Chapter 22: Modern World History

Part I. Decolonization  

After World War II, people began to speak of NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries as two major blocs, often using such terms as the "free world" as compared to the "Soviet bloc". These two "worlds" were not numbered, but it was eventually pointed out that there were a great many countries that fit into neither category. Therefore in the 1950s, this latter group came to be called the Third World. It then seemed wise to have a First World and a Second World. With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the term "Second World" largely fell out of use and the meaning of First World has extended to include all developed countries. (Some World History texts call developed countries the Global North and the Third World the Global South in spite of the obvious geographic exceptions; i.e., Australia.)

One of the most powerful trends shaping the postwar era was Decolonization, which is defined as the achievement of independence by the various Western colonies and protectorates in Asia and Africa following World War II. Technically, Decolonization began during the Age of Anxiety when Great Britain was forced to give Home Rule to Ireland in 1922. The next step was the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which transformed the British Empire into the British Commonwealth. Not every nation in the Commonwealth received the same degree of autonomy, but it was the beginning of Decolonization. Then, from the mid-1940s to the 1970s dozens of new nations came into being. It may be argued that the breakup of the Soviet Empire in the early 1990s is but a continuation of that trend. These new nations obtained their freedom in different ways and they faced different problems. They were wooed by both of the superpowers and many of them chose a separate path called non-alignment.

Nonalignment was a reaction to the superpowers and their political strings. Nonalignment emerged at the April 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, where twenty three nations, led by India’s Jawaharlal Nehru (who coined the term nonaligned), Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, Sukarno of Indonesia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, charted a third path of neutrality in the Cold War, choosing neither the Soviet sphere nor the American. Although officially non-aligned, many members had close ties to one bloc or the other. In addition, both blocs wooed the non-aligned nations with military and economic assistance, like the Peace Corps. It is important to note the many non-aligned leaders considered Cold War Politics and the choice of American or Soviet spheres of influence nothing more than continued or new form of Imperialism.

The Bandung Conference eventually led to the establishment of NAM (Non Aligned Movement) whose over one hundred members (in 2005) considered themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. Their vision was "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries" in their "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, Zionism, racism and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics".

I. Africa
African Nationalism began to grow even before the demise of European hegemony following the First World War. In the 1920s and 1930s, political groups were formed in Sub Saharan Africa to improve the living conditions of the poor and working classes. The best known of these groups was Négritude, a literary and ideological movement, developed by French black intellectuals, writers, and politicians in the 1930s in a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan  Léon Damas. Negritude writers found solidarity in a common black identity, often embraced Marxist ideas and became a powerful rallying cry for independence in sub-Saharan West Africa.
As time went by after World War II, a new, urban and increasingly sophisticated African elite began to agitate for (demand) independence. Strikes were organized and religious leaders were often leaders in independence movements. One of the most famous was a prophet, Simon Kimbangu of the Belgian Congo. The son of a Baptist minister, he was arrested in 1921 for his religious activities and charged with sedition. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he died in prison in 1951. His “crime” was that he promised his congregations that God would deliver them from the oppression of European imperialism.

Nevertheless, in the face of increasing calls for self-rule and independence, the British and (to a lesser degree) the French helped prepare their colonies for the inevitable freedom that logic dictated had to occur someday by educating native elites and forming transitional governments. The Belgians and Portuguese had the worst records of helping their colonies prepare for independence. Another problem was that the borders between countries, drawn in the Race of Empire, did not often correspond with tribal and religious dividing lines. So it is not surprising that native violence sometimes erupted before and after independence. The result was that many new African nations enjoyed relative peace and prosperity (mostly with democracy), but others have been plagued by military coups, dictatorships, civil war and genocide.

Morocco:  the French Protectorate ended in 1956 and Morocco has been a stable, constitutional monarchy ever since. The king has wide powers and the monarchy has survived political protests demanding the king’s power be curbed. Morocco is a member of the Arab League and non-NATO ally of the United States.

Tunisia declared its independence in 1957 and is a republic with a strong presidential system dominated by a single political party. Although the government is autocratic, Tunisia has maintained a healthy economy and has largely eliminated starvation, homelessness and disease. 

Libya began independence in 1951 as a kingdom, but in 1969 a coup led by Muammar al-Gaddafi toppled the monarchy. Gaddafi ruled Libya brutally and his foreign policy often brought him into conflict with the West and governments of other African countries. On the other hand, Libya has one of the highest Gross Domestic Products per person in Africa, largely because of its large petroleum reserves, and, in spite of numerous human rights violations, poverty has been almost abolished. Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011 and Libya has since been led by a provisional government marked by much instability.

Algeria was an exception because the French were fiercely determined to resist decolonization mostly because there were 2,000,000 ethnic French residing in Algeria. While the French allowed most of their west and equatorial African colonies to become independent, including thirteen alone in 1960 (The Year of Africa), they fought tenaciously to maintain control over Algeria.

After World War II, tensions ran high between the natives and French settlers, but a French massacre at Sétif in 1945 (when French soldiers fired on a demonstrating crowd) began a determined resistance movement. A brutal war broke out in 1954 between the French and the National Liberation Front or FLN. What began as a guerilla war moved to the towns and cities and became an eight year blood bath with both French and indigenous peoples suffering high casualties.  In the end a half-million French troops could not keep Algeria from gaining independence in 1962.

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was born in Martinique and was perhaps the preeminent (most important) thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization. He was a psychiatrist with a Marxist, Pan-African outlook. His last book, The Wretched of the Earth is often viewed as one of his more controversial books since it was written during the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule and openly advocated using violence to throw off colonialism. His works inspired almost all anti-colonial liberation movements throughout the world in the 20th century.

 

Ghana: the most important leader in West Africa was Kwame Nkrumah, who founded the Convention People’s Party almost immediately after World War II. Nkrumah led the movement and was with many of his followers jailed often, but won independence for Ghana (the former Gold Coast) from the British in 1957. Afterwards Nkrumah helped inspire other colonies to demand and work for independence; he was also one of the founding fathers of the Bandung Conference.  Although Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan country to win independence, it has had a long struggle for survival. In 1966, Nkrumah was ousted by the first of many military coups. The last coup was in 1981 when Jerry Rawlings restored order, strengthened the economy and restored democracy. He won a fair election in 1992 and peacefully handed over power in 2002, after losing the election. In 2010, the president is John A. Mills.

Nigeria was divided between Christian Ibo and Yoruba tribes in the southern rainforests and the Muslim Hausa in the dry northern savannahs. The British gradually gave in to decolonization demands and independence came peacefully in 1960. Oil was discovered in 1961 and the future seemed bright. In 1966 military coups began and a group of Ibo the oil rich south east seceded and declared the Republic of Biafra, which was subdued only after a bloody three year civil war. Military rule and corruption continued into the 1990s, but in 1999, the military allowed free elections. However, Nigeria still faces crime and both religious and ethnic tensions. 

Kenya: Descended from the Bantu, The Kikuyu are the largest ethnic group in Kenya. In 1952, a secret Kikuyu society known as the Mau Mau used violence against Europeans and what they termed as traitorous Africans to try to win independence. Although the Mau Mau was crushed in 1955, the British could not stop the surge of African nationalism and under Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya finally gained independence in 1963. It is important to understand that the British settlers had pushed the Kikuyu off the best lands and had reduced them to the status of wage slaves. In their mind, they were truly fighting for independence from slavery.  President Kenyatta jailed his opponents and crushed opposition but he also brought stability and economic advances until his death in 1978. He was succeeded by autocratic leaders until the 1990s when a democracy movement grew.

In 2002, Kenya held its first democratic election when the ruling party was defeated at the polls. Under the presidency of Mwai Kibaki, the new ruling coalition promised to focus its efforts on generating economic growth, combating corruption, improving education, and rewriting its constitution. Many of these promises were kept including the institution of free primary education. Elections were held in 2007 which were flawed by charges of corruption. Violence broke out but in 2008 a coalition government was formed, which seems to be holding. Currently, power is divided between a president, Mwai Kibaki and a prime minister, Raila Odinga. In 2013, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta (the son of Jomo Kenyatta) became the fourth and current President of Kenya.

