Bipolar World

We explain what the bipolar world was during the Cold War. In addition, their history, the faced blocks and their characteristics and the non -aligned countries.

What was the bipolar world?

The term “bipolar world” refers to International order that was established after World War II (1939-1945) Already throughout the second half of the twentieth century, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991). It was called “bipolar” because It was dominated by two poles or powers faced with each other: the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR).

After the allied triumph in World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, which had been the main responsible for the defeat of the Nazis, consolidated themselves as the two great world powers. Each represented a different political, economic and cultural model: On the one hand, the capitalism of free market and liberal democracy (United States), and on the other hand, state planning communism and the Uniparty regime (Soviet Union).

With Europe weakened by the effects of war, the United States imposed its hegemony on the nations of Western Europe, while the Soviet Union decided the formation of satellite states in Eastern Europe. This consolidated a separation between two blocks that faced the so -called Cold War: the western (capitalist) and the Eastern (communist). The western bloc constituted a military alliance, NATO, while the eastern bloc shaped its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact.

However, The United States and the Soviet Union never faced militarily. Even so, the bipolar world dictated that the vast majority of countries had to align with the United States or with the Soviet Union, or establish alliances with one of the two blocks, by ideological or strategic affinities. As of the 1960s and 1970s, the situation began to complex with the rise of China, Japan, Western Europe and OPEC countries (organization of oil export countries).

See also: Blocks of the Cold War

The beginning of the bipolar world

The bipolar world was formed after the end of World War II and, especially, between 1948 and 1955. When Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, the allies distributed territorial control of Germany and Berlin in four areas of occupation that corresponded, respectively, to the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. But the collaboration between Western governments, on the one hand, and the Soviet regime, on the other, ceased in the wake of conflicts due to access to certain resources from Germany and political and ideological differences.

Germany's partition was consolidated after the United States and the United Kingdom economically unified their occupation zones in 1947 (which was known as Bizona) and the Soviet Union blocked Berlin, which prevented the occupants of the western sector of the city from supplying (1948-1949). The blockade was raffled through an allied air bridge and was finally built in 1949, but this resulted in the foundation of two separate German republics: the Federal Republic of Germany (Western) and the German Democratic Republic (oriental). This separation extended to Most of Europe, divided between a capitalist west and a communist east.

The “steel curtain” that was installed between Western Europe (capitalist and under the influence of the United States) and Eastern Europe (communist and under the hegemony of the Soviet Union) was replicating worldwide. In 1949 western nations signed the North Atlantic Treatywhich gave rise to a military alliance called NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

In the Korean War (1950-1953), the United States intervened (supporting South Korea) and the Soviet Union (supporting North Korea), and In 1955 the Warsaw Pact was signed, a Military Cooperation Treaty between the Socialist States under the orbit of the Soviet Union.

The world was politically divided into two large blocks, led by the United States and the Soviet Union. From now on, Each block defended its area of ​​influence against the progress of the opposite block. Washington and Moscow used different mechanisms to achieve these objectives. Meanwhile, the leaders of new countries born from the decolonization process in Asia and Africa tried to create a movement that escapes this bipolar logic.

The western block

To strengthen the development of its world policy, the United States government deployed a wide policy of alliances. First, it reinforced the transatlantic ties with Western Europe. The Berlin block precipitated the Constitution in 1949 of NATO, the Great Military Alliance of the Western Block to this day.

In second place, The US government contributed decisively to initiate the European integration process which culminated in 1957 with the signing of the Treaties of Rome and the birth of the European Economic Community (antecedent of the current European Union).

Third, The United States began to weave a wide network of alliances around the worldwith the aim of expanding its own hegemony and stop the expansion of Soviet communism. Thus, the OAS (Organization of the American States), the Anzus (Australia, New Zealand, United States), the Seato (Organization of the Treaty of Southeast Asia), the CENTO (Organization of the Center Treaty), and the San Francisco Treaty with Japan with Japan.

The eastern block

The first step in the formation of the Soviet block was the Creation of the Kominform (Information Office of the Communist and Workers' Parties) in 1947. This organism had the function of coordinating action and propaganda in the countries that integrated the block, not only against the progress of Western capitalism but also against communist dissent (such as the one represented by Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia).

In 1949, ComeCon (Mutual Economic Aid) was born, an organism that grouped the Soviet Union and the “popular democracies” of Eastern Europe (with the exception of the Yugoslava Republic). This association was aimed at the economic coordination of the communist bloc, and did not work full until 1960.

After the victory of the communist leader Mao Zedong in China in 1949, the Soviet Union signed military and cooperation agreements with communist China. Finally, in response to the entrance of the Federal Republic of Germany in the NATO, In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was born, a military alliance that joined the Soviet Union with all the European countries of the communist bloc, with the exception of Yugoslavia.

Through the invocation of this covenant, the Soviet forces repressed the anti -oviatic survey known as Hungary Revolution (1956) and invaded Czechoslovakia to cancel the liberalizing measures implemented during the spring of Prague (1968).

The movement of non -aligned countries

The new African and Asian nations that were emerging from the decolonization process, tried to defend their own interests apart from the two blocks. With that objective, the Afro -Asian Conference of Bandung was held in Indonesia in 1955, where what was called movement of non -aligned countries was born.

