Cold War

29 UNIT 5. THE DEMICE OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM Khrushchev’s fate reflected, in microcosm, that of the Sovi-et Union and the United States during the late 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s. The international system during those years appeared to be one of bipolarity in which, like iron filings attract-ed by magnets, all power gravitated to Moscow and Washington. In fact, though, the superpowers were finding it increasingly difficult to manage the smaller powers, whether allies or neutrals in the Cold War, while at the same time they were losing the authority they had once taken for granted at home. The weak were discovering opportunities to confront the strong. The nature of power was changing because the fear of power, as traditionally conceived, was diminishing. Mallets were indeed beginning to turn into flamingos, and balls into hedgehogs. The first signs that this was happening came with the de-cline and eventual demise of European colonialism, a process that began before the Cold War started, paralleled its early de-velopment, and only gradually affected its subsequent evolution. The European domination of the world dated from the 15th cen-tury, when Portugal and Spain first perfected the means of transporting men, weapons, and — without realizing it — germs across the oceans that had hitherto kept human societies apart. By the end of the 19th century, there was little territory left that was not controlled by Europeans or their descendants. But in 1905, Japan, a rising non-European power, won a war it had started with Russia, one of the weakest of the European empires: that victory shattered the illusion that the Europeans, if chal-lenged, would always win. The Europeans themselves then shattered another illu-sion — that of unity among themselves — by going to war in 1914. World War I, in turn, produced two compelling justifica-tions for an end to colo...