Rhodesia: In 1965, a white-controlled government (descended mostly from Boers and led by Ian Smith) won independence from Great Britain and enacted brutally repressive laws against the black natives who fought back with violence. It took fifteen years of bloody struggle for the black majority to win independence and rename the country Zimbabwe in 1980. Robert Mugabe was elected president and remains president in 2017. Land reform has been unevenly applied both in agricultural production and mining output has fallen dramatically since independence. By 2007, Zimbabwe’s economic crisis was perhaps the most serious in the world. Moreover, as the country struggled with food shortages, human rights violations, corruption and AIDS, the life expectancy is the lowest for any country in the world (37 for male; 34 for females).

 

South Africa: due to its tremendous wealth in gold and diamonds, the white government of South Africa was one of the wealthiest, most industrialized and modern nations on the continent. Blacks in South Africa, however, had suffered for decades under the Apartheid System implemented by the Afrikaner National Party in 1948. Apartheid divided people into four races: white, black, colored (mixed black/white) and Asian. The whites were the privileged and the blacks treated with the most discrimination particularly under the Pass Laws which banned marriages between races and strictly segregated restaurants, beaches and schools. Non whites were paid less for the same jobs and blacks could not own land in most areas.

The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, was the primary force opposing Apartheid. With the growth of African nationalism after the war, they organized marches, boycotts and strikes. In 1960 police shot into a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville and the government outlawed the ANC and similar groups. An ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, first advocated non-violent resistance to Apartheid laws, but later called for armed resistance. He was arrested and put into prison for twenty seven years where he remained a symbol of resistance.

However, a combination of internal agitation from leaders such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and external pressure such as economic sanctions imposed by the United States finally convinced the government of F. W. De Klerk to release Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990. In 1994, South Africans from every race were allowed to vote and Mandela was elected president and apartheid became a painful memory. It is important to note that, unlike many African nations which face economic inequities, unemployment and a high crime rate, South Africa has maintained stable government and solid economic growth. Today, South Africa boasts a multi-ethnic society with eleven official languages and all political and ethnic groups having representation in a parliamentary government. South Africa has the seventh highest per-capita income in Africa and is regarded as a “Middle Power” (below Super Power but far above a Third World power)

Ethiopia: Unlike South Africa, the story of Ethiopia is mired in tragedy – at least until recently. Although Ethiopia had escaped European Imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was nonetheless overwhelmed by Mussolini’s forces in 1936.  British forces restored Ethiopia’s sovereignty in 1941 and restored the emperor Haile Selassie, who could trace his lineage to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Although Selassie was seen as a national and African hero from the 1940s to the 1960s, public opinion turned against him due to the worldwide oil crisis of 1973, food shortages, uncertainty regarding the succession, border wars, and a discontented middle class created by growing Communist agitation. Selassie was deposed in a Communist coup in 1974 and later murdered. Thirty years of human rights violations and rigged elections followed until 1991 when competing factions agreed to form a transitional government and free elections were held in 1995. In spite of a recent serious droughts (2010, 2011) and political unrest, democratic government seems to continue as the norm in Ethiopia.

 

Portuguese Angola and Mozambique were Portuguese colonies which Portugal tried to keep as colonies as long as possible. As a result, both were mired (stuck) in pro-independence guerrilla warfare until 1975 and then – wholly unprepared for independence - were torn apart by civil wars fueled by Cold War tensions. The United States and the Soviet Union both had ties to the warring factions. In 1992, the fighting stopped in Mozambique and in 2002, the fighting stopped in Angola. Tensions remain high, but both countries were devastated by decades of war. However, rebuilding has begun. In 1994, Mozambique held its first free elections and has been working – with some unrest – towards democracy; Angola is advancing more slowly.

Rwanda, which supports the densest human populations in continental Africa, was not only unprepared for independence because of Belgian self interest but also because its two principal tribes, the Hutu and Tutsi, were traditional enemies. After independence in 1962, tensions simmered for three decades until 1994 when extremist Hutu leaders urged their followers to kill their Tutsi and moderate Hutu neighbors. This Rwandan Genocide cost 800,000 people their lives; moreover, another 3-million people lost their homes. France finally sent in troops to restore order and the United Nations has sent economic assistance to help Rwanda rebuild, but the problem of ethnic tension remains. The current president is Paul Kagame who helped end the genocide and stabilize the government.

Burundi, a small, neighboring nation, also has a mix of Hutu and Tutsi and a similar post colonial history. While the civil struggle between the two tribes did not reach genocidal levels, the groups fought for a longer period not signing a peace accord until 2000. Tension and sporadic violence remain.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: Belgium also reluctantly pulled out of the Belgian Congo having exploited it terribly (in the manner of the Portuguese in Kongo). Moreover, the Congo would play a role in Cold War politics in 1965 when the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu (or Mobutu Sese Seko) overthrew Patrice Lumumba, the country’s first prime minister and a Maoist Marxist. Seko and his “vampire elite” plundered the country (renamed Zaire and eventually the Democratic Republic of the Congo) until Laurent Kabila overthrew him in 1997. For six years the country was ravaged by civil war, but in 2003 an uneasy truce was in place. However, stories of atrocities continued into 2007. As of 2016, no elections have been scheduled and stability continues to elude the Congo.

Sudan (the ancient Kingdom of Kush) is another country divided by religious and ethnic divisions. The north is Muslim and Arab; the south is Christian/tribal and non Arab (Bantu). After independence in 1956, the Muslim dominated north enacted discriminatory laws including imposing Islamic law on Christians and adherents of Tribal Religions. The result was twofold: the first was decades of civil as the south fought back and the second was millions of deaths due to the war and exacerbated by drought and famine. Finally in 2004, a peace agreement was signed by which the rebels fought in return for more self government. By 2007, Southern Sudan became an autonomous region with a semi-independent status and attained full independence in 2011.

Darfur: unfortunately in February 2003, ethnic conflict spread into Western Sudan called Darfur (Land of the Fur People). Like Southern Sudan Darfur is non-Muslim and non-Arab. The Darfur Genocide was unleashed when Arab/Islamic militants (called Janjaweed or bandits), given full support by the government under Omar al-Bashir, launched a bloody wave of terror and ethnic cleansing against the peoples of Darfur. They burned villages and drove thousands of farmers off their farms. Displaced peoples poured into refugee camps and many died of starvation. It appears that over 400,000 people have died as a result of this conflict. Bashir became the first sitting president to be indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court – but no meaningful action has taken place.

 

II. The Middle East
The Middle East is a land of contrasts perhaps more striking than anywhere else in the world: the home of three of the world’s major religions; huge oil reserves and great poverty; functioning kingdoms and democracies next to dictatorships and military governments; and, like Africa, peoples and cultures who find themselves within the borders of other nations. For example, Kurds have found themselves a minority population scattered in four countries: Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran where they faced much discrimination and even persecution. From the 1970s to the 1990s thousands of Kurdish rebels died fighting against Turkey. In 1991, however the Turkish government allowed the use of Kurdish and the rebels have given up armed resistance although tensions remain high. Kurds were also brutally treated in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime, especially after Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 First Gulf War.

Even before World War II, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan were attaining increasing autonomy and self rule and all easily achieved full independence after the war. Palestine, however, would be the troublesome legacy of imperialism, which led to the establishment of the Israeli state.

Israel: The combination of the Balfour Declaration’s backing of a Jewish homeland, the support for a Jewish homeland at the Paris Conference after World War I, the increasing migration of Jews into Palestine between the wars and the consequent tensions, insured that there would be no stability in the Arab world. As a result neither the British nor the United Nations were able to settle the dispute to the satisfaction of the Jews or the Arabs and Civil War broke out in 1947. When the Jews in Palestine declared independence and a Jewish State of Israel in 1948, the first of several Arab-Israeli wars broke out. The outnumbered Israelis won a decisive victory and so ended up with more land than the United Nations had proposed and the area was no closer to peace. In effect, Jerusalem and the Jordan River Valley were divided between the new Israeli State and the Kingdom of Jordan. Israel has maintained a strong democracy and a strong military state ever since.

