Chapter 10.5 Europe and the New World Order
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Understand the place of major European states at the end of the Cold War
- Explain why the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc collapsed
- Discuss the effects of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe
- Describe the emerging post-Cold War era in the 1990s and beyond
At the beginning of the Cold War, ideological differences between the Soviet Union and the United States seemed insurmountable. The enmity between the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc resulted in conflicts around the globe that cost the lives of millions of people. Nuclear weapons that threatened the very existence of the human species were stockpiled in preparation for a war that neither side wanted. European states tried to adapt to the changes. A world that was not so deeply divided seemed unimaginable to many. However, the Cold War lasted less than fifty years.
The Collapse of Communism: The Eastern Bloc
The Cold War had begun in Greece, an unlikely place. Its last shot was also fired in an unlikely place—Afghanistan, the site of the final proxy war waged between the allies of the Soviet Union and those of the United States.
In 1973, the nationalist Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan, once the prime minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963, came to power again in that country after deposing its king. He was originally backed by the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which received support from the Soviet Union. Not all factions of the PDPA supported Daoud, however. When he failed to reconcile the factions and realized he was losing the support of PDPA members who had helped him to power, he turned to the United States for support. He wished to free Afghanistan from dependence on the Soviet Union, which had extended assistance to the country in the past, and he reasoned that the United States would help. He also sought closer relations with US allies Saudi Arabia and Iran and expelled Soviet military and economic advisers from the country.
In 1978, Daoud was overthrown and killed by one of the PDPA factions. As the victors sought to eliminate their enemies, a group of Islamic fundamentalists who opposed secular and Western influences on Islamic societies and endorsed strict codes of behavior fought back against government attempts to spread communism to tribal areas. When it became clear that the PDPA leader favored by Moscow could not maintain control of the country and a pro-US rival was gaining ascendancy, the Soviet Union sent ground troops to invade Afghanistan in December 1979.
President Jimmy Carter protested the Soviet incursion and imposed economic sanctions. The United States also continued arming the Islamist enemies of the pro-Soviet Afghan regime, a policy it had been following for some time. These Islamist insurgents, called the mujahideen (Arabic for Muslims who battle non-Muslims on behalf of Islam), regarded the Afghan government a