismantled such tough decision on the technology front, but his administration is also working on domestic measures around the semiconductor industry that will be central to U.S.-China technological competition.

In September 2020, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA) came into law, authorising investments in both domestic chips manufacturing incentives and in advanced microelectronics research and development. Soon after Biden took office, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) followed up by stressing the need for the new U.S. administration to prioritise funding to such provisions. This came in light of the sharp decline in the U.S. share of the global chip manufacturing, which can affect the U.S. ability to produce newly advanced technologies vital to strengthen both U.S. military capabilities and its great power status overall. In fact, although the United States is the currently the global leader in semiconductors, owning around 47% of the global chips market share, U.S. chips manufacturing has been decreasing, and this might affect the American leadership in the sector already in the medium run. According to SIA, while in 1990 the United States accounted for the 37% of the global chip manufacturing, in 2020 this share has fallen to 12%. By contrast, China’s share has increased from 2% to 15% between 1990 and 2020, and it is expected to grow up to 24% in 2030, surpassing both South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In the same period, the American allotment in global chip manufacturing is expected to decline to 9% if governmental intervention will not be put in place.

This shift is the result of both lower incentives for the U.S. semiconductor sector and tougher measures towards China undertaken under Trump. The Covid-19 pandemic has further aggravated the situation, eventually bringing chips under the spotlight in U.S. government. The high increase in demand for consumer technologies – mainly laptops and smartphones – during the pandemic has led to a critical chips supply shortage in the U.S., leading Biden to sign an executive order that received bipartisan support in Congress in late February. The order authorised the use of $37 billion to foster the American manufacturing of semiconductors, and has furthermore launched a 100-day review on the status of supply chains in four areas that are essential to American competitiveness: semiconductors; key minerals and materials extracted from rare earths; pharmaceuticals; and advanced batteries. The order was signed the day after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared to have directed lawmakers to draft a package of an additional $100 billion as part of a bipartisan bill to implement the NDAA by fostering research and investment in U.S. manufacturing in key high tech areas – not only semiconductors but also Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing – in order “to out-compete China and create new American jobs”.

The crucial passage to rebalance the geopolitics of semiconductors and strengthen American technological competitiveness face to China, thus, lies in American domestic politics. The review launched with Biden’s signature of the executive order is aimed at diversifying and fortifying supply chains, and the SIA insisted particularly upon increasing American chips manufacturing through the mobilisation of federal incentives. About 44% of U.S.- headquartered firms are located in the United States, but the cost to build and operate a front-end fabrication facility (fab) in the U.S. is 25% – 50% more expensive than in other alternative locations. Singapore, for instance, which hosts the majority of U.S. chips fabs based abroad (17%), has introduced hiring credits and a reduced tax rate in the semiconductors manufacturing sector, while American incentives of this kind are almost non-existent. For this reason, the measures announced by Biden and Congress play a very important role in increasing U.S.-made chips and thus fortifying American leadership in the sector by avoiding a shortfall of the U.S. share in the global chip manufacturing at a time when China’s will surely increase as a result of the plan to reach the self-sufficiency in semiconductors outlined in China’s 14th Five Year Plan.

This turn in the American semiconductor policy, however, should not be analysed through a ‘new Cold War’ lens, as China is not only the biggest U.S. competitor in chips manufacturing, but it is also a top costumer of the U.S. semiconductor industry. According to a report from the Boston Consulting Group, prohibiting U.S. chips sales to China could cause the loss of around $80 billion to the U.S. semiconductor industry, compromising the U.S. long-standing leadership position with a loss of about 18% in the American global market share of microchips. For the U.S., the solution to face the challenges posed by China on the high-tech side is found not only in a tougher policy towards Beijing, but in the U.S. semiconductor policy, which will in turn have important side effects on U.S.-China policy. As the Biden administration is likely to adopt a tough but multilateral approach to China – not only on technology but also on a variety of transnational challenges – the oculate application of the resources recently announced by the U.S. government on chips manufacturing can be pivotal both to the maintenance of the U.S. power status and to the re-definition of great power competition.