Egypt: Egypt had almost complete autonomy before the war, but British interests in the Red Sea and Suez Canal lingered after complete post war independence. In 1954, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the Egyptian government and became a great proponent of modernization. He used the Cold War to his advantage and played the Soviets and Americans off against each other and for a while in the early 50s was the champion of the Arab world. His great plan was pan-Arabism and he labored to create a United Arab Republic that would link all Arab nations together in a cooperative commonwealth. In 1956, he tried to nationalize the Suez Canal. This prompted a crisis in which French, British and Israeli troops tried to seize the canal. The United States and the USSR, however, forced the French, British and Israelis to leave the canal in Egyptian hands. His anti-British stance caused him to court the Soviets and chill towards the Americans, but he expelled the Soviets when they attempted to exert too much influence.

Arab-Israeli Wars:  the Arab states have fought several wars against Israel, the most important being the Six-day War of 1967 in which Israel seized the west bank of the Jordan river from Jordan and both  the Sinai Desert and Gaza Strip from Egypt.  In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel again defeated Arab forces decisively and continued to hold its territory securely. Complicating the hard feelings was the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which had deep support among Palestinians who had fled or been forced off their lands during the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Headed by Yasser Arafat, the PLO launched terrorist attacks, most notably airplane hijacking and the assassination of Israeli Olympic team members in 1972. Palestinians also launched Infitadas or uprisings, which included stoning Israeli troops, ambushes and suicide bombings. Israeli retaliation killed thousands of PLO operatives and kept order, but also heightened Palestinian resentment.

 

In 1978 in talks sponsored by American president Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat of Egypt agreed with Menachem Begin of Israel that Egypt recognize Israel in return for the Sinai Peninsula in the Camp David Peace Agreement, for which Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize. Many Muslim states were outraged and Sadat was eventually assassinated, but a step towards peace had been made. Many moderate Arab states followed suit and King Hussein of Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Palestine: tensions gradually eased except for the Palestinians who lived in the Gaza Strip and wanted independence from Israel. It should be understood that many Palestinians do not recognize Israel or its right to exist. In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo Accord, which agreed that Palestine should be in part self ruled, but this implementation has been frustrating and marred by violence, especially from radical Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas. The 2000s have brought steps toward peace from both sides with cautious optimism mixed with violence.

Iran: Muhammad Reza Pahlavi was the shah of Iran from 1924 to 1971. He used wealth from the oil industry to industrialize and modernize. Like Mustafa Kemal, he opposed Islamic traditionalists and encouraged western dress and education, the unveiling of women, and eradication of Islamic Law. Reza Pahlavi, however, used dictatorial tactics to carry out his programs and used his secret police to crush democratic and Islamic supporters. In 1979, he went to the United States to seek cancer treatment where he died the following year. In his absence, a Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, took control of the country and launched an Islamic fundamentalist revolution. He transformed Iran into an anti-Western, Anti-United States country and a theocratic dictatorship. He fought a devastating war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988. He died in 1989, but his theocracy remains firmly in place.

Iraq: The British had given home rule to Iraq in 1932 but retained the right to maintain military bases. In 1941, the British invaded Iraq because the pro-Nazi government might cut off essential exports of oil to Britain. After the war the Hashemite kingdom was restored. In1979, Saddam Hussein overthrew the monarchy and became president. In reality, he was one of the most powerful dictators in the Middle East and of world history. In the war with Iran, he used poison gas, drafted teenagers, and committed civilian atrocities. He was vicious toward his own people and especially brutal to the Kurdish minority. In 1990, he invaded Kuwait as a prelude to invading the emirates and Saudi Arabia. Given sanction by the United Nations, the United States put together a coalition and drove Hussein out of Kuwait in the highly successful First Gulf War. After the war, Hussein evaded terms of the cease-fire agreement and faced sanctions and bombing by British and American warplanes. In 2003, the United States again formed a coalition, invaded Iraq and toppled Sadam Hussein from power.

Turkey was already independent before World War II and continued on its paths towards modernization. From 1923 to his death in 1938 Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk: father of the Turks), worked to create a secular, modern Turkey in which industrialization, western dress and western education were encouraged. Even the Turkish language was converted to the Roman alphabet. Church and state were separated and women, freed from the veil, were given the vote in 1934. Turkey, more than any other Muslim state, remained dedicated to secularism and westernization – and has integrated itself into European markets, as well as NATO. Postwar Turkey also allowed a multi party system which witnessed tensions, and the period between the 1960s and the 1990s was particularly marked by periods of political instability that resulted in a number of military coups d'états in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997. The Turkish government began to liberalize the economy in the 1980s and changed the landscape of the country, with successive periods of high growth and crises. Nevertheless in 2007, Turkey remains one of the strongest and most stable Middle Eastern nations

Lebanon is home to a delicate balance of Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Christian Arabs and Druze (a religion similar to Islam). Before 1948, Christians were the majority and dominated, but Muslims fleeing Israel reversed the balance and led to civil wars, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. Beirut, the capital was rebuilt and the country began to flourish, but internal and external tensions remain.

III. The Indian Sub-Continent
India: During the war, Winston Churchill, who despised Gandhi, refused even to consider independence for India, but as the war was ending, he was voted out of office and the Labour Party set India on the road to independence. However, independence also brought the threat of division. Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru had pushed for Indian nationalism and attacked Communalism or the idea that one’s religion is more important than the nation. Gandhi, especially, feared what he termed the “Vivisection” or the cutting up of India into tiny mutually exclusive pieces.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, on the other hand, advocated that Muslims could not survive as a small minority in India. He rejected any possibility of a untied India and that the creation of a separate Pakistan was the only option. Just before independence, Jinnah demanded a Day of Direction. Rioting broke out and 6,000 people died in the Great Calcutta Killing. In the end, Jinnah’s dream came true, but unfortunately Gandhi’s worst nightmare also came true. Division brought about mass migration and eventual hostility and warfare between the two countries over Kashmir. Gandhi became a martyr to the cause of non-violence when he was assassinated by a Hindu extremist on January 30th, 1948.

On the other hand, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister from 1947 to 1964, helped to turn India into the world’s largest democracy. Nehru’s top priority was to strengthen India’s economy. Under his guidance, India grew and increasingly prospered in spite of its inability to balance its population growth with its economic growth and its interethnic/inter-religious bickering. He encouraged family planning but had little success with many Indians – especially in rural areas – who saw children as an economic asset. He also worked hard to end discrimination against the lower classes or Dalits, the descendents of the old Dravidian untouchables. Politically, Nehru managed to keep a hostile China at bay, keep uneasy peace with an even more hostile Pakistan and accept aid from the Soviet Union without becoming a Soviet Satellite. He was also one of the fathers of the Non Alignment movement.

Two years after Nehru’s death, (from 1966 to 1975 and again from 1977 to 1984) Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, was chosen to be the prime minister. Although she continued her father’s policies, she also accelerated the national nuclear weapons program (mostly from fear of China) and was far more authoritarian both in Indian party politics and against Sikh and Muslim minorities. In June 1984, when Sikh separatists rose in rebellion and occupied the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indian troops crushed the rebels - killing about five hundred people - and destroying part of the Sikh sacred temple. Shortly afterwards, a member of her own Sikh bodyguard assassinated her.

