From Cold War to Detente

Security and Politico-Economic Scenarios for Southern Africa *

(Part 1)

Dr Simon Baynham
Director of Research, Africa Institute of South Africa

* Edited version of The New World Order: Regional and International Implications for Southern Africa, in Africa Insight, Vol 22, No2, 1992. Part 2 of this article will be published in issue no 6 of the South African Defence Review

Published in South African Defence Review Issue No 5, 1992

INTRODUCTION

Although we often refer to the notion of an international system, we should never assume that this is in any sense a fixed or static entity. The briefest study of international politics over the past century or two, for instance, immediately illustrates its dynamic qualities. In the eighteenth century, the system consisted principally of a number of European states, all in search of a balance of power through a series of shifting alliances. The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of nationalism and political ideology, together with the collapse of some states and the birth of others.

The twentieth century has seen an even greater acceleration in the pace of such global change. World War I acted as a catalyst for nationalist aspirations and increased demands for self-determination; non-European states such as the USA, China and Japan became more important; and the USSR - founded on a new revolutionary ideology - emerged as a major world power. Since World War II, independence has been extended to the countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, with the result that there has been a proliferation of new states from about 50 in 1945 to more than 170 today.

THE POST-1945 SETTLEMENT: COLD WAR TO DETENTE

The bipolar international order that emerged from World War II, and that took its definitive military shape with the establishment of Nato and the Warsaw Pact, was characterized by systemic conflict - a stark contrast between two completely different socio-political and economic orders. This East-West dichotomy was at the heart of international affairs for more than four decades.

By 1946, relations between the Soviet Union and her former Western allies had already moved towards a state later to be described as the Cold War. There has been much disagreement both on the nature of the Cold War and when it actually began. However, most analysts agree that the term describes an ideological confrontation in which a mixture of hostility, fear, suspicion and uncertainty comprised the basic ingredients, but where the adversarial relationship stopped short of direct military conflict.

Nevertheless, in practical terms, military prowess constituted the crucial element of the power equation. For as Winston Churchill - who coined the term "iron curtain" - noted in Missouri, USA, in March 1946:

From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire as much as strength and nothing for which they have less respect than military weakness.

He then went on to urge the West to respond with firmness to Soviet pressure.

The result was an arms race in which Washington's military superiority across the spectrum of deterrence in the 1950s and early 1960s gave way, incrementally, to virtual nuclear parity in the late 1960s (by 1967 both superpowers had developed an invulnerable second strike capability, marking a new era of strategic stalemate). In consequence, the concept of coexistence and detente emerged, but there was grave concern in some West European circles that detente was in fact weakening the West and proving to be a danger to security. As the 1970s wore on, the Americans became increasingly alarmed by the modernization of Soviet strategic nuclear weapons and by the rapid build-up of the Soviet fleet (for instance, by 1976 Moscow had accumulated 188 nuclear submarines, 46 carrying strategic nuclear missiles).

These developments gave Moscow the confidence and the ability to project itself further afield - not least in Africa. In December 1975, with a Soviet naval escort, the first Cuban forces landed in Angola and in 1976 others moved into Ethiopia. There was alleged Soviet and Cuban involvement in the 1978 Katangan rebels' offensive launched into Zaire from Angola; and in 1977/78, there was massive Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa on behalf of the Ethiopian regime. Growing Soviet influence in South-East Asia - and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 - reinforced the view that Moscow had no intention of modifying its global designs in order to reduce real or potential conflict.

