Post-1990 War and Conflict –
Legacies of Cold War Europe?
Poul Villaume
Professor, Dr.Phil.
Dept. of History, Saxo Institute
1
A historian’s view…
• The problem: Understanding war and conflict in
the post-Cold War era.
• What and when:
• Gulf War (War over Kuwait) 1990-91.
• Iraq conflict 1991-2003.
• Balkan Wars 1992-95.
• Kosovo War 1998-99.
• ‘War on Terror’ 2001 - : Afghanistan War 2001 - ,
Iraq War 2003-2006 ( ->?)
2
Main contention:
The long shadows of history
• Wars/conflicts in Balkans, Middle East,
Central Asia:
• Can not be fully explained and
understood without insights into their
deeper historical roots in the Cold War
era, and the general pattern of great
power interventionism of this era.
3
Adding complexity
• Historians’ privilege: To look at ’roads not
taken’ (although no archives available!).
• Actually pursued policies were not the only
available or possible options at each given
historical juncture.
• To reflect some of the conflicting views and
debates on ’alternative roads’.
• Overall picture may become more ’muddled’.
Four selected sections/focal points
of this lecture:
• 1) Great power interventionism.
• 2) The Iraqi Wars (1980-1991).
• 3) The Balkan Wars and NATO’s
expanded boundaries (1992-1999).
• 4) The ‘War on Terror’ (2001->).
5
• 1) GREAT POWER COLD
WAR INTERVENTIONISM
6
Great power interventionism
and the Cold War
• Odd Arne Westad: ”The Global Cold War –
Third World Interventions and the Making of
Our Times” (2005) (Winner of Bancroft Prize)
• Main point: Historically, and seen from the
southern hemisphere (Third World), the Cold
War was ”a continuation of colonialism
through slightly different means”.
• - How?
7
Perspective of the Third World:
• The U.S., the European great powers, the
Soviet Union: Giant social and economic
projects -> promises of modernity to their
supporters – and often death to their
opponents or those getting in the way of
progress as defined by the interventionists.
• The Cold War started, not in 1945, or in 1917,
but in 1878 (Conference of Berlin, on Africa).
8
”The tragedy of Cold War history”:
• The two historical projects – the liberal
American Revolution (1776) and the
communist Russian Revolution (1917) –
genuinely anti-colonial in their origins,
often became, in particular during the
Cold War, part of a much older pattern
of intervention and domination.
9
Why?
• The intensity of the conflict, the stakes
believed to be involved, and the apocalyptic
consecquences if the opponent won: A zerosum game.
• Despite opposing formal colonialism, the
methods they used in imposing their version
of modernity: very similar to those of the
European empires.
• Key role of local elites in Third World.
10
Consequences (Westad):
• Cold War ideologies and great power
interventions thus helped put a number of
key Third World countries in a state of semipermanent civil war.
• Some countries: Civil war anyhow, yet the
two ideologically opposed superpowers and
their European allies often perpetuated such
clashes, made them much harder to settle.
11
Some cases in point,
chronologically 1950-1990:
• Korea (1950-53), Iran (1953), Guatemala
(1954), Algeria (1954-62), Suez/Egypt
(1956), Lebanon (1958), Cuba (1960-62),
Vietnam (1950-75), Angola (1975-79),
South Africa (1960-90), Indonesia (1965,
1975), Ethiopia and Somalia (1974-79),
Afghanistan (1979->), El Salvador and
Nicaragua (1979-87).
12
The victims
• 20 million people killed in proxy wars of
intervention and civil wars (and their consequences) in Third World during the Cold War.
• Westad: Great power intervention
devastated many societies in the Third
World; and did NOT, apart from the two halfstates South Korea and Taiwan, lead to
democracy and stable economic growth.
13
End of Cold War
• Negotiated, peaceful surrender of
Communist dictatorships in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union:
tended to obscure results of
decades of disastraous
interventions in the Third World.
14
Cold War ‘triumphalist’
interpretation:
• ”Through anti-Communist interventions, the
United States bought time for capitalist transformations from within to take place in areas
such as Southeast Asia, thus paving the way
for true economic globalization in the 1990s”.
• This triumphalism => certain political and
popular war-weariness in the West: Western
reluctance to intervene in extremely bloody
Balkan and Afghan civil wars in the 1990s.
15
No more Third World interventions?
• CIA officer in Summer 2001: ”Operations that
include diarrhea as a way of life don’t
happen”.
• September 12, 2001: ‘War on terror’
declared:
• Afghanistan war: October 7, 2001.
