From the 1940s, major colonial powers demanded that formal political independence could be granted only to ‘responsible’ leaders – those who would be responsible to the big powers, and opposed to the Soviet Union and communism or to the empowerment of Africa’s people. The Cold War created not just conditions for the continued intervention of big powers in Africa but also justifications for such intervention. In Africa it was used as justification for the existence of apartheid and the banning of the ANC and other liberal organisations, as well as for Nato’s support for the continuation of Portugal’s colonial rule. The Cold War had a major impact on Africa and the African diaspora, from the persecution of African-American activist WEB Du Bois to the deportation from the US of communist Claudia Jones. The ‘war’ was therefore a cold one, carried out through ideology rather than fighting. Such weapons made military conflict on the scale of the Second World War unthinkable. The third feature was massive arms procurement, especially nuclear. Soviet leaders took socialism seriously: it was a buttress of their bloc, especially in eastern Europe, and it won the USSR significant support among leftist political groups, in Europe and then in the anti-colonial movement. These idea systems bound each bloc together and impeded good inter-bloc relations.
The second feature was ideology, Marxism-Leninism versus liberal-capitalism (or anti-communism).
Washington and Moscow assembled alliance systems, especially Nato and the Warsaw Pact. Many major states had been defeated or weakened, leaving the two ‘super powers’. One, a consequence of the Second World War, was global bipolarity.
It evolved over time, but had three essential features. The Cold War meant more than tension between two major states. But those developments are part of a new era. Relations between the US and Russian Federation have been cool over the past 10 years, and were chilled further by the 2014 annexation of the Crimea. Evan Mawdsley: “The Cold War was a product of the 1917 revolution and the Second World War”
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