Ronald Reagan's election as president of the United States reflected a new popular view to forego detente and arms control in order to contain, confront and "punish" the Soviets. Soon after his inauguration, he reversed Jimmy Carter's decision not to deploying the MX missile and authorized the production of the B-1 bomber and the neutron bomb. A little later (in March 1983), he announced the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), immediately dubbed "Star Wars" by the world's press. The new administration increased defence expenditure by 13 per cent in 1982 and a further 17 per cent in 1983. There was also talk in US military circles of "winning" a limited nuclear war in Europe, which - together with Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and the shooting down of Korean Airlines flight 007 - contributed to a further deterioration in relations between the two superpowers. In addition, on regional issues President Reagan (in what became known as the "Reagan Doctrine") stated quite firmly that Washington would support anti-communist guerrillas in Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, the serious deterioration in superpower relations, which saw the beginning of a new Cold War comparable with that of the late 1940s and early 1950s, gradually gave way to a second era of detente. It was presaged by Mikhail Gorbachev's appointment as General Secretary following President Chernenko's death in March 1985 and by a superpower summit in Geneva at the end of the same year. The cost of entering into a new technological arms race including SDI research - together with Moscow's serious and escalating economic problems - had forced the USSR back to the arms control negotiating table. The result was the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of December 1987, the first arms control agreement under which an entire system of weapons was banned. This laid the foundations for subsequent discussions on the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons and talks on a ban on chemical and bacteriological weapons which continue to this day.

Apart from the factors already mentioned, the collapse of the Soviet Union's empire in Eastern Europe, and the eventual disintegration of the USSR itself, was triggered by (and in a major sense can be dated to) the Politburo's decision not to take military action against democratic domestic reform in its Warsaw Pact allies as had occurred in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Poland (1981).

SOUTHERN AFRICA: WAR AND PEACE

President Reagan's second presidential term coincided with a second era of detente that had an indelible impact on Southern Africa. For many years, of course, this region was a key arena of superpower competition and conflict. After patiently building up its political and diplomatic position in Africa during the 1960s, the USSR emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as the chief supplier of armaments to revolutionary regimes in Angola and Mozambique. Indeed, Soviet arms shipments to these two countries were only exceeded, in Africa, by those to Ethiopia. The massive communist arms build-up in the region was accompanied by an influx of East bloc military advisers and thousands of Cuban soldiers acting as proxies for Moscow.

On the other side of the battle-lines stood South Africa and the United States, who backed the rebels in Mozambique (Renamo), and especially Unita in Angola, with both covert and overt military assistance. By mid-1986, Pretoria's assistance to Unita alone reportedly totalled over US$1 billion.

For as long as the Cold War bipolar international order persisted, the two major powers could be more or less relied upon to automatically take opposing sides in Third World conflicts - as they did in Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua. But the old world rivalry disappeared in the late 1980s: superpower military conflict gave way to diplomatic co-operation as communism began to die by its own hand. The collapse of centrally planned socialist structures in Eastern Europe, and changes in Soviet foreign policy, fundamentally altered the international context in which Southern African issues may now be (and are being) resolved.

By 1988 - and in a striking departure from previous policy - the two superpowers, in a new spirit of detente, at last concluded that the problems of Southern Africa could not be settled through foreign military intervention, but only through a combined international effort to seek peace through negotiations. As Joachim Krause and Klaus von der Ropp wrote last year:

In the second half of 1988, American, Soviet and British secret diplomacy successfully managed to persuade Angola, South Africa and Cuba to conclude the [December 1988 New York Accords].1

This paved the way for the independence of Namibia in March 1990 and the subsequent withdrawal of all South African and Cuban troops from Angola.

Fourteen months later, just after Namibia's first anniversary of independence in March last year, another breakthrough was achieved when top US and Soviet officials brought their respective Angolan partners to the negotiating table - consequently bringing the 16-year old civil war in Angola to a tentative end.

Three tendencies paved the way for the resolution of the inter-related conflicts in south-western Africa. The first and most critical of these was the growing convergence of interests between Washington and Moscow during the Gorbachev era of new thinking. Both countries decided it was in their mutual interests to extricate themselves from an increasingly costly adventure. The change in the Soviet approach was crucial. The new thinking stemmed from the domestic weaknesses of the USSR and Moscow's military overcommitments and setbacks overseas - not least in Afghanistan.