The Old World of Arms Control is Dying

March 24, 2021 by Bryce Farabaugh

By Bryce Farabaugh

The future of nuclear arms control is uncertain. On February 3, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the 5-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the agreement between the United States and Russia that limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers each state may possess. The extension was a welcome relief for those concerned about the fate of the last remaining pillar of the global arms control regime, a system intended to reduce nuclear risks by improving insight, verification, and trust between the two states with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world. As the treaty’s survival was anything but certain under the previous administration, proponents of its extension are celebrating this victory, but such celebrations are bound to be short-lived as looming arms control challenges come into focus. U.S. policymakers are increasingly wary of China’s military capabilities, including its modernizing nuclear arsenal, and both supporters and skeptics of the New START extension concede future arms control agreements will likely need to include China in some capacity. Indeed, if meaningful arms control agreements are going to continue to serve the national security interests of the United States by reducing global nuclear risks in an evolving security environment, it’s helpful to interrogate arguments that were made against the New START extension to explore whether such arguments are likely to be obstacles in future arms control dialogues.

New START is largely a product of the post-Cold War thaw in relations between the United States and Russia. In the 1990’s, as the dust settled from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States came to terms with “the unipolar moment,” global nuclear stockpiles were reduced while cooperation on nuclear issues generally increased between the two states. Cooperative arms control measures between the United States, the former Soviet Union, and others were achieved during this period: the Open Skies Treaty improved confidence and security in Europe, Soviet nuclear weapons were successfully removed from Ukraine, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) created an international network capable of monitoring nuclear detonations (among other successes) While there have undoubtedly been setbacks including the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001 and the failure of the US Senate to ratify the CTBT, for a while it appeared increasingly likely that intense nuclear competition between the US and its rivals was a thing of the past.

Indeed, the crown jewel of the post-Cold War arms control agreements, New START, entered into force in 2011 and was viewed by many as a major achievement in US-Russian relations. Set to expire in February 2021, the United States and Russia appeared unable to come to an agreement on its extension. This fact was somewhat surprising, as New START was widely popular among US nuclear experts. Arms controllers praise its limits on deployed strategic warheads, while counterforce advocates value the verification and monitoring protocols that provide visibility into Russian military capabilities. Likewise, leaders at the highest levels of the Russian Government publicly stated their desire to extend the agreement without preconditions. The reticence by the US to extend New START had been attributed to a host of explanations, but one complaint from US negotiators surfaced repeatedly: the absence of China from the treaty.

The US’s insistence on including China in New START and related strategic dialogues is puzzling for several reasons. First, China is believed to have a much smaller arsenal than either the US or Russia, meaning its number of strategic warheads is already far below the limits of the agreement. Second, China was not party to the original negotiation and had few (if any) incentives to join. And third, Chinese security concerns are very different than the decades-long nuclear rivalry between the US and Russia, etc. This begs the question then that if the US possesses nuclear superiority over China, both quantitative and qualitative, why does it continue to behave as if China is a significant and growing nuclear threat that must be controlled at all costs?

One answer may lie in how humans process information. US policymakers are often students of history and thus rely on historical analogies for interpreting new events. Additionally, behavioral scientists have shown that humans, in general, often rely on information that they believe is relevant for a situation even when the circumstances, parties involved, stakes, and other conditions are quite different, resulting in cognitive biases that can impact decision-making. In the context of US-China cooperation/competition over nuclear weapons issues, these two facts suggest policymakers may be heavily inclined to view the current situation as a replay of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. This could lead policymakers to mistakenly pursue policies that previously worked for the US despite the drastically different circumstances of the current situation.

This overreliance on the flawed Cold War analogy between the US and China can be seen in statements by senior US officials responsible for overseeing nuclear weapons policy. For example, in May 2020, US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, Marshall Billingslea, stated that the US is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to win a new nuclear arms race. Billingslea had also reportedly called Chinese efforts to modernize its nuclear forces “a ‘highly alarming effort’ to gain parity with the far larger arsenals that Russia and the United States have kept for decades.” These concerns evoke memories of the infamous “missile gap” argument that plagued American political discourse beginning in the 1950’s , a myth that still echoes in comments like those of Billingslea and other former officials

