Collapse of Cold War certainties is stoking the global migrant crisis

The breakdown of the old nuclear stand-off between the US and USSR has left a dangerous void

There is nothing new about vast numbers of people traversing the globe to escape from danger or despair. Human history is a story of the migration of peoples. Apparently impregnable empires have collapsed under the weight of such mass movement. What we are seeing now is not a new thing but a very old one.

So why is it such a shock to the world order that governments are threatened and the normal rules of diplomacy are (if you believe the briefings coming out of Paris and Westminster) being traduced?

Perhaps because we expected this to be an era in which prosperity and freedom would be in the ascendant: that the need to flee from lifethreatening persecution and poverty would largely disappear. The collapse of the terrifying nuclear stand-off between implacable superpowers would surely lead to peace and opportunity being spread to every part of the globe in a rush of blissful release. Open democracy and free enterprise were the rational answers to the question of how societies should be organised and this lesson was bound to be adopted by virtually all nation states.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Or at least, not universally, as the naively optimistic vision might have predicted – even though a huge proportion of what was known during the Cold War as the Third World (states that were not part of either the Western or Eastern blocs) did adopt the democratic system of government and free market economics which together proved to be the antidote to absolute poverty and backwardness.

But in a good many places, a new generation of corrupt dictatorships, zealots and kleptocrats brought civil disorder and tribal warfare to regions which had once been, paradoxically, bribed and policed into some kind of stability by the competing superpowers.

These waves of desperate migration mainly from what are now described euphemistically as “developing countries” appear to have come as a complete surprise to the West - which seemed to think that all it had to do was offer its successful formula for wealth and liberty along with some helpful trade agreements, and there would be an end to severe global deprivation. As it turns out, it may have been precisely the competition between ideologies – with its power struggle for world domination – that kept some of the worst possible influences in check.

You may be old enough to remember a time when the Western (which is to say, American) political message competed actively for the “hearts and minds” of unaligned populations against an aggressive communist recruitment drive orchestrated by the Soviet Union.

Even when the Kremlin-led operation behind the state socialism doctrine was disguised or denied, it was always clear that the USSR would benefit from any adoption of its credo by Third World countries.

Not only would their allegiance lend support to the idea that the Soviet solution was winning the battle of ideas and thus strengthen its hold against dissidents within the Warsaw Pact countries, but it would give Moscow leverage in the international power game, often in a quite literal sense when Russia helped itself to those territories’ natural resources.

So the world was carved up into spheres of influence in which the two big players counted each victory for their ideology as a moral marker. The relative success of every American administration was measured against how many countries or regions had been “lost” to communism.

But regarding these countries as helpless pawns in a great game which held off the threat of a cataclysmic world war was misleading. Decried at the time as dangerous, and degrading to the peoples whose fate was part of the deal, this was actually a more cynical arrangement in which territory was established largely through back channels.

Within those agreed spheres, unstable regions were monitored and unreliable rulers were displaced – often with the tacit approval of the “enemy” power. Risks to the hegemony of either bloc in a specified region were dealt with by ruthless suppression, targeted assassination and the carefully vetted placement of political leaders who could be held to their promises.

Tyranny was acceptable so long as it did not rock the boat of the unwritten pact between the great powers. The West was not innocent: the most important attribute of a national leader was that he was on our side, not theirs. (Hence the quote attributed to Lyndon Johnson about South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, that “he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”.)

One of the aspects of this manipulation was bribery: favoured tyrants were rewarded militarily and with personal protection and comforts, but their populations (at least significant sections of them) frequently saw benefits too because both power blocs knew that the people had to be kept on side. Most important, potential uprisings and competing factions were dealt with, ruthlessly and without apology or explanation, because the need to maintain the checkmate was accepted by both sides.

Occasionally, somebody overstepped the mark and the consequences were terrifying. When the USSR decided to plant a missile base in Cuba – 90 miles from the Florida coast – the world order seemed genuinely on the verge of collapse. What happened next? The Soviets pulled back – and never tried it again. But nor did the US ever repeat its invasion of the Bay of Pigs. The rules were well and truly fixed.

That’s all over now. There is nobody with a vested interest in keeping the dictators in order, or offering favours to their people for adopting an approved way of life. The Soviets are gone and with their departure, America – after a few calamitous misadventures – has lost interest. Chaos and tribal war fills the void with self-serving tyranny running amok, so the people who really would like to live the way that we do believe they have little choice but to come here.

Will the West (led by America) ever regain its interest in these places and people now that the competition for their favour is gone? We wait and see. In the meantime, they will come.

Chaos and tribal war are running amok, so the people who really would like to live the way we do believe they have little choice but to come here