On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as supreme commander of the Soviet Union, and the world was freed from the confrontation between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, marking the end of the old Cold War. The old Cold War was an ideological, economic, scientific and technological, and ideological confrontation through ideological confrontation without a direct military war, with the aim of controlling global strategic resources through geopolitics, striking at opponents, and disintegrating the opposing camp.
With the end of the Cold War, the United States has no competitors; With the acceleration of globalization in the new century, the development of the southern countries has accelerated, and the awakening of consciousness has accelerated. However, after many years of foreign wars in the United States, the competition in finance, military capital, and energy capital in the United States has become more and more intense, and the difficulty of reconciliation has become more and more difficult, and the United States' control over the world has been greatly weakened. With the introduction of Trump's "America First" model, Trump's political model has been adopted by more and more troubled Western countries. The countries of the South are in an accelerated upward phase in their efforts to promote globalization; However, a large number of internal contradictions in Western capitalist countries cannot be reconciled, institutional shortcomings are gradually emerging, and selfish anti-globalization is gradually taking shape.
OneBackground analysis of the formation of the old Cold War:
What is the Cold War? Literally, the "cold war" is not a hot war, and the core is competition in the absence of a direct military war. The term "Cold War" was written in an article by the American political commentator Swopp in early 1946, and later because of Churchill's "Iron Curtain Speech", the critic Lippmann used a series of articles to elaborate on the "Cold War", and it became popular in the West together with the "Iron Curtain Speech". In March 1947, Truman of the United States delivered a speech to Congress, proposing the policy of "containing communism", which interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and tightened control over other countries' programs and policies to form the "Truman Doctrine", marking the formal rupture of the US-Soviet alliance in World War II and the official beginning of the Cold War between the capitalist camp and the communist camp. What factors contributed to the formation of the Cold War?
1. The core after World War II is the distribution of interests
On May 8, 1945, the German army surrendered to the Allies, and the European theater of World War II ended at the end of the European theater, in order to defeat the fascist Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan, capitalist Britain, France, the United States and other countries formed an alliance with the socialist Soviet Union, and then distributed the benefits, so the defeated Germany was divided into East and West Germany, which were occupied by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively. On January 15, 1945, the Emperor of Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender, marking the end of the Asian theater, with the United States stationing troops in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, while the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw from Northeast China. According to the Yalta Agreement signed by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union during the war, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union was still an alliance. With the end of World War II, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union began to seize territory, so contradictions gradually emerged, and the root cause of the contradiction was the geographical division, because the geographical division was to seize all kinds of strategic resources, strive for strategic space and grasp control, World War II accelerated the progress of science and technology in energy, aviation, nuclear energy, missiles, communications, etc., which all need the support of various resources. Mainly include:
(1) Strategic resource control competition
World War II was the beginning of the large-scale use of mass destruction in the hot war era, machine guns, grenades, tanks, fighters, bombers were widely used, and auxiliary transport vehicles made mechanization more a reality, and the use of these advanced ** needs to be based on steel and oil, so after the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought openly and secretly in order to seize strategic resources such as oil, iron ore, and copper ore. At this time, the United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands still firmly grasped the right to speak on oil, controlling 85% of the world at that time, and controlling the right to speak in the Middle East, the core oil storage area, while the Soviet Union competed for the right to speak by uniting Iran and Iraq, because the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union was also an oil-rich area, but could not be exported to Europe, so this kind of strategic resource exploitation control and pricing power became the core of the division of interests in World War II. Oil still influences the world order and is a core resource for all parties.
(2) Strategic space struggle:
Through World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union saw that the new type of geographical space was shrinking, so a truly larger geographical space is the basis for ensuring their own security. During World War II, strategic bombers and rockets developed rapidly, with the Soviet Union's Il-4 bomber having a range of 3,500 kilometers, the United States' B-17 bombers having a range of 2,800 kilometers, and B-24 and B-29 bombing having an extreme range of 6,000 kilometers; The German V2 rocket has a range of more than 300 km. The United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and its tremendous lethality and deterrence greatly stimulated the security nerves of the Soviet Union. Because of the emergence of these **, the homeland security space and strategic buffer space have been redefined, so the larger the geographical space occupied by whoever occupies the greater the strategic space, the more effective the strategic defense will be. Therefore, although the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain had the "Yalta Agreement," they all used various means to control a larger geographical space when it was implemented in the later period, which gave rise to direct regional conflicts and competition.
2. The appearance is the ideological competition between capitalism and communism
Ideological competition has been initially revealed in the middle of World War II, the October Revolution, the establishment of a socialist form, and the origin of this social form is indeed the core of capitalism in Germany, according to Marxist theory, socialism is a higher social system than capitalism, socialism is the end and replacement of capitalism, so the needs of World War II, the socialist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States and Britain reached a wartime cooperation. As the war progressed, Soviet socialism became more and more influential in Eastern Europe and Asia, and the International Socialist League was formed, with the Soviet Union as the leader. Especially in the late stage of World War II, with the help and leadership of the Soviet Union, eight socialist countries were established, the Polish People's Republic was established on July 21, 1944, Yugoslavia was established in March 1945 under the leadership of Tito with the help of the Soviet Union, Hungary was established as a republic with the help of the Soviet Union in 1946, and in February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia began to govern, etc., so quickly and on a large scale to establish a social state, It has alarmed Europe, the birthplace of capitalism, and the United States, the new representative of capitalism, has also been somewhat afraid. In particular, the confrontation between the social systems between East and West Germany, the Berlin Wall incident, and the active attack on Western capitalism in the Greek Civil War intensified the fear of capitalism, and made this ideological confrontation and struggle gradually manifest.
