Klaus Dodds’ essay on international development efforts in the shadow of the cold war opens with the observation that words have power. The author describes how the global dynamics during the cold war came to label the different nations of the world as poor vs rich, developed vs developing etc and how these labels shaped the development rhetoric. Now, in the post-cold war era, these labels persist and continue to be significant in a global landscape that is changed and yet still the same in some ways.
The cold war was a period of struggle for ideological and economic dominance of the world between the two wealthiest nations of the time - the United States and the Soviet Union. Not an outright war, the prolonged conflict saw both the US and USSR extending their influence to other countries of the world in order to install governments sympathetic to their cause. As many of the smaller countries had recently gained independence from imperialist occupation, the superpowers channeled development aid to these countries in exchange for implicit or explicit dependence on and support of the world order led by that particular superpower. Indeed, the notion and goals of development were themselves a central part of the competing ideologies between the two countries. Alongside the carrot of development aid, the two countries waged proxy wars against governments considered antagonistic to their agenda by political insurgency, inciting revolution and outright invasion. The discourse instrumental to sustain this interventionist strategy labeled the smaller, less powerful countries as developing, the Global South or poor. This labeling fuelled, on the one hand, a feeling of exceptionalism in the two superpowers which allowed their governments to justify international interventions as necessary stabilization of countries in need. On the other hand, this same labeling allowed the international development industry to fuel aid and ideas for the economic growth to their poorer neighbors.
The end of cold war with the folding of USSR in 1990, Klaus notes, brought hope of a possible attempt to directly address the humanitarian crises in the least developed nations and bring about a global attempt to help nations develop for betterment of their citizens, rather than the dual carrot-stick treatment by the powerful nations towards their own goals. This hope has been mostly for naught. The North led by the US is once again embroiled in a war on terror with a similar categorization of friendly and antagonistic countries, and a similar inefficient arbitrary flow of aid and war onto smaller nations.
The text clearly explains the roots of development thinking and its state in the post-cold war era. The treatment brings out the frustration meted out to the developing nations because of the ultimate agenda of the aid providers – influence in a fragmented world order. Accepting the conclusion that development efforts propelled by cold war agendas provide mixed results, I find the expectation that powerful nations would aid the development of poorer nations for humanitarian causes naive. Humans are a tribal species and nations seldom have the empathy to help other nations prosper for selfless reasons. Even partial attempts to extend the nations’ concern oversees often lead to domestic backlash because resources are seen to be squandered while the “situation at home” is seen to be dire. The contemporary result in the US is Trump. Any attempt to improve the lot of their citizens must be driven from within the global South. The text references Non-Alignment Movement as one such attempt in the cold war era when the developing nations recognized the loss of sovereignty and long-term well being from the polarized dominance of the two superpowers. NAM failed to keep the countries together meaningfully because it was unable to account for the heterogeneity of nations in the South and was unable to tackle the paucity of resources these nations had to effectively drive policy on the global stage. To achieve development goals in line with the less powerful nations’ disparate requirements, these nations must create and maintain a platform that provides them collective bargaining power against the richer states that otherwise stipulate global policy by default through their superior resource allocation for the purpose. The dominance of rich nations in WTO and IMF and the often criticized impact of IMF policies on developing nations’ social trajectories is a case in point.
At the same time, I think it is important to note, as the text does, the material progress in the global South in the last century. A large part of the global population has access to more and better quality material resources than their ancestors. Even if IMF stipulated market restructuring tramples on nations’ sovereignty, perhaps it delivers on the promise of progress? Characterization of actual development on the ground, its impact on the people, and the cost concerning long-term self-sufficiency and resource extraction are essential and difficult questions to consider.
A somewhat exaggerated analogy to the North-led and North-dependent progress of the world is the century-old model of imperialist colonization. Are the global dynamics triggered by the cold war, a new form of imperialism? And if so, is the cost-benefit of imperialist colonization in favor of the colonized? As an example, the British were responsible for the construction of an extensive rail network in the Indian subcontinent. This rail system is an enduring piece of critical infrastructure for the modern Indian economy. But independence from imperialist control across the globe is unanimously considered a step in the right direction for the nation. Self-sufficiency is an integral part of a nation’s progress and the cold war-driven global order does not provide space for nations to develop the capabilities that would make them self-sufficient.