She was succeeded by her son, Rajiv Gandhi, who introduced economic reforms along free market lines (including strong encouragement for science and technology), improved relations with the United States (reversing her mother’s and grandfather’s policies), and even began an Indian space program. Nevertheless, his anti-socialism positions and charges of political corruption caused him to loose his office in 1989. In 1991, while campaigning for prime minister, he was assassinated. Although India remains the world’s largest democracy, it still is plagued by poverty, overpopulation and religious and ethnic tension. In the 1980s, the Congress Party faced stiff opposition from Bharatiya Janata Party. Whereas the Congress party had separated religions, the BJP wanted a Hindu dominated state and their radicals even destroyed mosques. But all out religious conflict continues to be avoided

Pakistan overcame sectarian problems and became a modern nation with strong Islamic traditions. However, in spite of these accomplishments, Pakistan struggled with corruption, political repression and military dictatorships. After Muhammad Ali Jinna died in 1948, Pakistan had no strong leaders. In fact, Pakistani political history is divided into alternating periods of authoritarian military government and democratic civilian/parliamentary rule.  1948 to 1956 saw a shaky democracy. In 1956 a military coup ran the country until 1973 when General Yahya Khan handed over power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Bhutto fought to restore democracy, lessen tensions with India, founded Pakistan’s nuclear program and recognized an independent Bangladesh. In 1977, he was removed by another military coup by General Zia and executed. General Zia’s died in a sabotaged airplane crash in 1988 and until 1999 Pakistan was ruled by civilian governments, alternately headed by Benazir Bhutto (daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the first female to head an Islamic state) and Nawaz Sharif, who were each elected twice and removed from office on charges of corruption. Another military coup ended Pakistani democracy in 1999 and continues today.

Pakistan’s shaky government was also threatened by when the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 forced over a million Afghanis to flee into Pakistan. Many of these refugees turned to Islamic Fundamentalism and joined the Mujahedin rebels fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistani Islamic Fundamentalists gained power when they allied with these Afghan rebels. After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1986, these fundamentalists turned against the United States who like the Soviets had played an influential role in Middle Eastern politics. Thus, during the 1990s, Pakistan supported Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban regime. However, after the September 11, 2001 bombing of the New York Trade Center and the United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan, Pakistan reversed its position and supported the United States invasion of Afghanistan and destruction of the Taliban.

Bangladesh: From Pakistan’s inception in 1947, West Pakistan dominated the government and enjoyed the greater economic wealth; even though East Pakistan had a larger population. Moreover, even though they were Muslims, the population of East Pakistan was mostly Bengali and as the decades rolled by they began to resent their inferior political and economic position. In 1971, East Pakistan declared itself to be the independent nation of Bangladesh, (Bengali Nation). Civil War followed, but India sided with Bangladesh and Pakistan lost about one-seventh of its land and more than one-half of its population.

Sri Lanka: The British Colony of Ceylon gained independence in 1948 and changed its name to Sri Lanka. The majority population is Buddhist which speaks Sinhalese; the minority is Hindu which speaks Tamil. The Sinhalese dominated government and ignored the suffering of the Tamil. In the 1970s, Tamil rebels began a civil war which led to a peace agreement in 2002. The rebels agreed to quit fighting in return for political concessions. The peace agreement continues to hold.

IV Southeast Asia

Vietnam: During World War II, Ho Chi Minh, a dedicated nationalist and later communist, helped to drive the Japanese out of Vietnam and then issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. In 1954 the French suffered a disastrous defeat by Vietnamese insurgents at Dienbeinphu and were forced to leave. At the Geneva peace conference Indochina was divided into Cambodia, Laos, and two Vietnams, with Ho Chi Minh in the north and French-educated, U. S. backed Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. Diem refused to allow elections and fighting with Minh’s North Vietnamese Communists broke out in 1959.  The following year President Eisenhower, fearing a communist takeover, sent the Diem government military aid and advisors, which eventually escalated into the Vietnam War after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. We have seen in the last chapter how the United States in spite of overwhelming superiority could not win, how the Tet Offensive of 1968 turned the course of the war and how in 1973, the United States left Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 before his Viet Cong troops won their victory.  Although Communist postwar rule was harsh on the former South Vietnam and many people fled, there was no bloodbath and most low ranking government officials were allowed to keep their jobs. An initial American economic blockade retarded economic growth, but since the 1990s growth has been substantial, but not been as fast the four tigers. Vietnam’s economy has doubled every ten years and the government, like China, has mixed socialist and capitalist models.

 

Myanmar: After India and Pakistan won independence, Great Britain gave independence to Burma in 1948 and in 1989 was renamed Myanmar. Burma was a democracy until 1962 when military dictatorships ran the country until 1989 when elections were held.  The winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was not allowed to take her office. In fact, she won the Nobel Peace prize in 1991 for her efforts to establish democracy in Myanmar, because she was still under house arrest. In 2008, a national referendum created at quasi democracy and renamed the country Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Peaceful elections were held in 2010 which allowed more reforms including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Free elections were held in 2016 with a non-military president (the first since 1962) and Aung San Suu Kyi as prime minister.

Malay Peninsula: Great Britain gave independence to Malaysia in 1957 and Singapore in 1965. Along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan (some historians also count Thailand), Singapore became one of the Little Tigers (Japan being the big tiger) because of its economic growth and continuing strength. Hong Kong (another of the Little Tigers) remained British until 1997 when (with the conclusion of the lease dating to the Unequal Treaties) it was returned to China. The area around Singapore, Malaysia which includes the bottom half of the Malay Peninsula and part of Borneo, also prospered in diverse industries including rubber and electronics. Just above Malaysian Borneo lies the small, oil-rich kingdom of Brunei.

Indonesia: The Dutch fiercely resisted decolonization of their Dutch East Indies colony. In 1949, the Dutch were forced to leave and, at first, the Indonesians formed a functioning democracy under its first president Sukarno. Then, in 1965, after an aborted army coup, an army general, Suharto, blamed the communists and seized power. Suharto massacred hundreds of thousands communists and suspected communists and ruled Indonesia as dictator for thirty years. He retired in 1996 and successfully avoided legal efforts to bring him to justice for corruption and human rights violations. He died on January 27, 2008 at the age of 86.

V Japan

Japan was occupied by American forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur who became the virtual dictator of Japan. The Meiji built industrial infrastructure had been almost totally destroyed by the war, but the United States helped rebuild it. In the process, however, they tried to break up the Zaibatsu (industrial conglomerates), but failed as the Japanese created Keiritsu or interlocking agreements, especially after the American occupation ended. Politically, a compromise was worked out that the emperor would retain his throne and renounce his divinity, but, at the same time, allowed Macarthur to preside over both the demilitarization and democratization of Japan. Macarthur’s staff drafted a new constitution that renounced war and reduced the emperor to a mere figurehead. This Constitution is in use in Japan to this day.

Like West Germany, Japan quickly recovered and became the economic superpower in the Far East. Much of this success depended on the Japanese people and their dedicated work ethic, which (in long-standing Confucian tradition) placed the needs of Japan before the desires of the individual. During the 1980s, the Japanese economy was the world’s third most productive after the United States and West Germany. However, as the 1990s dawned, Japan’s selfless workforce was becoming less sacrificial. Japanese politics has been dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party, which, although technically democratic, has never lost its oligarchical flavor.

The 1990s also saw an economic recession and exposure of massive government corruption. The 90s came to be known as The Lost Decade in which excessive speculation and a combination of incredibly high land values matched with incredibly low interest rates led to a point where credit was both easily available and extremely cheap. This led to massive borrowing, but when the Japanese Stock Market crashed, the economic bubble burst and Japanese business spent the rest of the 90s paying off massive debt. As the new millennium dawned, however, Japan rebounded and is the world’s largest exporter with a gross national product exceeding that of Great Britain and France combined. [In the decade, however, China is rapidly displacing Japan as the economic giant of East Asia.]

VI The Little Tigers

By the 1980s, the Four Little Tigers - sometimes called the Asian Tigers - are Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. They are little in proportion and comparison to Japan and China, the big tigers, but have much in common with them. The primary characteristics of the Four Tigers are: high educational levels, a high degree of economic freedom, harmonious labor-management relations, an economy focused on exports to richer industrialized nations, maintaining a trade surplus with aforementioned countries, sustaining a double-digit growth rate for decades, having had non-democratic and relatively authoritarian political systems during their early years, a high level of U.S. Treasury bond holdings, and a high savings rate among its citizens.

