Is the Cold War Over?
 

the the title says it all really. Is the Cold War over? this particular phase of history is defined by the two superpowers battling it out for control of the third world.

Many claim that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of the Cold War, but did it? Indeed, how could it? the SU fell but the USA remained. All the institutional networks behind the lone superpower remained the same and the same aim (i.e. ensuring the USA is the dominant world power) was kept. there was no need to change these aims, only the methods employed (due to a different strategy being required) would alter.

When we look at the current Administration it is full of the old guard which would imply that their vision is one going back 50 years or more.

So when people talk about the end of the Cold War are they fundamentally misinterpreting the significance of 1991 or am I just spouting a load of nonsense?

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

It ended with the event of Rocky IV. All hail Stallone!

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

The Cold War wasn't a war so you shouldn't interpret it as one. It was an extended period of varying degrees of political tension. It's much easier to see things clearly if you approach it from this perspective.


Edit; Rather disappointed T&F's post didn't have more excerpts from Das Kapital :(

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

ive had like 20 lectures on this :(

The answer of course is how you define the cold war; and how you view US / Russian relationships today.

I'd argue that yeah, it is over, because as frosty and combative as us/russian relations are they are nowhere near the peak of tensions in the bipolar US/Soviet world, theres no longer such a huge idealogical clash.

Just because they disagree on various aspects of foreign policy, interpretations of democracy etc, doesnt mean that theres still a cold war going on - otherwise America pretty much has a cold war going on with many countries in the world, india, china, pakistan, venezuela etc.

Relations are, and always will be, frosty, but the cold war ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

i was wondering that myself, us-russian relations havent been in the news for a while.

(North and South? Did you mean east and west? Because russia isnt south afaik :( or are you talking about the seperate clash between the more developed north and the third world south)

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

Yeah what with the USSR being right next to the north pole it's clear that the more southerly USA's victory in the cold war indicates the triumph of the South over the North.



Misleading names are bad :(

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

The War on Terrorism is just a new name for a old concept.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

The Cold War was between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union.

At the end of WWII the Soviet Union was a dictatorship on a par with and perhaps surpassing Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union had set up dictatorships in East Germany, Poland, Chechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Albania, Bulgaria. Yugoslavia had gone to a soviet style dictatorship. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been gobbled up.

Soon after the war, China, Viet Nam and Korea headed down the same path. Soon China, North Viet Nam and North Korea were dictatorships.

Cuba fell in 1960.

No where that international communism went did a democracy spring up. Now it is true that in some of these places one dictator had supplanted another dictator.

From the Western Democracies side, Japan and Western Germany had been converted into democratic governments where none had ever truly flourished before.

Were economics a part of the confrontation? Certainly. The same could be said about the confrontation in the "Not-So-Cold War" which had been concluded. However, it would be unduly cynical to suggest that economics explains everything. Sorry but Marx was a twat.

Economics explains much but not all.

Bitch as many of us do about our elected governments, would any of us truly like to install a Stalin or a Mao Tse Tung to set the rules? It was touch and go for 40 years.

The spread of Soviet imperialism was stopped.

Things are better in the world for this having been done.

Is the world great? No. However, again, I would submit that the world would be a much worse place had the decision gone the other way.

If nothing else, look at the record on environmentalism in places like the USSR and China. Things would have been much worse under a system which badly mismanaged its resources and cared nothing about the environment.

The Cold War is over.

There is, unfortunately, never a shortage on wars. There is a new war which began shortly before the end of the old one. It hasn't been labled yet. However, it is the war of your time. The Cold War was my generations war. The growth and spread of a militiant brand of Islam or the use of Islam by a group of neo-fascists is the new threat.

States such as Syria, Iran, Packistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. are not freedom loving states.

Good luck to you young people. It is you who will bear the brunt of fighting this new war or you who will bear the consequences for not fighting this new war. My generation is fading and will soon enough be gone.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

That explains why it was a good thing to oppose the USSR, not why the cold war happened.

Large series of bolded question marks.
Nah dude, as usual the war is against people who hate freedom. And truth be told, they're pretty much everywhere.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

This simply isnt true though; it was Americas war (much like Iraq is americas war despite the british presence). Many West European states felt relatively friendly to the Soviet Union at various points; re Willy Brand's Ostpolitik. Ostpolitik and the period of detente it existed within was crushed by the americas who aimed to re-establish their own sphere of influence.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

The use of North and South would imply there's been a Cold War going on in Britain for hundreds of years.

As I like to put it;
"The North thinks it's better than the South, the South knows it's better than the North"

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

When someone mentioned cold war we werent talking about the ****ing ice age you old goon

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

"Fell" from what? Cuba wasn't a democracy to start with. In fact, trying to put everything in those terms gives you a very misleading interpretation of events, especially in Central America. There were cases where democracy was attacked for being anti-US.
I doubt many people think that economics does explain it all, and Marxism certainly doesn't. Quite a bit of the Marxist "canon" is actually polemics against that sort of crude economism (read some of Lenin or Gramsci's stuff for instance).

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

I remember reading, but I can't find where, that had Hitler won WWII, his plans for the environment, and the search for alternate power sources and heading away from using internal combustion engines would have meant the environment would have been in a better state than at present.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

Only Ice Age I'm interested in is how long it lasts in my gin and tonic, you buffoon.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

We wouldn't have all this fuss about Israel either.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

Indeed.

Okay I have a cunning plan, I'll build the time machine, and you steal some nukes.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

He was a bit of a nutjob though. ;)

Also, it's a lot easier to turn your nose up at internal combustion when you don't have much access to oil. If Germany had won the war, that would almost certainly have changed.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

He was one of those nutjobs with a bad tendency to actually get things done though.

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

he may have made the trains run on time, but THINK ABOUT WHERE THEY WERE GOING

Re: Is the Cold War Over?
 

I dislike politicians who make the trains run on time. One less excuse for me to use for being late to work.