This superpower co-operation took place as it became increasingly obvious to Luanda and Pretoria that neither was going to emerge victorious. The MPLA (backed up by a Cuban force that numbered only hundreds in 1975 but which had steadily increased to at least 50 000 by 1988) gradually and grudgingly concluded that while they might contain, they could not defeat, the combination of Unita and its American and South African backers. Meanwhile, the SADF's military edge was being eroded as Cuban reinforcements moved south, protected against Mirage aircraft by a formidable combination of Soviet-supplied static and mobile radar, surface-to-air missiles and MiG-23 Flogger fighters. This deadly air-defence network - which enabled Angola to scramble MiG and Sukhoi interceptors with a generally superior performance to the bulk of Pretoria's warplanes - turned the tables on a South Africa severely handicapped by an ageing fleet of fighters. This disadvantage was largely the consequence of the international arms embargo.2 At the same time, Pretoria faced a stalemate in Namibia, where Swapo's political strength and military weakness were matched by South Africa's political weaknesses and military strength. Swapo was unable to break the South African grip on the territory but neither was South Africa able to destroy Swapo. In short, an escalating military-political stalemate existed in both Angola and Namibia.

Thirdly, and linked to the above, economic factors were taking their toll. For the MPLA (which was spending half of its revenues on security), the economic screws were tightened as the country - which earns 85 per cent of its export revenue from petroleum - watched global prices fall. Simultaneously, Washington effectively vetoed Luanda's access to the World Bank and IMF. A combination of financial setbacks was also at work in South Africa. Since 1985, the South African economy has been under severe strain, the consequence of sanctions and disinvestment, drought, low productivity, declining bullion prices and debt repayment obligations.

In any case, and to sum up, the astonishing pace of change in South Africa itself was not possible until the problem of Namibian independence had been solved. And that depended on stopping the undeclared war in Angola which, in turn, rested on a commitment by the Soviets and Cubans to go home. One tends to forget how utterly impossible all this seemed only four short years ago.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

So much for the recent and the not so recent past. What seems clear now is that the world of the 1990s is going to be a great deal more complex - and possibly a lot more unstable - than in previous decades when the Cold War imparted a clarifying logic in which international politics could be reduced to a zero-sum game we could all understand. Soon we may be looking back with fondness at the predictable days of the Cold War. In the early post-war years, the global landscape could be described as bipolar, divided between East and West with Moscow and Washington leading two hostile camps in what was for them an unprecedented era of peace enforced by the mutual terror of mass destruction.

Forty years later, the world has been transformed into something more akin to a multipolar system. A North-South conflict between rich and poor states has developed and widened to match and eclipse the old East-West rivalry. Moreover, individual nations such as China and Japan, economic bodies such as the European Community (EC) and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), and also multinational corporations, have grown in importance, exerting influence regionally as well as world-wide.

It is ironic too that the defeated countries of 1945 (Germany and Japan) are currently making a successful bid to translate their economic power into a greater political say in world affairs. The Bundesbank's action on DM interest rates, and Bonn's bullying of its EC neighbours on the recognition of Croatia, are just two recent examples of this. Despite these developments, implicit in President Bush's September 1990 address to Congress - when he spoke of a world novus ordo - was the premiss that the USA is the sole superpower in the newly constructed international system.

In one study,3 Northedge sets out three criteria determining the status accorded to states in the international hierarchy or "pecking order" of power. Firstly, there is actual and measurable strength, calibrated in terms of population, size of territory, economic resources and military might. Secondly, Northedge suggests that a nation's position or standing is determined by its interests or stake in the international system. Thus, an acknowledged superpower should have world-wide interests that other members of the international system are not in a position to ignore. The final criterion is recognition of that status by other members in the system.

Northedge goes on to explain:

The world system of states is essentially a continuous self-assessing process: states are all the time taking stock of each other, sizing each other up in order to determine what degree of recognition to accord each other. Recognition of power status is a process of according deference to another state depending upon the extent to which its wishes have to be taken into account in reaching one's own decisions.4

Against the criteria offered by Northedge, there can be little doubt that the USA is the only country in the world with the complete mixture of economic, military and diplomatic power to qualify as a superpower today.