In addition to these tired Cold War analogies, theoretical arguments about the structure of the international system may alternatively explain increasing nuclear competition between the United States and China. Under this framework, states are constantly competing with one another in order to achieve national goals, whether supremacy in the international system or narrower goals like regional security or relative gains vis-à-vis competitor states. Nuclear competition in this scenario is largely inevitable as states constantly strive to improve military capabilities. Recent scholars have argued why maintaining a robust nuclear arsenal is important to deter nuclear conflict with a rising power like China or, in the event of a crisis, possess the ability to terminate the conflict on terms favorable to the US. Matthew Kroenig argues maintaining “nuclear superiority” can provide significant utility for the US should such a crisis or conflict occur. Keir Lieber and Daryl Press similarly argue that states may be able to escape nuclear “stalemate,” which suggests that while the US currently maintains a significant nuclear advantage over China, technological advances may erode this advantage and thus some form of nuclear competition is inevitable. Additionally, some US Government intelligence agencies have contributed to this perceived “inevitability” by promulgating largely-unrealistic projections of the growth of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, which further reinforces the US-China nuclear competition framing.

Policymakers’ overreliance on Cold War logic and deterministic structural forces may make the future of arms control look bleak, but students of history would be wise to remember that even during the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were able to find common ground to reduce risks and avoid catastrophe. The unfolding competitive relationship between Washington and Beijing shouldn’t be viewed through a strictly zero-sum lens, and cooperation between the United States and China on security issues with global implications must be pursued when possible. With New START officially expiring on February 5, 2026, the clock is ticking; now is the time to get creative and imagine how a new world of arms control can deal with emerging nuclear risks that threaten to erase the progress previous generations worked so hard to achieve.

Bryce Farabaugh is a master’s student at the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations and an external representative for Strife. You can follow him on Twitter @brycefarabaugh

The Case Against Mexico Joining NATO

March 11, 2021 by Strife Staff

By Raúl Zepeda-Gil

Artwork: “Esquadron 201,” The 201st Mexican Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force Artist: Ginny Sherwood

Mexico has no benefit in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In a pragmatic sense, the relation with the United States constrains how Mexico employs its foreign policy. Adding a new layer of complexity, coming from an international organisation that has an overwhelming leadership from the U.S., would futher hinder Mexico’s foreign policy by reducing its freedom degrees of action by excesing a neutralilty instance in international security matters.

Historically, Mexico has diverged from the U.S. foreign policy and acted in a semi-neutral basis for the rest of the world. After the recurrent invasions from the U.S. and France during the 19th Century, Mexico adopted constitutional principles enshirend in article 89, fraction X: self-determination, peaceful conflict resolution, follow international law, and the proscription to threat to use force against other State.

Mario Ojeda, one the most relevant experts on Mexico’s foreign policy, described the paradox of a relatively weak country neighbouring through a long border with the United States: it has independence in foreign policy in exchange for cooperation in everyday matters. Mexico does not engage in international security affairs of the U.S., but has intensive cooperation in other maters: border protection, migration issues, having a Free Trade Agreement, and Plan Merida for anti-drug initiatives.

In 2019, Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO, in response to the integration of Colombia as a partner of the alliance, mentioned that other Latin American countries could integrate in the same way. This appeal happened in a particular geopolitical moment: Brazil had requested to join NATO to help Donald Trump pressure the rest of the member states internally.

2021 has changed the scenario: Trump is now out of office. And Joe Biden will reinforce the U.S. presence in NATO. However, before these junctures, two members of the Atlantic Council have made their case for Mexico in NATO. Skaluba and Doyle argued:

“Mexico could serve as a gateway for an intensified NATO presence in Latin America where the alliance is absent outside of a formal partnership with Colombia. Given Russia’s criticality in propping up Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and China’s growing influence throughout the Global South, an augmented NATO role in Latin America could further democracy promotion while providing a timely deterrent effect, including on Russia’s solicitation of Mexico to increase bilateral trade and security agreements.”

This idea has been widely debated. In 2012, Christopher Sands, of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkin’s University, said:

President Obama and Prime Minister Harper should consider Mexico when they meet with other NATO leaders in Chicago. NATO with Mexico as a member could also confirm the alliance’s role as a guarantor of security and mutual cooperation against transnational security threats that contributes to the prosperity of the west, in Europe and North America equally.