The First Tiger is Singapore, an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. The city was originally founded by Sir Thomas Raffles in 1819 and remained a British colony until 1965 except for its occupation by the Japanese in World War II. Under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore rapidly industrialized (especially shipping, textiles and electronics), developed strong banking network and promoted tourism to create a strong economy with as many jobs as possible. 

The Second Tiger is the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, commonly known as Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. As a result of the Opium Wars and the Unequal Treaty of Nanjing, Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842. In 1898, the British and Qing governments agreed to a ninety nine year lease and Hong Kong was amicably returned to Chinese control with compromises agreeable to its citizenry. Even before became a part of China again (remember with conditions), Hong Kong’s economic prosperity, like Singapore, was linked to its shipping and banking industries. Even though many capitalists moved significant amounts of investment dollars to the United States and Canada in fear of the unification of China, Hong Kong continues to prosper economically and more and more linked to China’s economy.

The Third Tiger is Taiwan or the Republic of China (ROC). After his defeat by Mao Zedong, Jiang Jieshi set up a counter government of the Island of Formosa or Taiwan. During the early years of the Cold War, Taiwan and the United States maintained very close economic and political relations. As détente grew between the Soviet Union and the United States, Taiwan suffered political setbacks including the loss of its seat in the United Nations in 1971 and loss of political recognition by all but twenty four nations of the world.

Nevertheless, during the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan began to develop into a prosperous, industrialized country with a strong and dynamic economy, in spite of Jiang Jieshi’s authoritarian, single-party government. After Jiang’s death in 1975, his son and successors have liberalized the country and Taiwan has been able to gain markets in the People’s Republic of China without loosing its markets in the United Sates and South Asia. By 2000, Taiwan has transitioned to democracy.

The Fourth Tiger is South Korea. South Korea was actually the first of the Tigers to imitate the Japanese model. Within a decade of the end of the Korean War, South Korea managed to combine her assets (cheap labor, strong technical education, prudent spending) to develop heavy industries (especially shipbuilding and steel production) and consumer oriented electronics. In politics, Korea shifts between democracy and authoritarianism. Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea whose His presidency lasted from 1948 to1960 is a good example. Rhee was a strong anti-Communist, and led South Korea through the Korean War. But he used martial law and constitutional manipulation to keep power and presidency ended in resignation following popular protests against a disputed election. He died in exile in Hawaii.

South Korea has the world’s twelfth largest economy and is among the world's most technologically advanced and digitally-connected countries. It has the fourth highest number and proportion of broadband Internet users and is a global leader in electronics, digital displays, semiconductor devices, and mobile phones. South Korea also leads the world in the shipbuilding industry and exported ships to the value of 15.09 billion USD in 2004.

It is interesting to note that the Southeast Asian nations of Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia are sometimes considered the Four New Asian Tigers. Moreover, the term is not limited to Asian nations. In Europe, the Republic of Ireland has been called the Celtic Tiger for its rapid growth in the 1990s, while Estonia and Slovakia are recognized as the Baltic and Tatra (i.e., Slovakian) Tigers respectively for their current high growth rates.

VII China
Even though the Guomindang (Nationalists) and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) publicly fought the Japanese with a united front during World War II, in reality they remained locked in a bitter struggle for control of China. Open warfare between the two parties resumed following the Japanese defeat in 1945, but by 1949, the Communist forces under Mao Zedong had routed the corrupt Nationalist forces and occupied most of the country. Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) fled with the remnants of his government and military forces to Taiwan where he proclaimed Taipei to be the Republic of China's "provisional capital" and vowed to reconquer the Chinese mainland.

Mao Zedong thereupon established the People’s Republic of China and remained its leader until his death in 1976. Mao believed that socialism would eventually triumph over all other ideologies. His first Five-Year Plan (1953), based on a Soviet-style centrally controlled economy, led to industrial growth. Then Mao took on the ambitious project of the Great Leap Forward in 1958. It included an even more ambitious industrializing and an unprecedented process of collectivization in rural areas. One of the experiments was Village-based industrialization where Mao hoped to use collectivization principles to produce steel and other manufactured goods on a small rural scale. The result was a disaster: non-cooperation from many peasants, bad weather and a grossly administered system of production. Along with an end of Soviet economic aid the Great Leap Forward ended in great famine, during which over twenty million people would die. The Great Leap Forward was halted in 1960, but terrible damage was done and Mao came under more criticism and some opposition. Nevertheless, Mao would try again.

In 1966, Mao masterminded a second program of rapid and radical modernization, which, this time, included a profound restructuring of society and culture. This was the (in)famous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which tormented China for a decade until Mao’s death. Censorship and political indoctrination were the hallmarks of the day. Dissent was not allowed! Young Communist activists, known as Red Guards, were allowed and instructed to rampage through both rural and urban areas alike where they put on trial any person suspected of counter-revolutionary thought or activities. University professors, teachers, bureaucrats, journalists, politicians and even senior Communist party members were demoted, humiliated, arrested and sent to special camps for re-education. Mao used the Cultural Revolution as a way to get back at his real or suspected opponents. Among the victims was Deng Xiaoping, who would one day be leader of China.

After Mao’s death, a power struggle followed and in 1980, Deng Xiaoping came to power. Deng pioneered "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and Chinese economic reform, also known as the "Socialist Market Economy". Critics and supporters alike have claimed many of his reforms helped bring his country closer to capitalism. His program was based on the “Four Modernizations” focusing on industry, agriculture, technology and national defense. Thus, Deng was flexible and pragmatic where Mao had been idealistic and inflexible. Mao was impatient and not able to compromise; Deng was, gradual, patient and willing to compromise.

Perhaps Deng’s most famous quote was, “It makes no difference whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” Therefore, Deng allowed limited free-market reforms, including private enterprise, small business and limited capitalist exchange and foreign investment, all under the slogan, “Create wealth for the people.” The result was that in the 1980s, China experienced dramatic economic growth and both wages and standard of living improved considerably.

By the end of the 1980s however, the one western luxury Deng was not permitting was dissent and freedom of speech and expression, as demonstrated in the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre of March 1989. The protestors came from many different groups, ranging from intellectuals who believed that the government was too corrupt and repressive, to urban workers who believed that economic reform had gone too far and that the resulting rampant inflation and widespread unemployment was threatening their livelihoods. After the protestors defied government calls to disperse, Deng and the hardliners sent army tanks and infantry were sent to crush the protest and disperse the protestors. Over 400 protestors died and nearly 10,000 were wounded or injured. In spite of world protest and resentment in China, few could deny the economic results achieved by the Deng regime.

After Tiananmen Square, Deng retired but kept ultimate control of China’s economic growth until his death in 1997.  His “successor” Jiang Zemin, returned to Deng’s fast economic pace by the mid-1990s and laid heavy emphasis on scientific and technological advancement, especially in space exploration. He began the Three Gorges Dam, which spanned the Yangtze and in 2007 possessed the largest hydroelectric plant in the world. On the other hand, as China’s industry mushroomed, environmental pollution became a serious problem. In 2002, China became a member of the World Trade Organization.

Deng’s legacy of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics continues to shape China in the first decades of the twenty-first century. It has been observed that China is divided into two zones: one located along the seaboard that is modern, industrialized, efficient and connected to the outside world; and one that is rural dominated by government and bureaucracy. And as China moves towards full industrialization and a modern society, she must still grapple with the social problems female inferiority, socialism vs. capitalism and a new generation looking forward not backward.

VIII Latin America
Latin America continued to pursue a political, social and economic position that made them vulnerable to the growing international capitalist economy. The Great Depression had forced Latin American nations to diversify, but many countries turned to dictators for political stability. After World War II, many countries in Latin America fought to reduce foreign and especially American interference. But the problem remained the United States’ economic investment was often necessary to alleviate social problems or build industrial infrastructure. Moreover, the elites continued to profit export based economies.