The collapse of the old international system - especially the three layers of the Soviet bloc (the outer one of Third World protectorates, such as Angola and Mozambique; the inner layer of East European satellites; and the core of the USSR itself)5 - makes it very difficult to identify what issues will preoccupy the global village of the future.

According to Benjamin:

The problems of war and peace and major power rivalry, whilst still dominant, no longer monopolize the international agenda. Issues such as economic interdependence, the future of the environment, nuclear proliferation, population growth and international debt, once condemned to the periphery, have thrust themselves onto the stage of world politics.6

As such, and despite some arguments to the contrary,

...it may be postulated that the new international configuration will be one in which greater consideration [than before] is given to issues associated with the Third World.7

The end of the Cold War and its impact on the creeping peace process in Southern Africa has already been addressed at some length. But in addition to this, I intend to discuss a number of other international tendencies and developments that have already begun to make their mark on Southern Africa and other regions of the Third World.

AFRICAN WINDS OF CHANGE: DEMOCRATIZATION AND CONDITIONALITY

A key development of course has been an apparent - indeed an inexorable - global shift away from authoritarianism, and a virtual end to the international ideological struggle as between political pluralism and Marxism-Leninism, in favour of democracy and democratization. Political and economic reforms in the former USSR, and the rapid replacement of seemingly entrenched and highly repressive regimes in Eastern Europe, have had profound repercussions for Africa, catalysing demands for democratic reform and an end to single-party hegemony. In an era without precedent, oppressed peoples across Africa are throwing off the authoritarian yoke against the backdrop of a global democratic renaissance - which still, of course, has a long way to go.

Nevertheless, the 1980s have been characterized - perhaps somewhat prematurely - as marking "the end of history", the ultimate victory of liberal democracy and market values over totalitarian ideologies and bureaucratic central planning. From Equatorial Guinea to Ethiopia, and from Morocco to Madagascar, Africa's military and one-party dictatorships are under unprecedented attack from an increasingly impoverished and deeply disillusioned populace.8 This process is now unstoppable, but it could also have serious destabilizing consequences for the continent.

As I have noted elsewhere, advocacy and cajolery for a radical shake-up has also emanated from the Western countries, who 'regard the implementation of multiparty politics and open government as a sine qua non for structural adjustment and improvements in the economic sphere'.9 Put another way, the twin processes of political reform and economic recovery are viewed by the West as inseparable.

Nevertheless, conditionality is not being restricted to the execution of structural adjustment programmes or to improvements in the field of human rights and proof of a commitment to multiparty democracy:

With the relaxation of East-West geopolitical tensions and the apparent end of the Cold War era, a new '... criterion is beginning to make itself apparent as a proviso for external assistance. The new litmus test relates to military spending.'10

The OECD countries and agencies such as the World Bank and IMF are now taking the view that the new international climate provides real opportunities for African states to reduce military expenditures so that resources can be reallocated towards pressing welfare and economic needs. If the global community is able to create an enabling environment to make this possible, 'bilateral and multilateral conditionality may be able to catalyse socio-economic development without reducing national security'.11 Whether or not this is likely or possible, will be addressed below.

AFRICA'S "SECOND LIBERATION": STABILITY OR CHAOS?

If one looks back on the convulsions in recent African politics, what is significant is that in the twelve months between the June 1990 and June 1991 Organization of African Unity (OAU) summits, no less than nine African leaders lost their positions - the highest turnover since the OAU was created in 1963. More widely, political changes in Africa since 1989 had led to a doubling of the de jure multiparty states from 10 to 20 by the end of 1991. Another two dozen have committed themselves to democratic reform.