• Iraq war: March 20, 2003.
16
• 2) THE IRAQI WARS
(1980-1991)
17
The long road to Baghdad, 1953-2003:
• The West and Arab/Third World nationalism:
Basically, oil interests and anti-communism
outweighing democratic principles and anticolonialism.
• Case in point - Iran 1953: Conservative
nationalist leader Mossadeq nationalized
Western oil interests in Iran, =>
• Democratic process in Iran derailed by CIA
instigated coup, bringing Shah to power.
18
Shah’s ”white revolution”
in 1960s-1970s:
• Heavy-handed modernization from above +
dictatorship and torture + strong U.S. support
for Shah (”policeman of the U.S. in the Gulf”).
• Amnesty Int.nal 1977: Shah’s regime world’s
worst, in terms of human rights violations.
• => Truly popular anti-Shah and anti-American
revolution in 1979 (”Iranian Spring”) - but
revolution stolen by Khomeini’s islamists –
anti-U.S., but ALSO strongly anti-Soviet.
19
Iran-Afghanistan connection 1979:
• Yet, in 1979 the U.S. immediately took
strongly hostile position against Khomeini’s
regime.
• U.S. fear: The Soviets would profit indirectly
from the Iranian revolution, e.g. by
strengthening the Soviet position in
neighbouring Afghanistan =>
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”My enemy’s enemy is my friend”:
• From JULY 1979 on: U.S. secret arms support
for anti-Soviet islamist Mujaheddins in
Afghanistan =>
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan December
1979 => increased U.S. military support for,
and alliance with, Mujaheddins during 1980s
(Reagan: ”Freedom fighters”. Brzezinski: ”This
must be the Vietnam of the Soviets”).
21
Iraq-Iran war, 1980-88:
• Sept. 1980: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacks
Khomeini’s Iran, with tacit U.S. support:
• U.S./Western powers sold weapons of mass
destruction (chemicals) to Iraq – and
weapons to Iran (regional balance of power).
• August 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait – counting
on tacit U.S. support (once again).
22
Kuwait crisis, 1990:
Mobilizing the United Nations
• But now, the Cold War over, and Soviet
Union’s power crumbling:
• U.S. President Bush Sr.’s first use of ”the
unipolar moment” to assert U.S.
preponderant power in post-Cold War world:
• ”This is a new world order: This aggression
will not stand.”
• Military ‘U.N. coalition’, including Euroepan
powers - but evidently: led by the U.S.
23
August/Sept. 1990: Manipulations
and ‘rhetorics of fear’
• Blocking Arab attempts at a negotiated
settlement with Iraq –
• Inventing an Iraqi ”imminent military threat”
to Saudi-Arabian oil fields: ”This is Hitler
revisited!” (Bush) –
• Pressure on reluctant Saudi-Arabian King to
accept U.S. military on his soil (or sand) –
• Media manipulated exaggerations of Iraqi
atrocities in Kuwait – (”babies in incubators”)
24
Yet, broad domestic U.S. opposition
to Bush’s ”rush to war”:
• James Schlesinger, Arthur Schlesinger, Jimmy
Carter, top U.S. Generals, 230 members of
U.S. Congress, etc.: Concern about increased
islamist fundamentalist anti-Americanism in
Arab world.
• Vote in U.S. Senate, January 12, 1991: 52 for
war, 47 against war (three votes’ difference).
25
Kuwait War, 1991:
• U.S. General Schwarzkopf: We aim at
”deliberate overkill” in Iraq.
• Five weeks’ of intensive B 52 aerial
bombardments of Iraqi fixed military
positions, January-February 1991.
• Result: Some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers killed,
140 U.S. soldiers killed.
• President Bush: ”By God, we’ve kicked that
Vietnam syndrome once and for all!”
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From Iraq to the Balkans
• Still: No U.S./allied ‘rush to Baghdad’:
• No U.S. ground invasion of Iraq: spectre of
involvement in Iraqi civil war ‘quagmire’.
• Vietnam syndrome still not entirely ‘kicked’?
War-weariness of Cold War triumphalism?
• James Baker, U.S. SecState, June 1992, on
Balkan civil war: ”We don’t have a dog in this
fight”. (No U.S. ground troops on Balkan soil).
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• 3) BALKAN WARS, AND
THE TRANSFORMATION
OF NATO (1992-99)
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Balkan ‘Proxy War’?
• 1992: U.N. arms embargo on former Yugoslavia.