Both pieces, plus the Stoltenberg declaration, do not mention why or how Mexico would benefit from a NATO membership beyond the current benefits from the bilateral relationship with the U.S. or the integration within the free trade agreement government Canada. Both quotes show that having Mexico’s main interest in NATO is to be functional to the NATO agenda. Nonetheless, history has shown that Mexico’s geographical closeness to the U.S. automatically requires Mexico to be auxiliary to the Atlantic agenda. Mexico is so entwined with the U.S. that it will choose to be with the U.S. on a global scale conflict.

Nonetheless, beyond a real common threat to Mexico and the U.S., such as the Japanese Empire during the Second World War, Mexico does not need to enter into the agenda of international conflicts of the U.S. The advantage of Mexico’s independent foreign policy is that Mexico exchanges cooperation of its own agenda without the need to be involved in issues that are not geopolitically relevant to Mexico. For example, the George W. Bush administration pressured Mexico to enter the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq in 2002. Nonetheless, México denied joining that endevour initially because it was not supported in the UN Security Council. Afterwards, with the negative vote of Mexico in the UN Security Council in 2003, the Iraq War was not athorised, therefore, giving Mexico the main reason to deny any future involvement: it was against the Mexican constitutional principle of following the international law. Indeed, diplomatic tensions arose, but the bilateral agenda continued as usual, and Mexico did not embark in a conflict; it not needed be involved.

For a country so dependent on the U.S. economy, joining to NATO would mean relinquishing degrees of freedom in foreign policy. Mexico is in line with North America’s defence by cooperating with the U.S. Northern Command and follows constitutional principles of peaceful resolutions of conflict and democratic values. However, joining with NATO would mean that Mexico could be pressured to integrate to conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya, Bosnia, or Yemen, contentious by themselves in other multilateral forums.

As stated before, Mexico usually disagrees with NATO countries in the UN on international security matters. For example, Mexico has never supported Responsibility to Protect as a policy, instead prefers diplomatic mediation. And has never supported military responses for international security matters, rather than just peacekeeping operations.

The previously mentioned authors argued that Mexico would benefit from the Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework that NATO implemented in Eastern Europe. Is it necessary that Mexico join NATO to ask for bilateral or multilateral cooperation in implementing SSR framework? The authors were not aware that bilateral cooperation with the U.S. in anti-narcotics agenda has involved some SSR programs under the Merida Initiative signed during the George W. Bush administration. Nowadays, UN peacekeeping is a more effective way to engage in SSR reform in the defence sector than NATO initaitives. Mexico has established a new peacekeeping educational centre for its recent engagement in UN peacekeeping since 2014, after a long absence from any peacekeeping since the late 1950s. Therefore, there are no apparent benefits in cooperating with NATO.

Finally, we remember why NATO was founded: to combat Soviet influence Undeniably, Mexico also was under the influence of Cold War global politics. However, instead of following the US foreign policy agenda, Mexico has followed a foreign policy agenda based on promoting peaceful resolution of conflicts, neutrality in conflicts, and the promotion of de-nuclearisation. Mexico has developed a diverse portfolio of multilateral initiatives in the UN that are possible because it does not follow U.S. foreign policy: migration agreements, small arms trafficking and recently, promoting the global vaccine alliance for developing countries. Close cooperation in real bilateral problems with the U.S. allows Mexico to act with more freedom in global issues. Joining NATO would hinder that freedom.

it is not a problem to argue that a country has a role in the global scenario. But, the problem with the Atlantic Council’s arguments is that they do not consider any of the current foreign policy traditions of Mexico. In simpler terms: they did not even mind asking or thinking in Mexican terms why would it be useful to be in NATO, beyond a random menu or SSR reform, without knowing what is happening in its SSR agenda. In even more practical terms: if there is something that unsettles the U.S. about the Mexico’s bilateral relations with Russia or China, a phone call between the State Department and the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs would be more effective than a long and exhaustiative process in joining NATO.

Raúl Zepeda-Gil is a Mexican PhD Student in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He holds degree in political science by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a master’s degree in political science by El Colegio de Mexico. One of his research topics is Mexican multilateral foreign policy and civil-military relations. You can follow him on Twitter at @zepecaos.

