Chapter 20: The Three-World Order, 1940–1975
Chapter Summary
At Yalta, even before the end of World War II, the United States, Russia, and Britain harbored very different visions of the coming world order. World War II destroyed Europe’s dominance, leading to a three-world system. Locked in the cold-war struggle were the First World—the United States and allies—and the Second World—the Soviet Union. The Third World included virtually everyone else.
Competing Blocs
Confident in the universal applicability of their respective ideologies, the United States and the Soviet Union moved to expand their spheres of influence and defend against each other with great stockpiles of nuclear weapons. It was in the Third World, however, that most hostility broke out as anticolonial nationalists sought independence. Freedom, however, did not automatically bring economic strength as new states sought to build new political orders for themselves. Democracy and material goods gave Americans confidence but could not overshadow racism and unpopular wars. The Soviet reliance on crushing repression undermined its social welfare policies. By the early 1970s, rising economic might in Asia and radicalism elsewhere challenged the dominant First and Second Worlds.
World War II and Its Aftermath
German and Japanese desires to expand brought them into conflict with France, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, among others. The total devastation of World War II ended all claims of superior civilization among Europeans and stimulated anticolonial movements to press for independence.
THE WAR IN EUROPE
The Nazis conquered most of Western Europe with their blitzkrieg attacks. In subdued territories, puppet regimes sent millions of foreign laborers to work in German factories while genocidal policies sent Jews and gypsies to concentration camps. Soviet armies stopped Hitler’s advance at Stalingrad in 1942 and began driving him westward, gaining momentum when the United States and Britain landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944. Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. Enormous destruction and death were left in the wake of the war. Six million Jews, a full two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, had been decimated in the concentration camps.
THE PACIFIC WAR
Anxious to create a colonial empire in Asia, Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931 and then attacked China in 1937. Unable to force China’s surrender, the Japanese imperial army brutalized the Chinese, particularly those in Nanjing. Determined to take the oil and rubber resources of Southeast Asia, Japan moved into Indochina but aggravated the United States in the nearby Philippines. Surprise attacks at Pearl Harbor aimed to weaken the Americans for a time and give Japan time to complete the conquest of Asia. Vast territories were taken, including the Philippines, before the Americans came roaring back. Japanese abuses did not win the support of the Asian peoples they conquered, and soon the United States had put Japan on the defensive. Despite overwhelming failures, the Japanese refused to surrender until President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After surrendering, Japan was then occupied by American forces.
The Beginning of the Cold War
Much of Europe was left in ruins at the end of the war. A massive rebuilding program would be necessary to restore order and services.
REBUILDING EUROPE
With their countries in ruins, many Europeans looked to Communist leaders, who had distinguished themselves fighting Fascism, for direction in forming powerful egalitarian societies. Alarmed that Communism was spreading, U.S. policymakers identified Stalin as a threat and moved to “contain” Communism by preventing its spread. As a symbol of contention, the western portion of Berlin was walled up and Germany was split between the democratic West and the communist East. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan offered economic and military aid to wrecked nations as a means of weakening calls for Communism. The United States also helped form NATO, an alliance of Western nations designed to oppose the Soviets. Moscow responded with the Warsaw Pact.
THE NUCLEAR AGE
Both sides built up their arsenals of nuclear weapons. By 1960, each had the power to destroy the world and thus moved cautiously to avoid full-scale confrontations with the other. In Asia, where no clear line separated one side from the other, wars broke out regularly, beginning with the Chinese civil war and the Korean War. To help in Asian wars, the United States pressured Japan to become an active ally in the region in exchange for economic help.
Decolonization
After colonial empires collapsed during World War II, colonized peoples were determined to forge their own nations. Decolonization followed three patterns: civil war, negotiated independence, and incomplete decolonization.
THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
China’s case represents the first pattern. Chinese Communists, working in the countryside since 1927, sought to build a new society strong enough to resist enemies like the Japanese. The Japanese invasion of 1937 gave Mao Zedong’s rural Communist movement a chance to grow behind enemy lines and win popular support among the peasants by organizing them as guerrilla fighters. Embracing all Chinese groups, including women, the Communist movement swelled, growing from about 40,000 in 1937 to over 100 million by 1945. After the Japanese surrender, fighting resumed between Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government. Losing first popular support and then the civil war in 1949, Chiang retreated to Taiwan while Mao moved to build Communism in China and to provide inspiration to other Communist movements around the globe.
NEGOTIATED INDEPENDENCE IN INDIA AND AFRICA
Independence came with little bloodshed in the British territories of India and Africa. Seeing the writing on the wall, the British simply withdrew.
India British talk of departure left Indian nationalists in disagreement as to the direction India should take: Gandhi’s nonmodern, self-governing village communities or Nehru’s modern nation-state. Congress leaders convinced the British to hand power to them, a notion the British preferred over looming radical uprisings. At the same time, however, Hindu- Muslim unity fragmented. The new nation was largely defined in terms of Hindu culture, with which the Muslims shared little in common. Anxious to please, the British divided the colony into two states: Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Gaining independence in August 1947, celebration turned to horror as a million Hindus and Muslims killed one another. Gandhi stopped the violence long enough for 12 million people to migrate north or south, depending on their religious preference, but was himself shot dead six months later. Afterward, Nehru took inspiration from both the United States and the Soviet Union to modernize India.
