To What Extent was the Cold War in Asia a Bipolar Conflict?
Blakeley Nixon
INTR299: Introduction to the International Relations of South East Asia
To What Extent was the Cold War in Asia a Bipolar Conflict
The Cold War of the mid to late twentieth century was in every aspect an international phenomenon. Born out of the ruin of the Second World War (6,pp83) the Cold War has been analysed through many different disciplines of study from History to Media and Cultural studies and of course International relations. Understood by many (but not all) as a conflict between two opposing ideologies, Capitalism and Communism, the hostilities spread from Europe and the US to encompass the entire world. Asia was one of the more important fronts in the Cold War and more than any other region saw the so called Cold War turn hot in conflicts like those in Korea to Vietnam.
The point of this essay is to analyse the extent to which the cold war in Asia was a bipolar conflict. As a basis to the analysis the focus of this essay will largely been on the actions of communist China because of its importance in the region and the alignment it has had with both the major cold war powers. This the essay will develop a historical background to the development of hostilities is Asia discussing the situation immediately after the Second World War. As examples for arguments for and against a bipolar situation an analysis will be made of two case studies within the historical record. The first will be the Korean War, considered the first major cold war "hot" spot. The essay will discuss the political makeup of the conflict and study whether the actors formed into two blocs or whether the situation was more complex. The second case study shall be the an examination of the Sino-Soviet split as a way of analysing the infighting within the so called communist bloc to see if the split was evidence for multipolarism or whether the turn toward the west was evidence of a bipolar international system. The essay will then conclude by considering all the evidence and examples and attempt to determine the level of bipolarity that existed in Asia's cold war.
As one of the major theatres of the Second World War, the Asia Pacific Region did not escape the devastation that the cities of Europe suffered, and importantly, the region did not escape the creation power political vacuums left behind by the defeated axis powers. It was through these power vacuums that so called bipolarism formed as the two major victors sought desperately to fill these vacuums.
At wars end in 1945 the US, whose territory was left virtually untouched by the conflict, began to assert economic control over the largely ravaged Western Europe and, more importantly for this essay, occupied Japan and made alliances with other major Asian nations such as Korea (later south Korea) and nationalist China. The USSR, whose loss of twenty million people during the conflict was at least partially compensated by the dominance achieved over Eastern Europe and huge territorial gains in Asia achieved partly through the "Big Three" Yalta conference in 1945 (6, pp84). The Soviets also began to make important alliances with numerous Communist\Marxist movements throughout Asia (2,pp226).
Other major victor nations, namely those with seats on the new UN Security Council, were, as historical evidence shows, in no position to challenge the dominance of the two super powers. Britain was struggling to maintain its empire while attempting to rebuild the domestically while France, devastated by Nazi occupation, also had imperial issues and, like Britain, became more dependant on America, at least economically, for reconstruction.
Finally, in 1945 China saw a resumption of a broad based civil war and was, at least for the remaining years of the forties, not able to emerge as ...
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Other major victor nations, namely those with seats on the new UN Security Council, were, as historical evidence shows, in no position to challenge the dominance of the two super powers. Britain was struggling to maintain its empire while attempting to rebuild the domestically while France, devastated by Nazi occupation, also had imperial issues and, like Britain, became more dependant on America, at least economically, for reconstruction.
Finally, in 1945 China saw a resumption of a broad based civil war and was, at least for the remaining years of the forties, not able to emerge as an important regional or world actor. However the Chinese Communist victory over General Chang's nationalist in 1949 would see China emerge as a pivotal actor in Asia cold War. The Chinese Communist relations with the USSR did not, unlike many other countries, stem from the Soviet support for Mao's Communist movement. During the Chinese civil war, tied by an agreement made at the Yalta conference, the USSR supported Chang's nationalists and agreed with the US and Britain that a strong democratic regime should be installed (6, pp88)(7). However, due to the growing ideological and political tensions between the west and Moscow, the USSR and Red China formed a communist axis that dominated the Eurasian Continent.
It was the years immediately after World War II that set the stage for a conflict that, however cold, would span for forty years. The evidence discussed above suggests that the opening stages of the Cold War, especially in Asia, were on most levels Bipolar. The simple fact that most other global actors were, as the evidence shows, unable to challenge the positions of the US and USSR as the two global super powers could be seen as evidence for a largely bipolar system. Even the emergence of Communist China did not, at least immediately, create another power "pole" in Asia because the PRC's close relationship and dependence on the USSR.
It seems that in any argument over the extent of bipolarism in Asia China is a central feature. It was this country's development from its years of Japanese occupation and Civil war to an important world actor that seems to suggest that bipolarism in Asia began to degrade. The People's Republic of China's first actions as an international power was first felt in the seesaw conflict of the Korean War.
The small peninsular Korea, a nation no bigger the UK, was the unlikely first "Hot Spot" of the Cold War. The complexities of the conflict are not the focus of this essay but in an argument for and against bipolarity the Korean War must be considered. South Korea had gradually become a central feature of Truman's "Containment" policy, an international policy that attempted to territorially surround the Communist bloc that had by this point consumed the bulk of Eurasia (5, pp48).
The Soviets and Chinese supported (encouraged) North Korean invasion of South Korea began in June 1950 under the orders of a government that believed the invasion could be completed in three days avoiding American intervention. However, due to the current political situation in the US Truman, afraid of being seen as being soft on communism after his failure to support Chang's nationalist on Formosa (Taiwan)(3, pp192), ordered American troops to enter the battle from Japan by the end of the month (5, pp49). The UN Security Council, boycotted by the USSR, the only communist country with a veto, because of the refusal of the UN to recognise the PRC, commenced its first deployment of troops since its creation.