This conference It was directed by the great leaders of what began to be called the “Third World” (or, also, “underdeveloped” or “in the process of development”): Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister of India), Gamal Abdel Nasser (President of Egypt) and Sukarno (President of Indonesia). In a conference in Belgrade in 1961, the movement was formally established, with the participation of Marshal Tito, Yugoslavia, and from now on the integration of some countries outside Asia and Africa was accepted.

The economic and political weakness of most members of the movement of non -aligned countries, as well as its own internal divisions and mutual conflicts (such as those who faced India and Pakistan, who continue today), They prevented the movement from becoming a real alternative to the bipolar world of the cold war. The movement continues to exist, despite the fact that the Cold War concluded in 1991.

The end of the bipolar world

The confrontation between the two blocks It was never an open war between the United States and the Soviet Unionbut it consisted of the support of these powers to one or the other conflicts that were fought in other regions, with the aim of stopping the influence of the enemy.

In addition, it was a permanent competition in the economic, technological, scientific, diplomatic, arms and cultural fields. In this context it is produced, for example, the space race.

Throughout the Cold War There were important facts that demonstrated the global impact of bipolar logic. In addition to events such as the Korean War (1950-1953) and the construction of the Berlin Wall (1961), The missile crisis in Cuba (1962) was highlighted.

From the Cuban Revolution, which in 1959 inaugurated a socialist government chaired by Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union installed in 1962 nuclear missile bases in Cuba, in response to an earlier attempt to invasion of Cuban emigrants supported by the US government. Given the danger of an open war with nuclear weapons between both powers, a peaceful solution was reached.

Then came a stage of distension, despite the fact that the United States intervened in the Vietnam War (1964-1975) and the Soviet Union provided supported Northern Vietnam. At this time Agreements for nuclear weapons reduction were signedas the SALT I agreements (1972) and PALT II (1979), or the ABM Treaty (1972).

In the late 1970s violence was intensified with US financing to cons In Nicaragua, which opposed the Sandinista revolution supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, and with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was followed by a war in which the United States militated militarily to the resistance of the Afghan Mujahides.

When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed Soviet leadership in 1985, it implemented a series of reforms aimed at overcoming economic stagnation and liberalizing the Soviet Union's policy (known as Perestroika and Glasnost). Among the consequences of this process were, in 1989, the Soviet withdrawal of Afghanistan and the opening of the Berlin Wall, and in 1990, the reunification of Germany.

Finally, In 1991 the Warsaw Pact and ComeCon were without effect, to which the dissolution of the Soviet Union followed. This meant the end of the bipolar world of the Cold War.

Churchill's speech on the steel curtain

The expression “steel curtain”also translated as “iron curtain”, It seems to have been used for the first time by Winston Churchill in a telegram that sent the US president Harry Truman on May 12, 1945. The term referred to the hermetic division that was taking place in the contact front between Western and Soviet troops in Europe.

However, it was on March 5, 1946 at the Westminster College in Fulton, Missuri (United States), when Churchill delivered a speech that produced a true political shock and that is considered one of the key moments in the trigger of the cold war. Churchill said: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a steel curtain has fallen on the continent”.

The Soviet response was immediate and Stalin denounced him as “a war call”. More than one hundred British Labor Deputies considered speech as a threat to peace. Prime Minister Clement Attlee expressed his disapproval. Even Harry Truman, who knew the content in advance and approved it, distanced himself from Churchill, and invited Stalin to speak at the same university where the British politician had done, an offer that the Soviet dictator rejected.

Finally, Prague's coup in February 1948, which caused Czechoslovakia to turn to the Soviet sphere, confirmed the existence of the steel curtain in Europe. Only two countries remained east of the steel curtain and outside the Soviet domain: Finland, which signed a treaty with the Soviet Union in 1948 that allowed him to maintain a democratic system in exchange for diplomatic subordination to the wishes of the Kremlin, and Yugoslavia, where Mariscal Tito broke with Stalin in 1948.

Next, a fragment of the famous 1946 Churchill speech is reproduced, in which the British politician warned about the steel curtain and raised the need for the two English -speaking powers (United States and the United Kingdom) to stay together.

Churchill speech in Fulton, Missuri: “The Pillars of Peace”

March 5, 1946

“(…) There is now a clear and brilliant opportunity for our two countries. Rejecting, ignoring or wasting it will carry us long reproaches of posterity (…). The dark years can return, the stone age can return on the dazzling wings of science (…). Be careful, I tell them; it is possible that there is hardly any time (…).

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a steel curtain has fallen on the continent. After that line are all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe (…), all these famous cities and populations around them are found in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subjected, in one way or another, not only to the Soviet influence, but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control by Moscow. (…)

From what I have seen of our friends and Russian allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing that admires more than strength, and there is nothing to respect less than weakness (…). If the population of English -speaking communications adds to that of the United States with all that this cooperation implies in the air, in the sea, throughout the globe and in science and industry, and in the moral force, there will not be a balance of trembling and precarious power that tends to greed or adventure.“

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References

• Britannica, Encyclopaedia (2022). Cold War. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
• Britannica, Encyclopaedia (2022). Warsaw Pact. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
• Winston Churchill speech “Los Pillares de la Paz”, March 5, 1946, in: International Churchill Society. https://winstochchill.org/
• Haglund, DG (2022). North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
• Powaski, Re (2000). The Cold War: the United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. Criticism.
• Veiga, F., Da Cal, E. & Duarte, A. (2006). Simulated peace. A story of the Cold War. Alliance.