Africa for Africans In Africa, rapid decolonization occurred through the 1950s and early 1960s. Anticolonialist nationalists learned how to build powerful movements based on the poor, ex-servicemen, and educated elites. Pressured by the United States and the Soviet Union, Britain gave up its African colonies one by one. Charismatic leaders heading populist movements became the new administrators. French territories followed a similar course although France strongly resisted losing its colonies at first. Once it was clear that the French electorate had no desire to grant full privileges to overseas peoples, the French government moved to turn most of its colonies loose, with the exception of Algeria. Hoping to build on traditional African community values, many African leaders sought a new modernity—a type of African socialism that rejected cold individualism in favor of social justice and equality. Léopold Sédar Senghor’s “Negritude,” for example, envisioned a society that celebrated African values and community while accepting the better elements of French culture.
VIOLENT AND INCOMPLETE DECOLONIZATIONS
In some colonies, the presence of white colonists greatly complicated the transfer of power to new African colonial leaders. In others, like Vietnam, efforts to find a “third way” were thwarted by superpower requirements that colonies remain true to capitalist or Communist lines.
Palestine, Israel, and Egypt DuringWorldWar I, the British Balfour Declaration promised Jews a homeland in Palestine while also offering the Palestinians a state of their own. Anti-Semitism in Europe fueled Jewish immigration even as the British tried to limit it out of fear of provoking the Palestinians. In 1947, Britain handed the problem over to the United Nations, which separated Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian halves. Jews organized quickly as neighboring Arab nations moved to drive the Jews “into the sea,” and successfully defeated the threat. Israel extended its territory, producing more than one million refugees living in camps. In Egypt, the Free Officers Movement under Nasser toppled the regime of King Faruq, redistributed elite lands, dissolved parliament, and turned on the Communists. Israeli forces, with British and French support, tried to take the Suez Canal from Nasser but were forced to withdraw, brightening Nasser’s reputation as a symbol of pan-Arab nationalism.
The Algerian War of Independence French reluctance to grant Algerian independence stemmed largely from the powerful lobby of the colons: white French settlers who dominated Algeria’s political and economic spheres. As anticolonial nationalism spread after World War II, France responded with military suppression. The nationalist Front de Libération Nationale responded with its own violence in 1954 and a vicious, bloody war of eight years ensued. Most French believed the colon argument that Algeria was part of France and supported the war until a colon insurrection brought Charles de Gaulle to power. Sick of the conflict, de Gaulle ended the war.
Eastern and Southern Africa In Kenya, the Mau Mau Uprising against white rule forced Britain to fly in troops before ultimately granting independence in 1963. In Portuguese colonies and Southern Rhodesia, war lasted much longer. Women played key roles. South African settlers maintained a firm grip through extreme racial segregation called apartheid. Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress first urged nonviolent resistance and later violent attacks against the white regime, but struggled as long as the United States supported South Africa as a bulwark against Communism.
Vietnam Finding their road to political influence blocked by French colonialists, young educated Vietnamese nationalists like Ho Chi Minh began agitating for independence in the 1920s. Learning of communism and agrarian revolution while abroad, Ho established the Viet Minh among Vietnam’s peasantry. When France returned to reclaim Vietnam from the Japanese after World War II, Ho sought U.S. support but found none and had to defeat the French on his own. At the Geneva Peace Accords, following the French defeat in 1954, Vietnam was divided into a Communist north and a U.S.-controlled puppet south. The north determined to conquer the south while the United States moved to brace against the spread of Communism. Despite U.S. efforts, the south eventually fell to Ho’s forces.
Three Worlds
With decolonization creating new independent states, the superpowers positioned themselves to offer either democracy and capitalist economic growth or egalitarianism and rapid modernization respectively. Choosing to go their own way, many states struggled to modernize even as cold-war competition found its way into Third World politics.
THE FIRST WORLD
The First World—Western Europe, North America, and Japan—built liberal versions of modernity but also found it convenient to align with Third World dictators in an effort to defeat Communism. Western Europe U.S. economic support helped Western Europe recover from World War II devastation in remarkable ways. Agriculture and industry boomed, allowing for stable social and political systems resistant to Communist propaganda. Preservation of some Nazi elements in Germany ensured that Communism struggled in the West.
The United States During the 1950s, economic prosperity and a strong sense of faith in the country led to rising birthrates and national pride. At the same time, however, widespread and manipulated fear of Communist infiltration led to hardcore anti-Communist foreign policy and increasing arms expenditures. Eager to secure for minority groups the same right to prosperity enjoyed by whites, the Civil Rights Movement used nonviolence to demand (and eventually get) desegregation. The U.S. model thus combined liberal capitalism and increasing rights for all.
