There are varying interpretations on the end of the Cold War. On one hand,
people say it ended with the bringing down of the Berlin Wall and the
collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s. On the other hand,
according to others, the Cold War era was finally brought to a conclusion with
the eastward expansions of NATO and EU in 2004; the Baltic nations were the
first former Soviet states to become NATO members.
Edward Lucas in 2008 in his book The New Cold
War presented the return to
the Cold War. Russian politics had then numerous facets
demonstrating intentions for a position of power. The EU-Russia relations had
deteriorated and that was seen in practice with problems e.g. concerning border
crossings. The collapse of the post Cold War order came finally also to
the Finnish discussion during the Georgian war.
The concept of a return to the Cold War have risen ever more forcefully
with the Ukraine crisis. The familiar vocabulary of the Cold War with terms
like East, West, spheres of influence, geopolitics and neutrality have been resurrected in the political
rhetoric.
Cold War dinosaurs like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger are partly
to blame, but digging up old concepts, without much qualms, has also been
easy in Finland.
I participated at the end of last March in a congress on political science
in Turku, Finland, where the return of the Cold War terminology was among major
topics.
Professor Tuomas Forsberg gave an excellent lecture on the finlandization
in a current political dialogue where he analyzed the meaning and use of the
term. Such critical review and critique is sorely needed as the language of the
day easily flattens both the vocabulary of the Cold War and our understanding
of the current situation in international politics.
As a matter of fact, we have not returned to the Cold War. That historical period ended with the collapse
of the Soviet Union because one end of the bipolarization ceased to exist.
However, the world of the Cold War era despite all its tensions was a static one.
The Soviet Union was a stiff monolith where the rate of change was glacial.
Russia, on the other hand, is an agile, amoeba-like system that is hard to
grasp. Also the nationalism and the rise of the national boisterous bravado
sets it apart from its socialistic predecessor.
There are much more unpredictability and worrisome developments with Russia
than there were with the stagnant USSR. Thus also the political situation that
has now reached a crisis is much more complex and harder to predict than the Cold
War probably ever was.
Bringing old descriptors directly to modern rhetoric oversimplifies the
world and our perception. For instance, the talk about the East and the West is
nothing if not problematic.
The West as it existed during the
Cold War is no more and the trans-Atlantic connection has suffered many blows
in recent years – not the least of them was the Iraq war. Despite the
institutional integration and expansion today’s Europe is divided. EU is more
fractured than in the 1980s and new borders have been drawn both outside and
inside the EU.
Neutrality has become a word rife
with issues in the new political order. The EU membership and the partnership
with NATO have stripped it from any significant meaning for Finland and Sweden.
The term has seen some efforts of revival e.g. during the current Parliament
elections in Finland by the Left Alliance. Nevertheless, its content would
sorely need redefining should its use be deemed necessary.
Old concepts foster old ways to do things. The search for solution paradigms using a world of polarity has lost
its usefulness in the globally-connected world. There is a crisis in today’s
international politics, but to deal with it we need a new view of the world
facilitated by the creation of new concepts.
EU must, for its part, rethink its strategy with Russia, but that should
not be based on the thought patterns inherited from the Cold War. A changing
world needs new concepts to allow us to grasp it and to make the needed changes
and additions to the political tools to affect it.
Miika Raudaskoski
PhD Student, Project
Researcher
@RaudaskoskiMA
Column is originally
published in Karjalainen on April 1st,
2015. Column is translated by Ilkka Sillanpää.
