(2) COLD WAR (1945-1991)

 

Cold War? Can I get a Cool War instead?

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union that defined much of the twentieth century, where the logic of avoiding directly fighting each other was reinforced by the mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons.

Cold wars are a recurring theme in history. Even before modern firepower or nuclear weapons, states often sought to avoid outright war with other states, particularly where they were evenly matched. Wars are costly and destructive, especially big or long wars of attrition, and even when you win, you often still lose. There’s a reason Pyrrhic victory is a term.

Of course, the majority of wars in history have been hot wars, in which states have actively fought each other, but even those have often been preceded or punctuated by periods of cold war, albeit where the participants often maneuvered against each other for advantage.

The period from 1933 to 1939 might be regarded as a three-sided cold war before the biggest hot war in history, in which Nazi Germany and other fascist states, the western democracies, and the Soviet Union all maneuvered with or against each other.

The Great Game between the British and Russian empires in the nineteenth to twentieth centuries might be regarded as another cold war. Indeed, in many ways the Cold War replayed much of the same territory, literally and metaphorically.

The Roman-Persian Wars obviously did not persist for six centuries entirely as active fighting or hot war, but were punctuated by cold war. Indeed, the Romans and Persians might well have paid more heed to cold war logic of avoiding directly fighting each other, since their exhaustion from war led to their defeat or conquest by the new antagonist of the Arabs under the banner of Islam.

The Greek-Persian Wars offer a better example of cold war, although there the cold war logic for the Persians arose from their costly defeats at the hands of the Greeks. Indeed, the Persians arguably did much better in their cold war strategy of supporting the Greek city states fighting each other.

Of course, that might be said of cold war strategies in general, with states doing better than they would directly fighting their antagonists. Imperial Germany would have done better if it had waged cold war rather than world war, as would have any successor that showed more restraint or strategy than the Nazi regime.

But of course, there’s no cold war like the Cold War.

 

ART OF WAR

Ironically, cold war strategy is the essence of the art of war of winning without fighting. Which the Americans and their allies did, although not without some lapses on their part – most notably land wars in Asia. Indeed, it might be said the Second World War and Cold War were the peak of the American art of war.

Although I’m not sure what Sun Tzu would have thought of his art of war being applied from the logic of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction.

 

WORLD WAR

Not least in how pervasive it was, both in the forms of its conflict, including hot wars by proxy, and its extent (as well as its stakes, that threatened the world itself). The Cold War extended through more of the world than the Second World War, which had largely left sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America unaffected, although ironically not so much Europe, despite the masses of military force the opposing sides gathered there

 

STILL FIGHTING THE WAR

We’re all Cold Warriors now. Not against the Soviet Union of course but pundits always seem to be declaring the new or next cold war.

Also the same logic of avoiding direct fighting has persisted even after the end of the Cold War, such that it might be regarded as the default standard of modern conflict. Of course it looms largest between nuclear-armed states, but also arises from just how costly it is to deploy modern firepower, or even to engage in low-level conflicts against insurgencies or guerilla combatants.

 

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

I’ve always been a Cold Warrior – as in believing in the morality of its cause and the necessity of its purpose as a war that needed to be fought, although not necessarily in all aspects of the way that it was fought.

So…USA! USA! USA!

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)