The Japanese “Miracle” Shattered by World War II, Japan embarked on a reconstruction program that impressed everyone. U.S. military protection kept Japan’s military budgets small. American technology, investment, and markets, meanwhile, stimulated economic development and allowed Japan to produce one of the world’s most powerful economies. In addition to U.S. help, the Japanese government orchestrated much of the success.
THE SECOND WORLD
Determined to avoid future invasions from the West, the Soviets conquered Eastern Europe to serve as a buffer zone. Many supported the Soviet system as an effective alternative to capitalism’s inherent problems. Soviet education, for example, excelled. Pride in the Soviet victory in World War II combined with skewed information on life in the First World to give citizens the impression that Soviet people enjoyed a living standard far superior to anyone else. As news of the outside trickled into Soviet-bloc nations, many still believed the Soviet system to be more just. The Soviet system, however, relied on brutality and suppression. Millions suffered in the Gulag system simply because the government dared not trust them. Unrest led Khruschev to secretly denounce Stalin, signaling a wave of political and economic experimentation in Eastern European states anxious to loosen the tight grip of Moscow. Revolts in Hungary and Poland, although gaining small concessions, were crushed as a sign to all that Moscow still dominated. Intellectuals, youths, and workers clamored for more changes but were brutally squelched. The Soviet Union’s educational system, which trained many from the Third World, produced gifted scientists who eventually launched Sputnik in 1957. To many Soviet leaders, this advancement signaled that the Soviets were destined to surpass the First World.
THE THIRD WORLD
Having ousted the imperialists, many Third World nations believed they could now create humane versions of modernity different from the systems of the First and Second Worlds. Eager to build democracy and rapid economic growth without materialism or oppression, Third World leaders plunged ahead.
Limits to Autonomy Maintaining a “third way” proved difficult for Third World states. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund provided economic assistance, but also encroached on state autonomy. Multinational corporations, eager for profit, competed with native banks and remitted profits to First World stockholders. Politically, Third World leaders found themselves drawn into alliance arrangements, hosting U.S. or Soviet military bases, while also trying to build up their own military forces. Far from accomplishing their visions of a “third way,” many Third World nations fell to dictatorships willing to play the superpowers off against each other for arms and assistance.
Third World Revolutionaries and Radicals Other attempts to find a “third way” led to radical views of social change, as represented by the writings of Frantz Fanon. In China, Maoist radical visions led to the Great Leap Forward, which killed some 20 million, and the destructive excesses of the Cultural Revolution. In Latin America, dreams of empowering the poor and reducing the influence of multinational corporations led radicals to violent confrontations with U.S. interests. Cuban failures to improve the lot of the working poor opened the door to radicals like Fidel Castro, who eventually instituted radical reform. Abortive U.S. efforts to dislodge Castro drove him into the arms of the Soviets and precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fearful of Communist spread into the Western Hemisphere, the United States initiated aid programs that taught the virtue of democracy while also expanding antiinsurgency forces to combat rising revolutionary movements. As anti-Communist concern rose, the United States found itself supporting violently repressive military regimes that liquidated huge segments of their own populations.
Tensions in the Three-World Order Radicalism did not succeed but did expose rifts and vulnerabilities within the First and Second Worlds.
TENSIONS IN THE FIRST WORLD
National crises during the 1960s shattered the confidence, assurance, and unity Americans enjoyed during the 1950s. This occurred in spite of the fact that prosperity, rights, and opportunities expanded to groups formerly neglected. Race riots and violence marked a new course in the direction of the Civil Rights Movement. Women and minorities struggled for greater equality and empowerment. Intellectuals began to question the values of American society and then condemn them as the anti–Vietnam War Movement gained momentum.
TENSIONS IN WORLD COMMUNISM
Fractures in Soviet unity appeared in 1948, when Yugoslavia wrested autonomy from Moscow, and in 1956, when Poland and Hungary attempted to do the same. The “Prague Spring” of 1968 did not succeed in its objectives but gained some concessions. Moscow eventually allowed some variation as pressure grew. The greatest crack in the Communist bloc, however, came when Chinese-Soviet relations broke down in 1960. Presenting peasant-led revolution as an alternative to proletariat-led revolution, the Chinese moved to supplant the Soviets as the head Communist state, precipitating a crisis in relations.
TENSIONS IN THE THIRD WORLD
Never unified, the Third World labored to create cohesion. Collaboration rarely offered much. In the early 1970s, for example, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised oil prices, precipitating an oil crisis as a means of pressuring Israel’s allies. OPEC leaders, however, soon found themselves backpedaling when oil production in other newly discovered areas drove prices down and raised competition. Oil revenues also often profited First World banks or the multinational corporations in charge of refining and distributing oil. Some states, like Taiwan and South Korea, did break away from cycles of poverty. Here, however, success came from disciplined state regulation, education, help for new industry, and laws that kept multinational firms from destroying native industry.
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