Argentina: In the early 20th century, Argentina was ruled by the elites, but had stable government. Then the Great Depression brought economic and political chaos. In 1943 nationalist military rule (called a Junta) was established in Argentina and in 1946, an army colonel, Juan Peron, was elected president by appealing to the poor. His wife, Eva, appealed to the lower-class descamisados, or “shirtless ones”, was a major asset to him. She had come from the poor.  She was born illegitimate. She worked as a radio soap opera actress. She met and married Peron in 1944 and when he became president, she transformed herself into a stunningly beautiful political leader, radiant with gold-blond hair and designer clothing. But she ministered to the needs of the poor and pushed for them in the government. When she died at the age of 33 of uterine cancer, the people called her Santa Evita. When she died, Peron became increasingly right wing, almost fascistic and close to Francisco Franco in Spain, and her was overthrown and fled to Spain in 1955.

Peron’s popularity remained high and for a short time before his death in 1974, he returned to rule as president once again. However, in 1976, the government was overthrown by a brutal military regime, which purged leftists, intellectuals and dissidents – at least 30,000 “disappeared” in the night, alá Uncle Joe Stalin. In 1982, President Galtieri and the Junta seized the Falkland Islands, which had been occupied by Great Britain since 1833. Margaret Thatcher and Great Britain responded immediately and sent an invasion force that defeated Argentinean military forces and retook the islands. This failure so discredited the Junta that Galtieri resigned and elections were held the next year, restoring democracy to Argentina.

 

Brazil: We saw that Gaetulio Vargas (Father of the Poor), who imitated the fascist states of Europe, was forced out of office in 1945 by a military coup and successive military dictatorships ruled from the mid 60s to the mid 80s. In 1985, Tancredo Neves was elected president in an indirect election in 1985 returning the nation to civilian rule. Neves died before being sworn in, and the elected vice president, José Sarney, was sworn in as president in his place. Brazil has maintained democratic rule till the present. Economically, Brazil has been an economic miracle since 1960s, mostly from over exploitation of the Amazon Basin and its rain forests. The biggest problem facing Brazil in the twenty first century is that, in spite of continuing economic growth, the wide gap between the rich and poor has continued to expand.

Chile: Chile was an example of United States interference. In the 1970s, Chile was suffering from economic malaise from a declining copper market. General Augusto Pinochet, with the help of the U S Central Intelligence Agency, led a 1973 coup against left-wing government of Salvador Allende, who, in 1970, had become one of the few Marxist politicians to become democratically elected, but had angered the United States by nationalizing the copper industry. Allende also broke up large estates. Like many dictators, Pinochet used force and secret police to hold his power. His regime was one of the most brutal in world history and thousands either fled or “disappeared” in the night. Pinochet was finally defeated in a 1988 plebiscite and in 1989 a democratically elected president took power. In 2006, Michelle Bachelet  became the first woman president of Chile.

Mexico: It is very important to understand that Mexico must be understood as only nominally democratic. Nevertheless before World War II, Lazaro Cardenas experimented with massive land reforms, but at other time conservative leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled harshly. The PRI was able to keep power in the 50s and the 60s mostly because it kept the economy healthy because of its increasing oil exports. But by the end of the 1960s, a combination of racial minorities (mostly indigenous peoples who felt that they were being treated as second class citizens) and economic downturns (mostly from a drop in the price of oil) led to a 1968 series of protests, strikes and demonstrations.

The PRI continued to hold power during the 1970s but by the 1980s the government was forced to begin serious, albeit gradual reforms. In the 1970s, Mexico discovered new reserves of oil, but when oil prices dropped in the 1980s, Mexico defaulted on its foreign debts. In 1994, Mexico with the United States and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement called for gradually phasing out tariffs, over a 15-year period. NAFTA created great anger among the peasants because cheaper imports (like corn) hurt them terribly. Therefore, in 2000 many were ready for a change and so, after 71 years, the PRI lost a presidential election to the National Action Party (PAN) and Vicente Fox. Mexico’s biggest problem also remains the rising gap between rich and poor.

 

Cuba: a revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew the Creole-elite government of Fulgencia Batista. Castro immediately began to nationalize industry and steer Cuba towards socialism. He citicized the United States for its imperialism in Latin America and, with his lieutenant Che Guevara, declared Cuba Marxist state. As relations with the United States soured, he turned to the Soviet Union for help. In the last chapter we outlined the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. From the 1960s to the beginning of the current century, Cuba has slowly modernized, improved education and somewhat weakly closed the gap between rich and poor. On the other hand, Castro’s regime has been brutally dictatorial and has a terrible human rights record. When Castro died in 2016, he was succeeded by his brother Raúl Castro, who has moved Cuba toward normalization of relations with the United States and announced that he will not run for reelection as party chairman in 2018.

Part II. A Global World

Do not confuse Globalization with Globalism. Globalization describes a process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communication and trade. Globalization almost always economic in outlook referring to the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.

Globalism, on the other hand, is the attitude or mindset that places the interests of the entire world above those of any individual nation. The movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, climaxes in aliens informing the nations of the globe that they must stop their petty quarreling – especially since they have developed atomic destructive power – or they must risk incineration by the other nations of the galaxy.

If World History is examined over the sweep of millennia, then one obvious phenomenon is that, as humans emerged from the stone ages to the Neolithic Revolution, to the early Fluvial Civilizations, to the Classical Civilizations and into the modern era, the world has continued to shrink. Archeology continues to reveal that communication and trading networks existed long before the emergence of the civilization and history. Primitive “footpaths over animal trails” and river trade routes slowly grew into the Silk Roads, the East Coast Freeway of Africa, the Polynesian Triangle, the monsoonal mariners of the Indian Ocean  and culminated in the Age of Exploration, Manila Galleon trade and the Colombian Exchange.

The Industrial Revolution greatly speeded up this process as human and horse power gave way to steam power and then (with dramatic rapidity) to internal combustion engines, telegraphs and telephones, radios and televisions, radar and sonar, jet aircraft and rockets and finally the Information Revolution, Satellite transmissions and the Internet. After World War II and even more after the breakup of the Soviet Empire, as more Third World nations struggled to industrialize, modernize the shrinking globe witnessed societal, political and economic phenomena that will define the twenty-first century. What will the next decades witness: nationalistic Globalization, humanistic Globalism or some compromise.  The world truly is on a new frontier, a Global Frontier.

I. Global Economics
The late 1980s and 1990s with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Empire saw socialism on the defensive. The once state-managed socialist economies of Eastern Europe were looking to capitalism for solutions to their economic problems. Deng Xiaoping had brought free market reforms to China. Socialist Russia was mired in corruption and lack of consumer goods. A return to a more capitalist outlook had brought increasing prosperity to much of Western Europe. Free market capitalism seemed to be the best road to prosperity. But it was not always an easy road. 

During the 1990s, the world witnessed great expansion of manufacturing and trade. The already developed countries increased their wealth the most but it was developing countries that grew at the fastest rates, especially in the countries freed from Soviet style socialism. Entrepreneurs invested heavily in developing nations whose political stability, educational levels and labor costs promised the most profitable returns. China has been the single greatest beneficiary and even Russia has opened itself to free market investment and financial reforms.

Although Franklin Roosevelt did not live to see the birth of the United Nations, it was his hope that the United Nation would preserve world peace and build international cooperation in a shrinking world. Sometimes U.N. members, especially those on the Security Council, have acted in their own self-interest, but the United Nations has continued to play a role in late twentieth century and current world politics.

We have seen how the International Monetary Fund was created at the Bretton Woods Conference and how its purpose was to act globally, initiating a post war era of global cooperation in financial concerns. In 1947, the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established to encourage free trade and laid the groundwork for 1995 establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) whose primary goal is to negotiate and formalize trade agreements between nations, especially industrialized and non-industrialized.

That we live in a new age of Globalism was demonstrated in 1997 in Asia which experienced a financial crisis so sharp and deep that it affected the West. The crisis began when foreign money began to pull out of Thailand whose stock market lost 75% of its value. The crisis soon spread to neighboring countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines. This interconnectedness would have been unthinkable and impossible fifty years earlier.

Ten years later in December of 2007, the Great Recession began in the United States. It was linked to reckless lending practices and by September 2008 had spread across the world resulting in a in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and declining commodity prices such as oil. This worldwide recession was the worst since the Great Depression on the 1930s. The Great Recession began in December 2007 and lasted nineteenth months until June 2009 BUT its lingering effect lasted until at least 2012.

