0.6 The end of the west  (Page 7/19)

The Cold War

The first 25 years of the Cold War, in which efforts by the US to contain Soviet expansionism through regional politico-military alliances gave way to an arms race, creation of a Soviet blue-water navy and a growing network of influence in the newly independent former colonies, led to the debacle of Vietnam and was followed by reconstruction of a balance of global power based on a doctrine of limits crafted by Nixon and Kissinger. The strengthening of NATO, the opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union and the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty constituted the new equilibrium. The success of the relationship between Washington and Moscow was apparent in the restraint shown by both polities in their management of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Nixon’s demise after Watergate and the election of the “class of ‘74” to the US Congress after Washington’s exodus from Saigon, led to rejection of a foreign policy premised on ‘global realism’ – though the strategic arms limitation talks begun in 1972 were continued – and the adoption of a ‘regionalist’ perspective focusing on human rights. The ‘carnation revolution’ in Lisbon which led to the chaotic passage to independence of Mozambique and Angola in 1974 and 1975, the Soweto riots in South Africa in 1976 and rising tensions over Rhodesia and Namibia, led the Carter Administration to prioritise African issue but tension in Arab-Israeli relations and the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979 and the emergence of an Islamic Republic hostile to the United States, demanded urgent attention.

Energetic diplomacy led to Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel in November 1977 and the signature of a peace agreement in March 1978. Dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran proved more difficult. Student activists seized the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and held it and over 50 staff hostage until January 20, 1981. The failed rescue mission in April 1980 wounded the Administration. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 25, 1979, twenty months after the (Marxist) People's Democratic Party had established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, and a year after the signature of a Soviet-Afghan Friendship and Cooperation Treaty, ought to have come as no surprise. Islamist mujahadeen, with limited CIA support, were harassing the Afghan army and threatening the survival of the new regime. In light of the situation in Iran and the risk to Moscow’s prestige, Brezhnev’s decision to deploy the 40th Army was inevitable, though it put paid to Senate ratification of the SALT II agreement on strategic launch vehicles reached in Vienna in June 1979, and signed by Carter and Brezhnev.

Even in Africa the Administration could point to few successes. Rhodesia passed to independence as Zimbabwe in February 1980, but this was seen as a British achievement after the Lancaster House conference and Lord Soames’ assumption of the Governorship to oversee elections. South Africa’s negotiations with the Western Contact Group on Namibia’s independence had stalled; 30 000 Cuban groups were deployed in Angola to help the MPLA government fight a counter-insurgency war, the FRELIMO government in Mozambique was fighting another insurgency; and tensions in southern Africa were high as South Africa’s military intelligence service was supporting the Angolan and Mozambican guerrillas.