International Baccalaureate History Topics

So what is this “New World Order”?  I am not inclined to give much credit to the boundless conspiracy theories but they do make for some humorous anecdotes (see Simpson’s “Stonecutter’s Song”).

Seriously though what would Kissinger say now, almost 20 years after the publication of this book, about the New World Order.  There is an inescabably Eurocentric focus to his analysis of the periods of various World Orders, from the Peace of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna.  What did these conceptions mean to the populations of Southeast Asia, Africa or the Americas?  Not much, thank you.  If that is the case then, if Kissinger is really talking about European hegemony, and I think we could safely argue that the United States is a product of that, then is our current embroilment in the “war on terror” really much of a suprise?

As we conquered the west in the euphamism of “manifest destiny” the native American’s pushed back but could not prevail.  As “we”, meaning the European history and culture of representative democracy, seperation of church and state and free market systems, push into all corners of the globe,  is it really suprising that some are pushing back?  Is it suprising that some have acquired the means to really hurt us?   Will 9/11 be regarded as a sort of modern battle of little bighorn?  Was the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan like the Spanish retreat from the great Pueblo Revollt of 1680? 

By 2110 at least one other “New World Order” will have emerged by then according to Kissinger’s rubric, what will the students of this classroom refer to our time as? Will it indeed be, “the end of history”?  What do you think? What is this time period?

1980

I don’t know about you, but I find Kissinger’s analysis of Reagan hysterical.  His historical anecdotes having no “basis in facts, as facts are generally understood”, “the shallowest of academic backgrounds”, yet a man who developed a foreign policy of “extraordinary consistency and relevence”.  Yet he was bored with the details.  (Maybe he was just bored by Kissinger) 

Frankly there were many, and I think still are many, that believe Ronnie was a puppet controlled by his advisors like Alexander Haig, yet letters recently published in “Morning in America” apparently, according to a review I read, reveal a leader very much in control of his decisions and ideas.

So why does the Cold War end according to Kissinger?  What was Reagan’s role?  What about Gorbachev, and backing up a bit how do explain this?

1984

So how did the first post-Cold War crisis go?  Operation Desert Sheild & Storm buried the Vietnam syndrome, for some, forever in the sand of the Middle East.

What about Operation Serbia?  There was no operation Serbia?  Why not?  Serbia is engaged in the worst battle that Europe has seen sine the Nazis and Bush sends “a little food”.  What’s up with that? Kuwait gets more military hardware/manpower than was devoted to Vietnam A&B claim and Croatia and Bosnia, defending themselves against Serbia get squat.  Why?

Bush does have a banner day in terms of his popularity.  90%.  The highest ever recorded, even higher than Jr’s after 9/11 I  think (but I’d have to look that up/maybe you can) this despite the fact the we had helped arm Saddam Hussein, even helped him begin to develop a nuclear weapons program back in the 1980s, when we were also (secretly) helping Iran, who he was at war with.

Finally, as opposed to Fukuyama, A&B see the future rather darkly I think as ideology gives way to struggles over nationalism (this is what is behind the Serbia story) which they call THE great cause of instability, poverty and disorder in the world.

FYI – Star testing is coming up and its going to screw with our schedule quite a bit.  Stay tuned.

So could it have been, or in what way was it, the “end of history”?  It appeared to be the end of the Cold War, just don’t tell that to Castro’s Cuba or the imprisoned citizens of North Korea.  It is sad reading this chapter that the word “terrorism” isn’t used once yet the idea of a “new world order” is touted about by Ambrose and Bush and others. 

In an editorial in Life Magazine (remember those?) near WWII Henry Luce declared the 20th century the “American Century”. arguing that all centuries have great nations that lead the way, Britain the 19th century, I don’t know who in the 18th, and that now it was America’s turn.

Derrick Bell snidely commented that the “American Century foundered on the shoals of Vietnam”.  But did it?  What would Ambrose say?  And why do you think, or does Ambrose think, we didn’t financially support the emerging democracies in eastern Europe any better?  Did we really need to spend $* billion on the unwindable “war on drugs”?

Have you all seen these before?  They’re called “Word clouds”.  You can cut and paste and text and the words will be randomized but also manipulated in size by their frequency.  In other words in Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech, above, he used “World” quite a bit and “communism” rather less so.  I think they are interesting.

Here in Ambrose and Brinkley’s 15th chapter we have a marathon of words.  40+ pages!  Note the 5th edition was published in 1988, the sixth in 1991.  In one of those editions, the 6th I suspect, this chapter was new and a classic case of not having enough historical distance to weed out the significant from the non.  Student in one class lost his book and has newer edition which he says has this chapter much trimmed down.

