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LONG READ: The Sanusi speech that scolded Buhari’s government

0 in Share First of all, I want to break from tradition. Usually I speak in Hausa in Kano. But, I don’t know how I am go...

Thursday 28 December 2017

COLD WAR

The cold war was a sustained state of political and military tension between the Western bloc led by the United States and the Eastern bloc led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The war was cold because there was no direct fighting between both sides.
On the side of America was Britain, France, West Germany etc. while the Soviet Union had on its side countries of Eastern Europe –Poland, Hungary, and Romania for example.
One of the reasons adduced for the war, was the United States ambition to expand its overseas trade in the countries of Eastern Europe where the Soviet Union held sway.
On one hand, the cold war pitted capitalism against communism. On the other hand, it left many countries of the global south at the mercy of the big powers.
The war did not end until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but it left its devastations on the conscience of the world. While the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not directly confront each other in a war, they engaged in proxy wars by sponsoring and supporting conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Vietnam, Korea, Ethiopia and other countries.
At the end of the intrigues, the United States and its allies won, leaving the world at the mercy of one super power. The Soviet Union collapsed, splitting into Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and other smaller countries. It was a defeat of communism, leading to a global launch of market fundamentalism.
Following the end of the Cold War it was asserted, that the world had reached a final bus-stop ideologically, that liberal democracy is the final form of human government and the end of history is the consolidation of capitalism in every corner of the world.
This position is challenged by the view that “most importantly, the efforts of the west to promote its values of democracy and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military predominance and to advance its economic interests engender countering responses from other civilizations”. It has been termed “the west versus the rest”.
In furtherance of the argument, M.Y Akbar an Indian Muslim scholar states that the West’s next confrontation is definitely going to come from the Muslim world. “It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from Maghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will begin”.
Emerging scenarios like the recent rise of the militant Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) give credence to the civilization clash theory.

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