Revival of the Cold War

More and more voices are warning that more than seventy years after it officially began after the Second World War, we are reliving the beginning of a new Cold War, different in many of its components but identical in terms of the unfolding conflict between major political powers. , military and ideological economic blocs.

While there is consensus that the end of World War II started the so-called Cold War, which would last until the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, there is not much consensus on this. official start. However, in the history of the 20th century, there is a history that started the new world that emerged after the great war due to its symbolism and importance. We’re talking about President Harry S. Truman’s speech on the state of the Union on January 20, 1949, speeches by the presidents of the United States giving information to Congress about the state of the country and its priorities.

In it, most of the fundamental changes that took place in the world and that the US foreign policy had to face, summarized in four main axes, took shape. In fact, this historic speech is also known as the “four-point program” when describing the four big priorities that the foreign policy of the United States will focus on in the coming years.

The first concerned support for the newly created United Nations organization, which was established in San Francisco in October 1945 and headquartered in New York, as opposed to the previous League of Nations headquartered in Geneva. Second, through the work of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the embryo of the Marshall Plan and the World Bank, there was the impetus for the rebuilding of war-torn countries in Europe. The third point was the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also known as the Atlantic Alliance, which would be shaped by the making of its constitution in Washington on April 4, 1949. And finally, the fourth point was to promote a broad development aid program targeting poor and decolonised countries, which officially led to official development aid policies around the world.

This four-point summary represented a new way of understanding international relations, combining diplomacy and military might, development aid with restructuring, delimiting a world space in which the United States sought to establish itself as the global hegemon. The Soviet Union then spread such a policy among the countries that had its influence that it sought to copy, albeit on a different scale, among other reasons, what the Americans were doing, that the Soviet Union, unlike the United States. The Union destroyed key cities and regions on its territory, devastated by the Second World War. Thus, the importance of this speech at the beginning of the Cold War will be understood.

Now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine leaves a deep geopolitical scar that reshapes international relations, opening up a new and renewed Cold War that largely shares the key elements it had after the Second World War as outlined by President Truman. The first is the renewed momentum gained from the Cold War by a military organization that even President Macron thought was “brain dead” in 2019, but moved to the center of the international stage with the war in Ukraine. , with new additions and a clear intervention in favor of Ukraine against Russia. NATO is waging an intervening war against Russia, which is destroying its army and economy, through the constant supply of weapons, logistics and, above all, intelligence to the Ukrainian army. What happened during the worst years of the Cold War.

But at the same time, in the face of the colossal devastation that Ukraine has suffered, plans are being heard for its rebuilding, similar to the US incentives for the destroyed Europe after the Second World War, but in this case Western companies and contractors.

But in this new Cold War that seems to be opening, the United States must understand that the diverse world of impositions, wars and invasions they have fostered over the decades does not put them in the best position to face a threat. It’s a very different world from the one that existed in the mid-20th century.