One reason was the multiplication of Global Corporations. Since 1990, fifty-thousand such corporations have been created. Before 1990, Multinational Corporations dominated the world markets. A Multinational Corporation has its headquarters in one nation but does business in many countries. Global corporations, which evolved from Multinational Corporations taking advantage of WTO policies, also operate in many countries but without regard to where capital, people, resources and technology are located.

Both are entrepreneurial; both are profit driven. Both search for cheap labor and places that offer few restrictions. Thus both often avoid local tax laws which lead to a depletion of tax revenues in the countries in which they operate. Finally, both often outsource jobs to cheaper countries thus causing unemployment at home. The Japanese (Honda, Sony) and the United States (General Motors, Exxon, and Microsoft) are currently the leaders in the foundation of Global Corporations.

Old regional and national alliances are not easily dispensed with and various nations have produced trading blocs to protect their interests in the new global market. We saw the development of the European Union (established by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993), both a political and economic union, whose members have implemented the free movement of people, goods, services, and a common currency. We saw how the Union began with seven nations signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and blossomed with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 and (not counting BREXIT) has nineteen member states and six states eligible for membership in 2017.

O.P.E.C. or the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is a cartel of twelve oil-exporting countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC dates to the 1960s and its main purpose is to act collectively to safeguard the economic interests of its member states. OPEC uses oil embargoes and price fixing to maximize profits and achieve political goals. In 1973 OPEC embargoed oil shipments to the United States in retaliation for its support of Israel and drove up the cost of oil by 400%, trigging a global recession. In subsequent years OPEC has been more cautious and sensitive to global needs as global recession meant decreased profits for OPEC members.

N.A.F.T.A. or the North American Free Trade Agreement was established in 1993 between Canada, the United States and Mexico. N.A.F.T.A. created a trilateral trade bloc in North America which is the largest in the world. Economists argue that the effects of N.A.F.T.A. are both positive and negative: some argue that it has been particularly good for Mexico which has seen its poverty rates fall and personal income rise; others argue that it has been good for business owners (corporations) and elites in all three countries but has severely hurt Mexican farmers and U.S. blue collar workers, raising unemployment rates.

II. Global Diplomacy

In 1992, American president, George H. W. Bush, said that the collapse of the Soviet Empire had brought about and to the Cold War and a “New World Order.” Many people agreed and boldly predicted that the new millennium eight years away would witness the world emerge out from under the “nuclear umbrellas of the superpowers” in a new world of freedom and interconnectedness. But such was not to be as the post cold war world struggled with its own hot spots, security concerns and extremism: nationalist, ethnic and religious.

China: After the fall of the Soviet Union, China became the largest Communist power in the world. Strain with the United States came about in two areas. The first was the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 and continued Chinese political repression of political dissidents; second was the disagreements which were a result of China’s dramatic economic growth in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Russia: In the 1990s the United States and Russia enjoyed good relations under Russian president Boris Yeltsin and American president Bill Clinton as Russia was trying to rebuild its own democratic traditions. But in 1999 Yeltsin resigned and Vladimir Putin won the presidential election in 2000. Under Putin however, Russia has tried to reassert its sphere of influence in parts of the former Soviet Union, especially the Caucasus, Belarus and the Ukraine. In 2008, Putin was ineligible for a third term as president; nevertheless his handpicked successor, Dimitri Medvedev, immediately appointed Putin his Prime Minister. Putin’s post-cold war strategy seems to be to regain Russia’s parity with the United States and the West, even though Russia is too weak to do so.

III. New Global Hot Spots

Sometimes, Post-Cold War Hot Spots erupted from the old desires of conquest and imperialism. As we saw in the last chapter, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and its rich oil fields in 1990 - as a prelude to invading the Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Given sanction by the United Nations, President Bush and the United States put together a coalition and drove Hussein out of Kuwait. After this First Gulf War, Hussein evaded terms of the cease-fire agreement and faced sanctions and bombing by British and American warplanes. Finally, amid charges of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, the second President Bush organized an invasion (Second Gulf War) of Iraq by a multinational force led by troops from the United States and the United Kingdom on March 20, 2003. Hussein was deposed, tried for war crimes and hung. The allies still occupy Iraq and are trying to help democracy take root there. In late February 2009, President Barack Obama announced an 18-month withdrawal window for combat forces, with approximately 50,000 troops to remain in the country to advise and train Iraqi security forces.

North Korea: After the Korean War armistice, North Korea recovered quickly and saw industrial production rise. After “Nixon went to China” and China began normalizing relations with the West, Chinese and North Korean relations cooled. With the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Kim Il Sung began to sever ties with China but this led to a worsening of the economy in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s when the Soviet Empire collapsed and Russia gave little or no aid. Thus, North Korea and China were again drawn together.

In 1994, North Korea was developing nuclear weapons technology in the face of determined United States opposition. The same year Kim Il Sung died and was succeeded by Kim Jong-Il who negotiated and signed a treaty, the Agreed Framework, with American President Bill Clinton. Jong-Il, however, followed a Songun (or Military First) policy and continued to secretly violate the Agreed Framework treaty. In 2011, Kim Jong-Il died and was succeeded by his youngest son, Kim Jong-un who has continued to lead North Korea as a rogue nation defying international condemnation and continuing to develop nuclear weapons.

But most Post Cold War Hot Spots have been ethnic and/or religious in origin. India had been divided between Muslims and Hindus ever since the Umayyad invasion of 711. We saw how, when India was granted independence from Great Britain, two countries came into being: the larger, Hindu dominant India and the smaller, Muslim dominated Pakistan. We chronicled the violence of the Great Calcutta Killing that claimed 6,000 lives and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s hard line stance in rejecting any possibility of a united India. It did not take long for war to break out in 1947 and 1948 over Kashmir after which the province was divided. Skirmishes broke out again in 1965, 1971 and 1984. In 1999 another skirmish broke out over Kashmir. In 2010, India remained the world’s most populous democracy, but the threat of war with Pakistan still simmers.

In 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia and almost immediately ethnic skirmishes broke out between Catholic and Orthodox Christians as Muslims. Serbian nationalism led Serb minorities in Bosnia and Croatia to try to secede and in 1995 at U. N. peacekeeping force went there to keep the peace. The U. N. peacekeepers are still in place in 2010 to prevent ethnic fighting between Christians and Muslims.

We saw how in 1983, Tamil speaking Hindus in Sri Lanka, calling themselves the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers), fought a bitter civil war to establish a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka. The tigers used brutal tactics that crippled the economy and were condemned by many countries (including the E. U. and the United States) as terrorists. Although the Tigers were finally suppressed in 2009, 80,000 people died and 300,000 people were displaced. Tensions remain, but the government is determined to find an equitable solution.

The tiny island of Timor is Southeast Asia was split between the Dutch and the Portuguese. West Timor was freed by the Dutch in 1949 and became part of Indonesia. Portugal finally freed East Timor in 1975 but it was immediately annexed by Indonesia. The people of East Timor who were predominately Roman Catholic resisted in a prolonged guerilla campaign. The U. N. and Portugal both refused to recognize Indonesia’s aggression and after much fighting and international pressure, a referendum was held in 1999. The people voted to separate from Muslim Indonesia and achieved independence in 2002.

From 1996 to 1999, guerrilla warfare broke out in Kosovo between Albanian separatists and the Serbian (Yugoslavian) security forces, which Albanians characterized as a national liberation struggle and Serbs saw as terrorism. Under the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, Serbian abolished Kosovo’s autonomy and Serbian soldiers committed many atrocities. In 1999 NATO became involved and bombed Yugoslav targets. Albanian guerrillas continued to attack Serbian forces and Kosovo Serb civilians, and Serbian/Yugoslav forces continued to fight Albanian rebels, amidst a massive displacement of the population of Kosovo. Milošević was charged with crimes against humanity, but his trial ended inconclusively after Milosevic’s death under suspicious circumstances.