• Yet, 1993/94: Discreet U.S. support for large
supply of arms for Bosnian muslims, followed by
Iranian and Saudi-Arabian mujaheddins, against
Bosnian Serbs supported by Russian backed
Milosevic.
• U.S.-Russian ‘proxy war’ in the Balkans in the
1990s? Balkan replay of Cold War experiences
from Afghanistan in 1980s – strategic path
dependence?
29
Balkan turning point 1995:
• By 1995: U.N. requested 40,000 U.N. peace
keeping forces to ‘safe areas’ in Bosnia. Yet,
U.N. members only sent a few thousand =>
• Serb massacre at Srebrenica 1995 =>
• U.S./NATO air strikes at Serbian positions
1995: had some effect, but only because
Bosnian muslims had now gained strength at
the ground.
• => Dayton Peace Accords, 1995.
30
NATO, the U.S., and Europe
in the post-Cold War order:
• NATO: Cold War alliance. Role after Cold War?
• 1989/90: Fall of the Berlin Wall -> reunification
of Germany? Few in East and West were
enthusiastic about German unity.
• Gorbachev’s proposal: All-European ”Helsinki II
Summit” to incorporate both NATO and Warsaw
Pact countries in collective all-European security
organization, based on existing CSCE from 1970s.
31
• Little German, Western, or Eastern interest in
a ‘CSCE II’; and no to neutral Germany.
• U.S. Government to Gorbachev 1990: ‘If you
accept a united Germany, NATO’s authority
will not be moved one inch eastwards’.
• On this condition, Gorbatjov accepted united
Germany in NATO.
32
No rivals to NATO (and EU)
• General view: NATO (and the EU) an anchor
of institutional & democratic stability in a
profoundly changing post-Cold War Europe.
• Still, 1991-1993: NATO in search of a mission:
‘NATO’s identity crisis’.
• 1992: Draft U.S. strategy plan leaked: ”No
Rivals / One-Superpower World” (N.Y.T.):
33
March 1992
‘U.S. Defense Planning Guidance’:
• Calls for the U.S. to focus henceforth on
• ”… convincing potential competitors that
they need not aspire to a greater role …
[The U.S. must] maintain the mechanisms
for deterring potential competitors from
even aspiring to a larger regional or
global role ... [and] prevent the
emergence of security arrangements
exclusively for Europeans, which would
undermine NATO.”
34
NATO’s new mission: ”Expand or die”
• NATO: Prime vehicle for strong U.S. influence
on security of Europe – even in post-Cold War
world (Lundestad: ”‘empire’ by integration”).
• Sept. 1993: Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national
security advisor, on NATO: ”From [Cold War]
containment to [post-Cold War]
enlargement”:
• Changing NATO-Europe’s boundaries –
eastwards.
35
Reasons for enlargement of NATO
• 1) Wanted by many Central/East Europeans.
• 2) Securing democracy and stability in Central
and Eastern Europe (”democracies don’t fight
each other”): Democratizing armed forces,
under political/civilian control.
• 3) In the interest of NATO and the U.S. in
terms of geopolitics and power: Russia’s
influence in Eastern Europe weakened
36
• January 1994: NATO’s Partnership for Peace
(PfP) Program towards Eastern Europe:
• Flexible platform for possible later NATO
membership.
• From now on, NATO enlargement became the
focal point for alliance cohesion and purpose.
• Russia’s protests (‘broken promises’): politely
ignored by NATO. Russians felt humiliated.
37
”NATO must go ’out-of-area’, or out of
business” (Rich. Lugar, 1993)
• Parallel to enlargement: Developing options for
increased flexibility and mobility:
• 1994: West European Union (WEU) from 1948
re-activated as NATO’s ‘European pillar’:
• NATO could lend hardware etc. to WEU
operations, also out-of-area, which the U.S. did
not want to join.
• 1996: ‘Combined Joint Task Forces’: For NATOled peace-keeping out-of-area operations with
PfP-Central- and East European countries.
38
U.S./NATO bombings
of Bosnian Serbs in 1995:
• Limited military effect, but:
• 1) Contributed to re-establishing transatlantic
feeling of unity of purpose.
• 2) Strengthened idea that NATO had to act
militarily to consolidate stability outside of
its (original) area of responsibility in Europe.
• Peace-keeping U.N. forces in Bosnia after
Dayton 1995: Under NATO command (but
now also with Russian units).
39
Out-of-area Kosovo 1998-99:
• Radical break with previous NATO practices in
1998/99, changing NATO’s boundaries:
• European NATO countries joined U.S.-led ‘outof-area’ military operations against Iraq and
Serbia (Kosovo) – without clear mandate from
U.N. Security Council.