2. The formal establishment of the Cold War and its areas of competition
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's anti-Soviet, pro-capitalist speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton City, USA, on March 5, 1946, used the word "Iron Curtain" to attack the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe "shrouded in an iron curtain". In 1947, Truman of the United States announced that Turkey and Greece would be threatened by communism, and issued a state of the nation address aimed at "containing communism" as the guiding ideology of the country's political ideology and foreign policy, officially launching the Truman Doctrine and officially opening the "Cold War era" of the two-level struggle for hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In order to stop the socialist offensive posture towards the center of Europe, on April 4, 1949, the United States, Britain, France and other 12 countries jointly signed the "North Atlantic Treaty" in Washington, the capital of the United States, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formally established. In May 1955, NATO brought Sidla, which the Soviet Union saw as a buffer zone, into its camp, which angered the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union united eight socialist countries in Eastern Europe to launch the Warsaw Pact led by it. The Cold War situation of confrontation between the Warsaw Pact and NATO organizations was formally formed.
3. After the formation of the Cold War, fierce competition was carried out mainly in the following four aspects:
Military competition: The United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a great deal of military competition during the Cold War, including the development and deployment of military equipment such as nuclear weapons, missiles, and strategic bombers. Both sides are trying to maintain military balance and deter each other by demonstrating great military might. In addition, the two countries have conducted military exercises and military interventions around the globe to demonstrate their power and influence.
Economic and Technological Competition: In the economic and technological aspects, the United States and the Soviet Union also engaged in fierce competition. The United States adopted a free-market economic system, while the Soviet Union adopted a planned economic system, and both sides worked to develop their economic and technological capabilities to support their military and political goals. This competition has driven the rapid development of both sides in the fields of science and technology, industry and economy.
Ideological and political rivalry: During the Cold War, the capitalist camp (led by the United States) and the socialist camp (led by the Soviet Union) engaged in a fierce political and ideological confrontation. The two superpowers are trying to attract countries around the world to support their political models and ideologies, and to expand their influence through diplomacy, propaganda warfare, and more.
Establishing military alliances: To counter each other, the United States and the Soviet Union established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact Organization (Warsaw Pact), respectively, which became the main representatives of the two major military blocs during the Cold War. NATO was mainly a Western country, while the Warsaw Pact was mainly a Soviet Union and its allies.
Fourth, analysis of the trend of the new Cold War
1. Globalization and the rapid development of financial capitalism
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the turmoil in Eastern Europe intensified, and the United States and Western European capitalist countries launched ideological offensives and economic interests in Eastern Europe. This also allowed the American and European capitalist mentality to relax; They have mastered all kinds of resources around the world, they have made high profits, and the United States has entered the highest stage of capitalism, financial capitalism. Since the 90s of the 20th century, the rapid development of high-tech centered on the information technology revolution has not only broken through national boundaries, but also narrowed the distance between countries and localities and entered the world. Economic globalization has given the countries of the South an opportunity to redistribute their productive forces, thus enabling the countries of the South to develop rapidly and to enhance their ideological meaning at a relatively rapid pace, and events such as the Asian financial turmoil, the Internet bubble, and the seizure of Wall Street have exposed the greed and cruelty of financial capital. However, various social contradictions such as the competition of capital within Western capitalist countries and the widening gap between the rich and the poor have gradually been revealed and irreconcilable.
2. The rapid development of developing countries and the greed of capitalist capital have caused a period of concentrated contradictions
The irreconcilable internal contradictions make this risk spill over, and the national capital has to transfer the contradictions in order to solve these contradictions, so there is a Trump-style politician who has sprung up, anti-globalization, with me first, any rule can be abandoned and ignored, and more and more countries in the West have this trend, Argentina, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands, South Korea, etc. have joined such ranks. Western capitalism, which is anti-globalization, and the South-South countries, which are promoting globalization, are gradually engaged in fierce competition in the distribution of production factors and the struggle for production chains. The blockade of control in the field of energy and science and technology is not shy about it; And with the development, more and more developing countries are struggling.
The Russian-Ukrainian war, Europe and the United States have nakedly embezzled Russia's assets, expelled Russia from the international payment system, organized Russia to participate in various international organizations, and vividly demonstrated hegemony and control. De-dollarization, the establishment of multi-dimensional production chain security, and the promotion of discourse will directly compete and confront Western capitalist countries, so some elements of a new Cold War are brewing.
In summary: Whether it is the competition and self-protection between Western financial capital and the national capital of developing countries, regional conflicts caused by geopolitics, global commodity pricing competition, and multi-dimensional competition such as ideological competition and value competition that have always existed, are intensifying and evolving. China's Belt and Road Initiative in the economic field of globalization, the community of human destiny in the ideological globalization, are conducive to the development of China, are a correction to the original financial capital and industrial capital disorderly competition, greedy blood-sucking, is a higher stage of human development of a path, this will also pierce the Western capitalist counterattack and strangulation, so this kind of confrontation and competition from the economy, science and technology, system, ideology in the Western capitalist despair is likely to form a new Cold War, Complete dissection and confrontation in order to perpetuate the possibility of capitalism! In the "Liutao" of China's Western Zhou Dynasty, there has long been a view of human development:"The world is the world of the world, not the world of one person", the spring period of Lao Tzu De Tao said, "and its light, with its dust, is said to be the same as Xuan", the world will eventually move towards the great harmony!