Power Game in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Implications for the U.S.

February 18, 2021 by Strife Staff

By Sena Namlu

“Each of the carriers operating in the Mediterranean as this time represent 100,000 tons of international diplomacy,” – Jon Huntsman, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia

Sitting at the junction of three continents and main international trade routes, the Mediterranean Sea has been of capital importance for both littoral states and international powers. The name of Mediterranean itself, originating from the Latin term (mediues terra) and meaning “the sea in the middle of the earth,” illustrates its significant place in international affairs. While for regional powers, such as Italy, Greece, and Turkey, the Mediterranean Sea determines their national security and prosperity, it equally has strategic implications for states outside of the basin with regards to furthering influence over different regions and connection with other parts of the world.

The United States has been engaged in the region since the 19th century. America’s involvement reached its apogee during the Cold War; a time when two superpowers vied for control over the Mediterranean region, encompassing an immense maritime zone between the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal. The Mediterranean Sea has witnessed many examples of coercive naval diplomacy, historically known as Gunboat Diplomacy, which involves the application of naval forces to compel or deter a state. By the end of the Cold War, the United States had achieved unity in the Mediterranean, for the first time since ancient Rome, through bilateral and multilateral political arrangements; transforming the Sea into an almost a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) lake or a Mare Nostrum for the Alliance.

The emerging threats and complex regional challenges of the post-Cold War era brought renewed attention to the Mediterranean and forced states to engage in the region, notwithstanding the United States’ gradual retreatment. The American policy of withdrawal was initiated with the Obama Administration, but was taken further in the Trump era. Rising regional and international powers are eager to fill this expanding void left in America’s wake, seeking to gain as much control as they can in such a promising maritime area.

Russia, which has historically had strong incentives to access the warm watersof the Mediterranean, has successfully exploited the long-lasting conflicts in the Mediterranean as well as the current power gap, leading to the establishment of a permanent presence through heavy investments in the Syrian Port of Tarsus, where now it has both an air base and naval facility.

China has adopted a relatively peaceful method of further its influence in the Mediterranean through weaponization of its global supply chain. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which the Mediterranean is a crucial part, led to the country investing in the high-tech industries of Europe such as aerospace and artificial intelligence, and connecting said ventures through an immense supply chain comprised of many Mediterranean ports in which Chinese state-owned companies have significant holdings. Following the acquisitions of ports in several coastal states such as Italy, Malta and Greece, Chinese state firms now have significant influence in one-tenth of all European port capacity. Beijing is orchestrating every instrument at its disposal, including political, economic, and security creating a symphony in the words of Chinese Foreign Minister, in order to expand Chinese influence and presence around the world. One of the major concerns is of the possibility that China may not hesitate to use its civilian port facilities to the military end as it has done so in the past. Furthermore, Beijing’s previous experience of dispatching one of its most impressive-looking warships, the 689-foot-long amphibious transport dock Jinggangshan to Syria” to participate in Russian coercive diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, makes the menace even greater for Europe and the United States.

Turkish claims based on the Blue Homeland doctrine and enforced through the dispatch of the seismic research vessel Oruç Reis raised the unresolved issues in the Mediterranean relating to maritime delimitation and jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean. As the country with the longest coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Turkey regards drilling activities on the continental shelf as its fundamental right and disregards any solution that “confines Turkey to the shores.” Turkish foreign policy objectives relate the region directly to national security, rights, and interests. Additionally, Turkey’s perception of being left out in the Eastern Mediterranean based on the regional cooperation efforts excluding Turkey such as EastMed Gas Forum aggravates the tension and induces Ankara to resort more to coercive naval diplomacy. The successful outcome of natural gas reserve exploration in the Black Sea also strengthened Turkey’s commitment towards drilling operations in the Mediterranean.