But although these developments have raised real hopes for the better governance of Africa (which is fundamental to any chance of sustained economic recovery), the surge towards political pluralism, and the metamorphosis of African countries away from authoritarian rule, will inevitably mean a painful and extended period of adjustment - with parallel problems relating to domestic and regional security.12

In Somalia, for example, the downfall of Siad Barre's harsh regime has been replaced by murderous non-rule by competing armies in a country that once again openly reveals the grim reality of deep-seated interclan rivalry and suspicion. Elsewhere on the Horn, in Ethiopia, the ousting of Mengistu 'may yet represent something of a false dawn: armed bandits plague the south-eastern region of the country and in the north millions are threatened with starvation'.13 At the same time, thousands of refugees are crossing from Somalia into Kenya and Ethiopia, exacerbating the Horn's problems and imposing severe security stresses on the entire region.14

In Southern Africa, the possibility of similar levels of chaos during the next 5 to 10 years is not in the least remote - especially in Zaire, Angola and Mozambique. Indeed, entire communities have already been internally or externally displaced - most often into marginal areas in the countryside or into huge squatter camps on the edge of towns where they aggravate local demand for food, water and services and where diseases like cholera and physical degradation of the land are intensified. For instance, more than a million Mozambican refugees (deslocades) have fled across the border into Malawi, which the World Bank lists as the fourth poorest country in the world. These people now make up more than 10 percent of Malawi's 8 million population. By way of comparison, it is as if 25 million refugees had entered the USA during the past four years. The consequences for Malawi have been devastating - in terms of cost, the transmission of Aids and deforestation.

If Mobutu (or someone else) is unable to secure a peaceful transition to a new government acceptable to the majority of Zaireans, and if the peace processes in Mozambique and Angola turn sour, the ensuing conflict would have enormous economic and security implications for the other countries of Southern Africa. Thus, the issue is not just a humanitarian one. For as the UN Commissioner for Refugees, Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway put it recently: people regard refugees and refugee work as charity. It is not charity. It is part of our own future security.

What makes matters potentially worse for Southern Africa for the remainder of the 1990s and beyond is the accumulated proliferation of basic infantry weaponry in the subcontinent. Military sources estimate that as many as 1,5 million Kalashnikov rifles are circulating in Mozambique. On the Beira Corridor, one foreign businessman was recently offered an automatic rifle for one kilogram of sugar. In South Africa itself, AK-47s are selling for as little as R150, where they are fuelling the violence in the black townships.

One problem for Southern Africa, closely linked to the availability of weapons, is the status of demobilized troops and rebels following the formal end of hostilities. For example, what will ultimately happen to the 70 000 Fapla troops and 50 000 Unita guerrillas, the majority of whom are being demobilized? A serious danger is that groups of guerrillas or ex-soldiers will feel let down and disappointed by the lack of employment opportunities, and that they will use their military training and guns to go their own way. The same uncertainties apply to Mozambique and, to a lesser extent, to Namibia and South Africa.

As these countries move towards democratic pluralism on a continent where free elections were, until very recently, few and far between, there is a risk that the so-called "second liberation" will change not just the continent's autocratic regimes but also Africa's inherited international boundaries.15 This is especially so given the global community's new tolerance for nationalist/secessionist aspirations, as seen by the recognition, inter alia, of Armenia, Croatia and Estonia.16

The likelihood of state collapse and secessionism in Zaire, together with the possibility of two or more states emerging in both Angola and Mozambique, suggest that a separation along the lines of the Bangladesh breakaway from Pakistan could very well manifest itself in one or more Southern African states. In addition, a disintegrating Zaire could trigger a Congolese grab for oil-rich Cabinda (which produces half of Angola's oil) just as political turmoil in Tanzania might see the secession of Zanzibar from the Union.17

In short, and to conclude this part of the essay, the world-wide tendency towards political pluralism, and the renaissance of ethnic/nationalist sentiment (together with the sacrifices inherent in economic reform programmes), almost certainly mean that Africa can expect continued, indeed heightened, levels of turmoil during the next decade and beyond.

NOTES AND REFERENCES