• Kosovo, March-June 1999: 2 ½ month bombing
campaign against Serbia, legitimized as
humanitarian intervention to stop ethnic
cleansing and genocide on Albanian Kosovars.
40
U.S./NATO ultimatum
• Formal negotiations at Rambouillet in
February 1999: De facto U.S. ultimatum to
Serbia on NATO control with Kosovo, and
with NATO access roads through Serbia.
• Problem: compellence (threat/pressure to
make adversary act) is more difficult than
deterrence (discourage adversary from
acting).
41
NATO’s dilemma – and credibility
• NATO’s ultimatum rejected, predictably, by
Serbia’s Milosevic, =>
• NATO’s supreme commander General Wesley
Clark, to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright (mid-March 1999):
• ”We’ve put NATO’s credibility on the line. We
have to follow through and make it work.
There is no real alternative now.”
42
Prominent critics of rush to
Kosovo War:
• Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former
U.S. SecState Henry Kissinger, European
former Prime Ministers and top politicians
such as Helmut Schmidt, Neil Kinnock, Ingvar
Karlsson, Mario Soares, Oscar LaFontaine,
Thorvald Stoltenberg:
• ”Meaningful negotiations with Milosevic ARE
possible – as in Dayton, 1995”.
43
Humanitarian disaster in Kosovo
• NATO air bombing, March-June 1999 =>
• Serbian forces’ response: huge escalation of
ethnic cleasing and mass murder of Albanian
Kosovars during the 11 weeks of 37,225
bombing sorties by NATO, before Serbian
withdrawal from Kosovo.
• Vocal domestic critique in the U.S. and in
Western Europe of NATO’s bombning
campaign, unauthorized by the U.N.:
44
Former heads of NATO and of U.N.,
on Kosovo 1999:
• Lord Carrington, former Secretary General of
NATO, August 1999: ”What we did made things
much worse. I think it is a mistake to intervene
in a civil war”.
• Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United
Nations, May 1999: ”Unless the U.N. Security
Council retains its position as the only assembly
to legitimize international use of force, we are
on a dangerous road to anarchy.”
45
The case for NATO’s Kosovo War:
• Serbian rule in Kosovo: a threat to European
stability and peace.
• NATO’s bombing succeded in bringing about
Kosovo’s independence from Serbia (formally
in 2008), bringing an end to Serbian ethnic
cleansing and oppression of Kosovar
Albanians.
• Could this have been achieved without war?
We will never know.
46
NATO’s 50th Anniversary Summit,
April 1999: New Strategic Concept:
• Future threats: ‘Instability’, ‘weapons of mass
destruction’, ‘terrorism’, ‘denial of vital
ressources’.
• NATO prepared to act, if necessary out-of-area,
and without authorization from U.N. Security
Council.
• De facto transformation from Cold War regional
defense alliance to post-Cold War global security
organization of democratic Euro-Atlantic states.
47
• 4) THE ’WAR ON TERROR’
(2001 -> )
48
September 11, 2001:
• Apparent vindication of NATO’s 1999 threat
analysis: international terrorism.
• Bush’s immediate reaction: ”We are at war”.
”Crusade against Evil”. ”Either you are with
us, or you are with the terrorists”.
• Bush top-aide, Sept. 12, 2001: ”History starts
now”.
• September 11 and history:
49
• Al Qaida: Extremist politically coloured
organization dressed in fundamentalist
religious robes?
• Osama bin Laden in interviews with Western
reporters, late 1990s: Five specific allegations
against United States foreign policy, in
essence:
50
• 1) ‘American military boots on Holy Saudi
Arabian sand since Kuwait crisis, August 1990’.
• 2) ‘U.S. firm support of corrupt and oppressive
Arab regimes for 50 years’.
• 3) ‘U.S. firm support of Israel’s oppression of the
Palestinean people for decades’.
• 4) ‘U.S. initiated and sustained economic
embargo against Iraq since 1990, costing lives of
several hundred thousands of civilian Iraqis’.
• 5) ‘U.S. accept of the oppression of the Kashmir
Muslims for 50 years’.
51
• Evidently, this makes no justification
whatsoever of terrorist acts of any kind.
• Still, demonstrates that historical memory
may have widely different meaning and
widely different character, depending on
perspective.