In the last chapter we saw how, in 1994, extremist Hutu leaders in Rwanda urged their followers to kill their Tutsi and moderate Hutu neighbors. This Rwandan Genocide cost 800,000 people their lives; moreover, another three million people lost their homes. Racial tensions remain.

The warfare and atrocities committed by Christians and Muslims in Bosnia and Croatia underscores the rise of religious fundamentalism as a factor in world politics in the twenty-first century. Globalization and its mass consumerism often cause conflict with values of religious fundamentalists. Religious Fundamentalism is strongest among Muslims, but can also be found among Hindus in India, Protestant Christians especially in Latin America, Irish Catholics (Irish Republican Army) as well as others. Samuel Huntingdon, in his The Clash of Civilizations and his The Remaking of the World Order, argues that ethnic and religious conflicts will dominate the twenty-first century. Such fundamentalism, he argues, will create many new interest groups in the world – interest groups that will clash with one another.

Terrorism is a fact of the Global World and is usually an outgrowth of nationalism, ethnic identity or religious fundamentalism.  Al-Qaeda (al-Qaida) is an Islamist group founded sometime between mid-1988 and mid-1989. It operates as a global network of fundamentalist Sunnis calling for global Jihad, an Islamic term roughly translated as “Holy War” consists of using warfare to expand or defend Islamic territory. The issue is also difficult to understand because for many Islamic fundamentalists, Jihad also refers to non-military tactics to expand or defend Islam. At any rate, the formation Al-Qaeda reflects strong resentment for increasing American military presence in the Middle East.

A wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden, has become the global symbol of terrorism in the last twenty years. His methods have been so repugnant that his family disowned him and Saudi Arabia has stripped him of his citizenship. In 1992, bin Laden went to the Sudan where he tried to develop chemical weapons at a site near Khartoum.  In 1996, bin Laden was expelled from the country and 1n 1998 President Clinton had the site destroyed. Bin-Laden went to Afghanistan where he worked closely with its Taliban leaders and became the leader of Al-Qaeda. In 1998, his agents bombed American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. In 2000, his agents damaged the American destroyer, USS Cole, at port in Yemen.

Then on September 11, 2001, bin-Laden and his Al-Qaeda operatives launched a coordinated attack at the United States when nineteen operatives hijacked four passenger jet airliners and crashed two of them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying or damaging nearby buildings. The hijackers were also able to crash a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth airplane crashed in rural Pennsylvania field after some of its passengers and flight crew courageously tried to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors. In the same month, panic ensured when unknown terrorist mailed letter with anthrax spores to U. S. government agencies. The bottom line was that September Eleventh (9/11) Attacks brought home to the United States that nowhere is safe from terrorism in the Global World.

Since the 9/11 attacks, bin-Laden continued to direct his Al-Qaeda operation but also became a special target in the international war on terror led mainly by the United States. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed by a team of United States Navy Seals as he was hiding in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) is a Sunni Islamic terrorist organization, formed in 1987, during a Palestinian uprising against Israel. Its principal goal is to replace Jewish Israel with an Islamic Palestinian State. Hamas repeatedly used terror tactics such as firing missiles into populated areas and suicide bombers blowing themselves up in public areas trying to kill as many civilians as possible in order to try to bring Israel to agree to withdraw from Palestine. In 2006 elections in the Gaza Strip, Hamas won a plurality of votes and was able to take over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Hamas however continues to defy Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union in rejecting violence and recognizing Israel.

III. Cultural Interactions

The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution brought great advances in agriculture, industry, science, medicine and social organization. As the early modern world dawned, there were no vaccines, antibiotics, or insecticides and much of the world’s drinking water was polluted. All this led to sharp declines in mortality rates and - coupled with an expanding food supply - has led to staggering population increases over the last three hundred years. In 1650 there were 500 million people on the planet; in 1750, there were 791 million; in 1850, 1.2 billion; in 1900, 1.6 billion, in 1950, in 2000, 5.9 billion, in 2008, 6.7 billion. There seems no end in sight and begs the question: how many people can the earth support?

 

The world growth rate hit its peak in 1962-63 at a percentage of 2.2%. Since then, each region of the globe has seen great reductions in growth rate in recent decades, though growth rates remain above 2% in some countries of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and also in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. It is also interesting to note that some countries have experienced negative population growth, especially in Eastern Europe (mainly due to low fertility rates and emigration). In Southern Africa, growth is slowing due to the high number of HIV-related deaths. Some Western Europe countries might also encounter negative population growth.  Japan's population began decreasing in 2005. But the bottom line remains: world population is still increasing.

Population growth has affected the environment. As early as 1972, the Club of Rome (a global think tank) warned that there were limits to growth and overpopulation could lead to calamitous global consequences. A case in point can be found in many places in sub-Saharan Africa where population pressure has caused farmers to over-cultivate land which eventually exhausted the land and destroyed its fertility. Moreover, cutting down forests to put more land into cultivation, caused droughts, which also hastened the exhaustion of the land and causing severe famines. From the introduction of American food crops until 1985, sub-Saharan Africa had the world’s fastest population growth rate (3.2%) per year, but by 1994 that rate had fallen sharply. Not surprisingly since the late 1990s, the percentage of world population growth has slowed.

Environmentally, the problem is not simply one of depleting scarce or non-renewable resources or feeding burgeoning populations; rather it is one of battling chemical pollution, protecting plant and animal species threatened with extinction and preservation of natural resources. There is a great argument over atmospheric pollution and global warming, but no one disagrees that hydrocarbon emission from automobiles and carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels (i.e. coal) need to be restrained and replaced with cleaner sources of power. The Kyoto Conference of 1997 tried to reach an agreement to cut back greenhouse gases, but met resistance from both industrialized and developing nations alike who wanted to maintain or improve current standards of living.

Poverty and migration are like twins in the emerging Global World as populations are increasingly on the move and hunger stalks the planet. Migration is as old as humanity itself, but since the Industrial Revolution that ability of people to move across the globe has transformed the ethnic picture of nations and continents. There are two kinds of migrations: internal and international.

Internal Migration is the flow of people from rural to urban areas within one society as Great Britain experienced in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.

External Migration is the movement of people across long distances and over international boundaries. Both are a result of “push” or “pull” factors: people are pushed when lack of resources or inadequate food supplies or population pressure or religious persecution or ethnic discrimination pushes them to seek better conditions; conversely, people are pulled when they seek better land (or free land) to farm or employment opportunities or better health services or educational opportunities.

Since the end of the Cold War rural to urban migration remains the largest migration conduit and has led to rapid global urbanization. The most highly urbanized countries are those of western and northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and temperate North and South America where the proportion of urban dwellers exceeds 75%. Tropical Latin America, southern and Eastern Europe have an urban population of less than 75%.  As in earlier centuries the rural poor who flee to the cities often find no relief from their brutal poverty. In Latin America, Africa and South Asia poor immigrants are crowded into slums in Mumbai (Bombay), Kinshasa, Nairobi, Lima, Mexico City, Calcutta, Cairo where few basic services such as water, electricity and medical are provided – accompanied of course by malnutrition, disease and lack of educational opportunities.

Disease: Global epidemics are not new in World History: Bubonic Plague traveled the Silk Roads; European diseases wiped out 50% to 90% of the native populations of the Americas and Siberia; and the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-19 killed five million people around the world. And the advent of air travel only speeded up the process – even with the almost miraculous breakthrough in medicine.

Americanization or MacDonaldization refers to the homogenizing (blending) of global culture. The spread of culture from industrialized nations to the rest of the world (like McDonalds or Colonel Sanders or Pizza Hut) is often seen as a threat by smaller or non-industrialized nations. Both the French and Italians have fought back and tried to resist the American Fast Food invasion. But more than food: consider the globalization of Rolex watches from Switzerland, Foster’s Lager (beer) from Australia, electronics of all sorts from Japan, China and Korea, Armani clothing from Italy, IKEA furniture from Sweden and imported water from France or the Fiji Islands.