Countries opposed to Turkey’s actions in the region gathered around France, whose expectations for further political and military supports towards the European Union and NATO remain unmet, have agreed on seeking regional cooperation. France that has been the most vocal European power in opposing Turkey’s regional claims so far, backed by Greece and Cyprus with joint military drilling operations and deployment of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Eastern Mediterranean. France’s President, Emmanuel Macron seems quite determined to resist resurgent Turkish moves in the Mediterranean and has closed the ranks with its regional partners at all costs as being lacked of concrete support from the European Union and NATO members in its battling with Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkey similarly seeks to strengthen its hand through bilateral arrangements with another regional actor. Ankara signed two memoranda of understanding with Libya’s United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), one of which regulates maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea in line with the Turkish claims and the other envisaging further security and military cooperation. These agreements are followed by a similar deal between Greece and Egypt.

In pursuit of the Greece-Egypt deal, Prime Minister of Greece Mitsotakis and the President of Egypt Sisi reflected their expectation of more decisive U.S. involvement in the region under a Biden Administration. Nevertheless, given the other prominent challenges facing America such as extreme domestic polarization and the rising Chinese threat in the Pacific region, it is hard to predict whether the election of “Joe Bidenopoulos”, as he introduced himself to a group of Greek Americans will result in a rotation of American attention towards the region and to what extent this shift will change the course in the Mediterranean. Biden will likely give more weight to international organizations, beginning with enhancement of the EU and NATO’s downsized role in the region. However, geopolitical challenges require further engagements. Besides Russia’s permanent return to the area, China’s rapprochement with America’s most important strategic partner in the region, Israel puts American regional and international interests at higher risk. Similarly, Huawei’s expansion based on the Digital Silk Road Initiative accordingly to ports-buying strategy raise the caveat of filching data from NATO allies and friends in the region.

There is little doubt that the President-elect Biden will find himself in the middle of various complex and entrenched issues related to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea once he takes the oval office. It is clear that defusing tensions, restoring once-existing U.S. and NATO’s influence, and countering the rise of Russia and China as the alternative strategic partners for the region will occupy the top of the lists of American policies in the area. Any help and support provided by the regional partners will be beneficial for the United States. Although the hard task of gathering regional NATO allies France, Greece and Turkey, around a table has become more challenging than it has been before, Biden Administration can bring a breath of fresh air in relations and create incentives for each party to bolster dialogue. Depending on the new American leader’s ability to manage sensitive and tangled regional relations and find a common ground among highly divided and determined actors, it will soon be seen whether this glimmer of hope may blaze out or rapidly fade away.

Sena Namlu is a youth and women’s right activist. She has actively partaken in social profit organizations working on particularly girls and youth empowerment — their inclusion in policy-making, conflict resolution, and peace-building processes, and initiated social projects. She is a board member of YCDC, the representative institution of Youth 20 in Turkey, and attended the Y20 Summit in Argentina and G(irls)20 Summit in Japan as Turkey’s delegate. She is also a fellow of the Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship Programme. After graduation, she worked within Doctors of World Turkey Office as a Grant Officer. Sena is currently a graduate student in the Intelligence and International Security MA Program at the War Studies Department of KCL. Her research interests include processes of foreign policy-making, providing and analyzing information for decision-makers, as well as the role of women and non-governmental actors in conflict resolution and peace-building.

Capturing the humanity of the Cold War

February 17, 2021 by Strife Staff

By James Brown

A picture taken by renowned Czech photographer Viktor Kolar; his work captured the everyday experience in Ostrava, an important industrial town in communist Czechoslovakia. (Image: Viktor Kolar/Monovisions)

The history of the Cold War has a rich scholarship. The field encompasses International Relations studies, economic history, and, increasingly, cultural approaches, exploring the imprint of the conflict on art, film, and everyday life. Interest in books on the Cold War will likely increase this year as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while narrative histories of high politics and culture no doubt assist in improving our understanding of the Cold War, the works which will be most important as we reflect on the conflict’s legacy are those dealing explicitly with the psychology and human impact of the Cold War. With the rise of China and continuing instability following the COVID-19 pandemic leading to repeated suggestions of the potential for a Second Cold War, most important in our engagement with the Cold War is appreciating the human mindsets which created that conflict, and those which it created amongst people in turn. We need to ask ourselves what led the world to be so divided for nearly half a century, and then how to avoid the same happening again.