Despite the immediate American and eventual UN involvement, North Korean troops managed to invade as far south as what became to be known as the Pusan perimeter. It was the American counter attack, initiated by General Macarthur's flanking amphibious landing at Inchon that lead to the provocation of China as the UN forces pushed the North Korean's as far north as the Yalu river and the Chinese border.
The Chinese involvement in the Korean was sign of one thing over all others, it was a sign that Mao's China was willing to act independently and even defy the wishes of the USSR. Mao's decision to involve China was largely based on domestic and defensive issues. Firstly, a refusal to help defend a fellow Asian communist state would help fuel the counter revolutionary movement in China (5,pp50-51). Secondly, there were serious concerns that China would be next on the US's target list (3 pp193, 5,pp52). The incursion of up to 400,000 Chinese "volunteers", a title given to avoid immediate American attacks on China, began an incursion over the Yalu river and by late November 1950 had began an offensive that pushed the professional US and UN armed forces back way below the 38th Parallel and Occupied Seoul by January 1951. Only after a further two years of largely stalemate fighting was the UN able to advance above the 38th Parallel until the armistice in July 1953.
On the question of the extent to which the Cold War in Asia was bipolar the Korean War provides an interesting point of reference. The war allowed China to emerge and challenge both major super powers, the US on the battlefield and the USSR by defiance of policy. Overtly this would suggest that the international bipolar system was a myth. However, China's position on the world stage was largely through the dependency of the USSR especially economically and the PRC was never able to properly challenge the dominance over international socialism that the USSR had. Mao's China was also unable to challenge America except for subversively in the Korean Peninsular; evidence for this lies in the failure to invade Taiwan because of America's support for the nationalist government and the lack of official involvement, the use of "Volunteers", in Korea. Despite these counter argument it seems clear that regionally the Korean War began to see the beginning of gradual degradation, if not destruction, of the bipolar model.
The decades following Korea, as the historical evidence suggests, saw a decline, at least regionally of a bipolar two-bloc organisation of the Asian interstate system. The number of small wars and increased border tensions between the major communist nations began to display, to the delight of policy makers in the west, a less than unified communist bloc. The Sino-Viet war, the Viet-Cambodia war and the rising in border tensions between the USSR and the PRC is evidence of this infighting (4,5,6). It was this infighting, especially between the USSR and PRC that lead to what could be argued as a complete collapse of the idea of bipolarism in Asia. An example of this infighting was the Sino-Soviet split.
The later years Mao's life and control over China saw a turn away from Soviet domination during the early to mid sixties partly due to what the Chinese often refer to as "Soviet Chauvinism"(9,Liu Huaqiu article) and an approach to what has been called the "Period of Cooperation" (8) with America. The build up of both Chinese and soviet troops on the border "(7), the general rise in tensions between the two powers over the interference of Soviet facilitators helping develop Chinese industry may have contributed to Mao's movement, politically, away from USSR. This is itself is not an argument that supports the lack of a two super power system, this turn away from the soviets did not mean that China necessarily emerged as a third pole because of the turn toward the US.
US-Sino relations were obviously damaged due to the involvement of the Chinese in the Korean War as previously mentioned. The first stepping-stone in this new cooperation and the smoothing of post Korea relations was the famous Shanghai Communiqué of 1971-2 involving American a visit to the Peoples Republic of China by President Richard Nixon and a meeting with Chairman Mao. This communiqué was the beginning of cooperation between China and the west on a largely economic level that suggest that China, rather than achieving true independence, it could be argued that China has simply aligned itself with one block over another. Evidence for this new spirit of cooperation was China acceptance of western corporations such as Exxon and BP (7,8).
However, China, largely due to an ideological and political system different to the west, did not accept as much involvement from the west especially in its mainly political policies. China's continued claim over Taiwan and its actions during the Tiananmen Square massacre suggest that China developed a greater level of independence and sovereignty suggesting that it had finally emerged as the third power in Asia's Cold War front.
To conclude this essay it must be first said that to properly analyse the events in Asia's cold would take far more than a 2000 word essay. To answer the question "to what extent was the cold war in Asia bipolar" this essay focused on China. Analysing China's involvement in the cold war suggests that the conflict was in its early stages bipolar. The domination of the USSR over most states in the communist bloc and a similar situation with the US and the west is evidence of this. However as the conflict exploded in Korea the complexities of the Asian region gradually began to degrade the bipolar form as China emerged on to the scene as a challenge to the dominance of both the US and USSR in the region. In a concluding analysis it can be said that internationally the Cold War may have very well been a bipolar conflict, but on a regional level, Asia's cold war was a far more complex system.
Bibliography:
: Graham Evans, Jeffery Newnham, Dictionary of International relation, penguin, 1998
2: Eric Hobsbawn, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, Abacus, 1994
3: Stephen E Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, Penguin Press, 1971
4: John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold war History, Oxford, 1997
5: David Reynolds, One World Divisible: A Global History since 1945, Penguin, 2001
6: Suisheng Zhao, Power Competition in East Asia, Macmillan, 1997
7: "Nixon's China Game", Sino Soviet Split Article: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/china/peopleevents/pande06.html
8: From: The Colonial Revolution and the Sino-Soviet Split http://www.marxist.com/TUT/TUT4-3.html
9: Chinese Embassy Web site:
http://www.china-embassy.org
