Did you say Cold War?

Because of my articles on the policies Russia has developed in Syria and on the position it has regained on a global scale after the Cold War, my dear friend Erol Göka asked the question in everyone's mind: A Cold War again?

In fact, in my most recently published article I had tried to speak, through the example of Sykes-Picot, of how the general appearance of the international system is increasingly beginning to resemble that of the 19th-century world. Let us elaborate on this a bit more today.

The first person in history to coin the term Cold War was Don Juan Manuel, a 14th-century Spanish writer who wrote about the Christian-Muslim conflict of his time. Juan Manuel, who took part in the campaign to take Algeciras from the Arabs in 1344, was a member of the Castilian royal family, and the phrase Cold War appears in a dialogue in which a wise Christian gives a young prince advice on how to conduct war against the Muslim enemy. Using the concept for hostilities that did not turn into hot conflict, Juan Manuel claims that Cold and Hot Wars differ from each other not only in many other things but also in the way they end. According to Juan Manuel, while a very harsh and hot war ends either in death or in peace, a cold war brings the parties neither peace nor honor. The Cold War experienced in the 20th century too was shaped to some extent by this sense of the concept, as hostility not turning into hot conflict.

The international system in the 19th century is called the Balance of Power System by international relations researchers. Within the system, besides the four great states able to influence the international system, such as Tsarist Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France and Prussia (Germany after national unity was achieved), there is Britain, which, though decisive in shaping the international relations of the period, could not use this power without calculation and was obliged to take into account the foreign policy outputs of the other great states.

Indeed, Germany's catching up with Britain in economic indicators in the late 19th century made Britain too a "relatively equal" actor of the Classical Balance of Power system. Britain's losing its quality of being a hegemon created a shock in the classical balance of power system. The development that brought with it the questioning of Britain's position within the system, Germany's unstoppable rise, would result in the alliance agreements that began to take shape in Europe after Germany established its National unity culminating in the First World War.

After the campaign launched against Germany, which questioned and challenged Britain's position within the system and "the current state of the continental system" in Europe, Britain established "a new world order"; Germany was sought to be reined in with the Treaty of Versailles signed with Germany, but this was not successfully achieved. The period between the First World War and the Second World War is therefore called a period of crisis in international relations.

The great economic crisis that broke out in 1929 can be seen as an indicator that Britain could no longer bear hegemony. The Second World War that took place ended in the defeat of the Axis states, but the European states had reached the point of economic collapse. While the war was going on, two great international actors began to reveal themselves for the post-war period.

A new world system was formed by the USSR and the US through various conferences. In the end, eastern and western blocs made up of states clustered around two "superpowers" emerged. The existing international situation was called a "bipolar system" by system analysts.

The most distinctive feature of the bipolar system is that states are concentrated between two blocs. The international relations researcher Morton Kaplan examined the bipolar system in two groups, the Tight Bipolar System and the Loose Bipolar System. According to Kaplan, in the tight bipolar system all states are drawn toward one of the poles, and there is no state that has been able to remain outside the blocs. Organizations too take shape in this way, that is, there is no international organization able to admit members from both poles. Such a system has not yet been experienced. The historically experienced international system in world history is the "loose bipolar system."

In the loose bipolar system, the emergence of the possibility of one of the blocs becoming militarily stronger relative to the other will significantly affect the stability of the system and bring crises with it. This situation formed one of the concepts that constitute the backbone of the Cold War: the concept of second-strike capability. The concept is the nuclear poles of the loose bipolar system developing the capacity to respond after an attack has taken place. This attack must be of a scale that could destroy even all the nuclear weapons of the attacked country. The side that has second-strike power will be the winner of a nuclear war. Since we have started, we will need to continue on this subject.