The World War II had barely ended when humanity plunged into what Eric Hobsbawm called a third world war. It was a very peculiar war. As Thomas Hobbes had observed, “War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting: but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.”

The Cold War between the two camps led by the USA and the USSR, which utterly dominated the international scenario in the second half of the 20th Century, was unquestionably such a tract of time. The peculiarity of the Cold War was the lack of an imminent danger of a world war.

Despite apocalyptic rhetoric on both sides, especially on the American side, both superpowers accepted the global distribution of force in the concluding years of 1940s, which amounted to a highly uneven but essentially unchallenged balance of power. The USSR controlled or exercised predominant influence in one part of the globe — the zone occupied by the Red Army and/or other communist armed forces after 1945 and didn’t attempt to extend its range of influence further by military force.

The USA exercised control and predominance over the rest of the capitalist world as well as the western hemisphere and the oceans, taking over what remained of the imperial hegemony of the former colonial powers. It did not intervene in the zone of accepted Soviet hegemony.

The lines of demarcation had been drawn in 1943-45 at various summit meetings between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin and by virtue of the fact that only the Red Army could actually defeat Germany. But the new order that the world came to witness in the aftermath the World War II was punctuated with two transitions. Of these, the first one has been discussed already.

The second transition that marked the new world order that emerged in the World War II was the United States’ advent as the representative of Anglo-Saxon world. The United States of America substituted Great Britain as the hegemon in the world affairs. A dominant America was elevated to the superpower status, “unique in its dominance and imbued with worldwide interests and responsibilities.”

Concurrently, as British power waned in the 1950s and ’60s, the end of empire and relative economic decline meant that Great Britain became more and more an appendage of the American policy and less and less an independent element in the international scheme of things.

The peroration of Britain’s centuries-long status as a great power was made patent by the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 and by continuous budgetary contractions thereafter. However, the recognition of common vital interests was the key to the post-war Atlantic alliance.

The geopolitical structure of the peace ensuing the conclusion of World War II was a legacy of how Britain and America had fought the war in Europe and with what allies the war had been fought.

Defending the balance of power in Europe against the Russian bid to continental hegemony had been the defining feature of the international affairs in the years after the Korean and Vietnam wars in which the US had suffered defeat.

The containment of the USSR, preventing Europe from becoming the theatre of war and enhancement of its own neo-imperialist tentacles remained the cornerstones of the US-led NATO forces. Most of the (proxy) wars or military campaigns occurred in Asia. These included the Korean war, the Vietnam war and the Afghanistan war (1979-1988).

Most of the territories that became the battlegrounds were close to the USSR. The only time the USSR ventured to install nuclear warheads in Cuba, America’s reaction was so intense that the whole world virtually came to the brink of obliteration.

The Soviet leader, NS Khrushchev, had decided to place Soviet missiles in Cuba to offset the American missiles already in place across the Soviet borders in Turkey. The USA forced him to withdraw them by threatening war but also withdrew its missiles from Turkey. All said and done, Americans quite astutely kept military action away far from their own territory.

After the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan and its subsequent disintegration in 1991, the Northern Alliance had no apparent raison d’etre. But its relevance was established by triggering the Operation Desert Storm. This war was waged at the orchestration of the US under George Bush (Senior).

The unification of Germany was harnessed very effectively but raised the prospect of a rejuvenation of its nationalism. The US hegemony was perceived to be under threat given the German potential of catapulting itself into a major power. That set alarm bells ringing in France because of its history of conflict with Germany which goes back to the days of Bismarck. The Anglo-Saxon world felt tangibly threatened.

Thus, the NATO continued to exist as a tool to serve and enhance the neo-imperialist designs of the US. Its campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria were undertaken with that intention. However, these campaigns ended up spiralling disorder and anarchy.

A big setback that proved deleterious to NATO’s reputation and American prestige was its abject failure in Afghanistan. The NATO failed to break the Talban resistance. This has raised several questions about its efficacy despite its sophisticated weaponry and vast monetary resources.

Having an unenviable record in combating counter-US forces, the NATO was deployed in Ukraine despite US wanting the former to be the part of the latter. Given that record, any state with a sane leadership wanting to join the NATO, defies logic.

(Concluded)