Interrogating this aspect of Cold War history is indeed difficult and few authors truly succeed in illustrating the psychology of the era without resorting to cliche. The Cold War was a conflict defined by high politics and domineering ideologies of capitalism versus communism. Writers, especially academics, have found it hard to move beyond these abstractions to capture the human experience of the Cold War.

In this regard, it has been authors of fiction who have often been more successful. The works of the late great John le Carré endure in the popular imagination as among the most defining portraits of the moral compromises forced on individuals by the ideological restraints of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Francis Spufford’s fact-based novel, Red Plenty, gives insight into how Soviet citizens genuinely began to believe that communism’s material promises would be realised under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev (1956-64). In writing Red Plenty, Spufford, himself acknowledged the difficulties non-fiction authors face in trying to capture the essence of the Cold War’s ideas and their impact on people. He explains how his initial attempts to tell the tale of Red Plenty as a piece of non-fiction fell short and demanded he shift the book to the ‘border between fiction and non-fiction.’

Other Cold War authors, meanwhile, have successfully managed to bridge this gap between storytelling and fact while remaining truer to the latter. Among the most significant are Anna Funder, principally for her renowned book Stasiland, and the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, Svetlana Alexievich. These two authors are already widely acclaimed but it feels necessary to revisit their work as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the USSR, as they capture better than most the human impact of the Cold War, especially east of the Iron Curtain.

Funder’s brilliant Stasiland has been described variously as a personal history and a ‘journalist’s first-person narrative’ that can ‘read like a novel’. The book, through a series interviews intertwined with Funder’s own narrative, captures how the state ideology of the German Democratic Republic created an alternate, corrupt moral reality for its subjects and those who defended it: the notorious Ministry for State Security or Stasi. Funder, however, is not exclusively condemnatory of the former watchmen of state socialism. Her interviews are occasionally sympathetic with former Stasi employees, though without ever failing to address the violations they committed. On the other hand, Funder gives voice to those who resisted the regime and put themselves in extreme danger in desperate attempts to escape to the West. Funder’s main achievement is to shine a light on a society where ideology reigned supreme in a way it rarely does now, while still keeping the human experience firmly at the forefront of her prose.

Alexievich’s works, meanwhile, are less about how people were driven to extremes by ideology, and more about the everyday lives continuing in spite of or in accommodation with ideology. Alexievich’s method sees her conduct interviews with hundreds of witnesses to life in the USSR, focusing on formative events like the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-89), the Chernobyl Disaster (1986), and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). Her excellent Secondhand Time tells the story of the end of communism in the USSR and the responses of its citizens. Alexievich lets her subjects speak for themselves, sympathising with them. What emerges is a portrait of how the Soviet people inhabited a distinct culture of their own in the USSR and that while the political reality of the Soviet Union may have ended in 1991, left behind were millions of Homo-Sovieticus traumatised by the sudden collapse of their generations-old everyday reality.

If history is about authentically recreating the unique conditions of an era or culture, both Funder’s and Alexievich’s books stand as among the most accomplished studies of the Cold War, even though neither author may be exclusively considered a historian; two other worthy examples are Donald J. Raleigh’s Soviet Baby Boomers and Bridgett Kendall’s The Cold War. Furthermore, both women’s books hold relevance in understanding pertinent contemporary issues in international politics, especially Putin’s Russia and the historical factors which drive Russian foreign policy.

Modern Russia cannot be understood without an appreciation of the impact on Russian leaders of the loss of superpower status conferred by the USSR’s collapse. Nor can the contemporary rise of the far-right in the east of Germany be understood without knowledge of East German history. Throughout the 2010s, and now in the first years of the 2020s, observers have continued to speculate whether we have entered a new Cold War-style period of international relations. Understanding the human experience of the original Cold War seems a more important exercise than ever as we prepare ourselves for the new era, whatever it brings, and Funder and Alexievich offer the best place to start.

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.

At Northumbria, he is a member of several research groups, including the Conflict & Society and Histories of Activism groups. James also has a keen interest in literature, especially Czech writers, and had a poem on Jan Palach published in Edge Magazine. Additionally, he remains interested in the Chernobyl disaster, on which he wrote his undergraduate thesis, ‘A Long Half-Life: Responses to Chernobyl in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society’.

United States

Footer

Contact

Recent Posts

Tags