If I were hunting for terms I might choose Ambrose’s take in the Iran-Contra affair, Lebanon, Grenada and maybe the Falkland Islands.

So what do A&B think of old Ronnie?  Good or bad or somewhere in-between?

“Breaking a Han Dynasty urn” is the title of the photo taken by the often jailed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.   What do you suppose he intended to say with this photograph?

On to Spence and of course the protests of 1989.  The protests of course don’t fall out of the clear blue sky.  Though the excuse was the death of Deng’s former compatriot Hu Yaobang what was the “real” or longer term reason for the events?

Interesting at the opening of the chapter of how all the changes and reforms in China, like getting rid of the communes, weren’t really seen as completely positive.  China was in a muddle in many ways, and despite economic growth of even recent years, might still be.

Remember, you get your take home test tomorrow.  Test and terms due on 29th-30th, Monday Tuesday of the week after next.  For Wednesday Thursday this week you’re reading Ambrose on Reagan and its a whopper.  49 pages.  Can’t take Ambrose so lightly with this one.

image above is Hong Kong

As China enters the 1980s here it appears that China is really entering the world.  The revolution of 1949 appears a convulsive act that required a generation of flitting recovery for the new China to emerge from.  How is this new 1980s China really different from the one in the teens or twenties or even the one that preceded the 1911 revolution?

Now in the 80s, no doubt inspired by full relations with the US and the “West”, China needs lawyers, international law, a solid education system, incentives for workers and even allows the free-wheeling Hong Kong to keep on keepin’ on.

They even need Porsche salesmen and mechanics!

How did all of this come about?  How does China seems to escape the fate of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union of the same time period?  What was really different here?

We are at crunch time for our little class.  I know you all have may exciting things going on and opportunities to look forward to, but the extent to which for the next simple 3 (only) or 4(stretch) weeks you can double down and focus with me on the final units and reviews as they unroll, you will see, and I will see, I think some extraordinary results.

Hang in there.

How is this a redefinition of revolution your might ask?  well, embedding an icon of capitalism into a communist system is pretty revolutionary I think.  Marx would be rolling in his grave.

China’s (Deng Xiaoping’s) desire to modernize in agriculture and industry etc.  saw them get in bed with the United States, and Coca-Cola and Boeing, and then attack a communist nation (Vietnam) in part because of its leanings towards Socialist country #1 the USSR!  Seems like crazy stuff.

What’s really crazy stuff is that Mao was right 70% of the time.  Claims like that make me think of “Lost in Translation” because I find pronouncements like that sort of funny, yet in China I know it was taken with the greatest seriousnesses.

For comments here consider spelling out your understanding of the rise of Deng, the significance of the “Fifth” modernization and/or how our relationship with Taiwan went the way that it did

Here we are!  Back to Spence, and frankly, back to some tricky terrain.  From the attacks on Lin Biao and Confucius, to Mao’s apparent snubbing of Zhou En Lai (above) near and at his death, to the gang of four and Hua Guofeng, its some times very hard to draw lines indicating one side or another.  Of course you know Deng Xiaoping will emerge as leader, because you’ve heard of Deng, but not of Hua, it certainly does not seem so at the end of this chapter.

What does seem so at the end of this chapter?  Who is in charge and why?

A couple of great incidents to recall, the mass gathering at Tiananmen square and then its subsequent comparison to Hungary in 1956.  How does that work?  Please note this is not the famous demonstration at Tiananmen square of 1989 with tank man (we’ll get there)  but why do the masses gather and how does the comparison work?

Finally there is an apparently providential natural event around the death of Mao.  why do you suppose Spence brings this up?

Cheers!

No this was not a lover’s warning, this was rather Gorbachev’s assertion, on the eve of taking power, that something was fundamentally wrong.  He believe change had to come, and it came, but not in ways he could have predicted.  In 1988 the state history exams were cancelled because as “glasnost” unrolled, the lies of the soviet textbooks became more and more evident.

Singled out as one of the most oppressive regimes by White, Honecker’s GDR, depicted in our movie, was a place where Gorby had to muscle in and force some change.  Some of the claims in the film, problems of corruption, prostitution, are supported by White here, as are the existences of the subversive authors and artists who, in White, want to push harder and harder for reforms.

I think its in Pipes, but it might be in Kissinger to come, someone makes the claim the regimes are at their most vulnerable when they begin to institute reforms.  Reforms begin to trickle in and they’re like “salted peanuts” to use Kissinger’s analogy from before.  People want more and more.

Why did change come in the way that it did?  White has some musings on possible answers.  What do you think?