• The argument on 9/11 offered by
distinguished Norwegian Cold War historian
Odd Arne Westad:
52
Odd Arne Westad:
”The Global Cold War” (2005):
• In the historical context of U.S., pan-European
and Soviet interventions in the Third World,
• ”… the crime against the people in the Twin
Towers of New York was no bigger, or smaller,
than those committed against the peoples of
Luanda [Angola] or Kabul [Afghanistan] during
the Cold War. In light of the history of the recent
past, the greatest shock of September 11, 2001,
was certainly where it happemed, not the
murderous act itself.”
53
• May well be a provocative perspective – but also
thought-provoking.
• Also raises the question, asked by many after
September 11, 2001: ”Why do they hate us?”
• Bush’s declaration of ”War on terror”,
September 12, 2001.
• For the first time since 1949, NATO’s ‘article 5’
provision was activated: An attack on one
member state is an attack on all member states
(‘Oath of Musketeers’). NATO was at war.
54
U.N. Security Council basic ‘antiterrorism’ resolution 1373:
• Unanimously adopted September 28, 2001.
• Makes no reference to any ‘war on terror’,
nor to any specific countries, nor to any
specific military action to be taken against
specific states.
• Yet, U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan October 7,
2001, is based entirely on this resolution – or
rather: on a specific interpretation of it.
55
A conflicting interpretation of
U.N. resolution 1373:
• Distinguished military historian Professor Sir
Michael Howard, Oxford University, on October
30, 2001:
• To declare the U.S. ”at war” was ”a very natural
but a terrible and irrevocable error”, because it
”is to immediately create a war psychosis that
may be totally counter-productive” […] and
bring ”inevitable and irresistible pressure to use
military force as soon, and as decisively as
possible.”
56
Michael Howard’s prediction,
October 2001:
• - on the basis of historical lessons of great
power Cold War interventionism:
• … a ”disastrous prolongation” of the ‘war on
terror’, but ”even more disastrous would be
its extension […] in a ‘Long March’ through
other ‘rogue states’ beginning with Iraq […] I
can think of no policy more likely, not only to
indefinitely prolong the war, but to ensure
that we can never win it.”
57
Prof. Michael Howard’s
preferred alternative, Oct. 2001:
• ”…a police operation conducted under the
auspices of the United Nations on behalf of
the international community as a whole,
against a criminal conspiracy, whose
members should be hunted down and
brought before an international court to
receive a fair trial…”.
• (Michael Howard, and like-minded voices,
were ignored in the aftermath of 11/9).
58
• SUMMARIES AND
CONCLUSIONS
59
Recapitulations
• First, we saw how problematic great power
interventions in third countries were during
the Cold War, and that this lesson was
learned, in part, in the post-Cold War 1990s.
• Second, we saw how short-sighted Western
Cold War policies towards Southwest Asia
(Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan) led to unintended
consequences of anti-Western revolution and
aggression.
60
Recapitulations
• Third, we saw how Cold War thinking
influenced attitudes towards the Balkan civil
war, including Kosovo, and how these events
contributed to NATO’s expanding ‘out-ofarea’-role in post-Cold War conflicts.
• Fourth, we saw how lessons of failed Cold
War interventionism were neglected in the
aftermath of 9/11, with the ‘war on terror’.
61
The changing boundaries
of Europe’s defense:
• NATO-Europe, prepared since 1999 for outof-area global military operations, came to
play active role in ”war on terror” in
Afghanistan from 2002 on, as NATO countries
did in Iraq from 2003 on.
• Basic official case for both wars: The axiom:
• ‘Military defense of NATO area, of NATOEurope -- of Denmark -- begins in Baghdad
and Basra, and in Helmand and Kandahar’.
62
Still, no uncontested axiom
• For one, Lloyd Gardner, renowned American
diplomatic historian, offers different and longer
Cold War perspective on the Iraqi wars:
• The quest in the two U.S.-led Iraqi Wars (1991
and 2003) ”… has been to find a safe landing
zone for American influence throughout the
Middle East in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian
Revolution” (”The Long Road to Baghdad”,
2008).
63
… and the Cold War legacies of
Afghanistan
• Islamist fundamentalists in Afghanistan,
still in 2011, are (heirs of the)
”Frankensteins” of the United States,
created as allies during the Cold War of
the 1980s, only later to turn against
U.S./Western strategic and oil interests
in the region.
64
MAIN CONCLUSIONS
• Overall picture is ambiguos:
• Cold War great powers, and NATO, have been
creative and flexible in adapting to the post-Cold
War era. NATO has re-invented itself successfully
– so far – by expanding its role.
• Still, long shadows of the legacies of superpower
Cold War interventionism have indeed
influenced hot wars and international conflict in
the post-Cold War world since 1990.
65