By Prof. Richard Sakwa, Canadian Dimension, 1/11/24

Was a positive peace possible after the end of the Cold War in 1989? The Cold War had been characterized by a negative peace in Europe, the management of conflict rather than its resolution, whereas a positive peace is based on the cooperative resolution of common problems, including those facing humanity as a whole. This is the question that has intrigued and puzzled observers in recent years, and with added force after the return to interstate war in Europe and the reimposition of an Iron Curtain across the continent. Why did all the promises of friendship, ‘strategic partnership’ and the like in the euphoria of those days between 1989 and 1991 end not just in failure but in a catastrophic reversion to a cold war, which in certain respects is far deeper and more intractable than the original version?

With the end of the ideological conflict between communism and capitalism, between the Soviet Union and the collective West, a more positive peace order appeared attainable. With Cold War divisions overcome, the vision of a more collaborative peace order was in prospect. The United Nations-based Charter international system established in 1945 could at last come into its own. Cooperation between the former adversaries in reversing the seizure of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, under the aegis of the UN, in 1990-91 appeared to be an augury of things to come. It did not quite work out that way, and divisions over the post-communist wars in Yugoslavia culminated in outright conflict over the West’s bombing of Serbia in 1999. However, this confrontation was a symptom rather than the cause of a broader failure.

The auguries of peace built on a long process that in the end transcended Cold War divisions. In the Soviet Union, the new political thinking that shaped Mikhail Gorbachev’s approach to transcending the Cold War had been taking shape in various institutions of the Soviet Academy of Sciences since at least the 1970s, accompanied by broader changes in societal attitudes. In the US, there was a long and hallowed tradition that understood the wastefulness of the Cold War arms race, beginning most eloquently with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ‘Chance for Peace’ speech of April 1953. He argued “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

The sentiment was reiterated by President John F. Kennedy in his still-evocative commencement address at the American University in June 1963. He talked of “peace as a process,” but “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace—the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living—the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans by peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” American leadership at the end of the Cold War was unable to rise to this level, but it was nevertheless ready to offer a vision of peace.

The option of a new kind of positive peace was fostered by what at the time became known as globalization. Time and space would be conquered by new communication technologies, a thickening web of personal and business contacts, and cheap air travel that would take citizens to the ends of the earth. The interdependence fostered by trade and financial ties would finally, as prematurely anticipated before the First World War, make war unthinkable—although not impossible. A global middle class based on similar patterns of consumption would put an end to the narrow nationalism of the past. Citizens would become consumers, glued to their screens rather than devoted to political screeds.

So, why was the peace lost? What was the missing ingredient that provoked failure? This is where the missing piece can begin to be inserted. The ideology of globalization implies a certain automaticity—processes that develop beyond the control of mere humans. This accelerated the already marked trend towards depoliticization, the view that certain developments are beyond human control, and indeed, should not controlled by humans. Above all, political actors should not interfere with the working of the market, let alone with the financialization that was beginning to shape post-industrial economies.

In turn, this neoliberalism was reflected in the non-negotiated character of the end of the Cold War. The period was accompanied by endless summits, conferences and declarations, but there was no holistic and integrated event, like a peace conference, that would have established the rules of the road for the new era. This is why in certain respects 1979 was a far more important date than 1989. The latter year saw the Berlin Wall dismantled, the Soviet bloc crumble, and the Cold War effectively brought to an end, but all of this represented little more than the culmination of processes begun in the 1970s.

There were plenty of events between 1989 and 1991, but in the end they did not amount to a transformative moment. The course of history certainly changed, but the logic underlying that history did not change. The endless crises in the end did not add up to a krisis in the Greek sense—a moment of reflection in the life of the community.

Instead, patterns established earlier were applied, adapted and modified for the new conditions. In the security sphere, the Helsinki Final Act of August 1975 was given new expression in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe of November 1990. The contradictory formulation of the earlier document was repeated and reinforced: ‘freedom of choice,’ for states to choose their own security, was accompanied by ringing declarations asserting the ‘indivisibility’ of security. Oceans of ink have been spilled defending one or other of these formulations, but tragically, very little on how to find mechanisms to render them compatible. The endless debate on what was or was not promised over NATO enlargement at the time of German unification in 1990 is secondary to this larger question. The debate does, however, demonstrate once again the effectively non-negotiated character of the end of the Cold War. Gorbachev failed to incorporate in treaty form the promises of his Western interlocutors.

In the sphere of geopolitics, the attempt to endow the end of the Cold War with a specifically European character failed dismally. Gorbachev’s idea of a common European home echoed Gaullist themes of an earlier era, of a Europe proudly standing for itself and acting as a third force in global affairs. Later, François Mitterrand (admittedly, half-heartedly, like so many French initiatives in the post-communist era) took up the idea in the form of a Confederation of Europe. Vladimir Putin, with not much greater consistency, reinterpreted the common European home idea in the form of proposals for a ‘greater Europe,’ but the details remained vague.

Instead, the idea of a “Europe whole and free” formulated by President George H.W. Bush in his speech in Mainz in May 1989 came to dominate. It was explicitly designed to repudiate the common European home idea, and thus to advance the American notion of a Europe whole and free under US tutelage—which by definition is neither whole nor free. Atlanticism triumphed over pan-continental Europeanism, thus structurally marginalizing Russia. Europe was once again divided, leading to consequences far worse than anything seen during the original Cold War.

The peace in Europe has been lost, decisively and for our generation almost certainly irrevocably. As always, a peace lost here has global consequences. Equally, there was nothing predetermined about its loss. It was the result of decisions and calculations that in the end undermined the underlying rationality. The outcome from every possible perspective was irrational, setting in motion processes that would engulf the continent in war, division, enmity and ruin. Only agendas centred on Europe, made by Europeans from across the continent, and implemented by all Europeans of good will, can insert the missing piece, and thus make the continent genuinely whole and free. Only in this way can the lost peace be regained.