Was our world a more rational one at the peak of the cold war?
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Jonas.dini
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You know how conservatives say that an important difference between now and then is that the Russians had a rational worldview so even tho we were always at odds politically, at least everyone was able to come to the table and have a conversation. This, they argue, is in contrast to islamic terrorist outfits today, who are driven by religious ideology and therefore can't be reasoned with. This always seemed to me an ethnocentric perspective on foreign policy, and overall I think the world is in a better place now than it was at the height of the cold war.
That said, obviously the global population is very misinformed and irrational, and so it sometimes seems are states and nonstate actors. Is this a more irrational time than the 1960s and 1970s? And is the propaganda-to-paranoia ration different today than it was? (religion being a type of propaganda, for the purposes of this conversation).
That said, obviously the global population is very misinformed and irrational, and so it sometimes seems are states and nonstate actors. Is this a more irrational time than the 1960s and 1970s? And is the propaganda-to-paranoia ration different today than it was? (religion being a type of propaganda, for the purposes of this conversation).
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Well it is true, you could meet with Soviet Leaders and discuss things without spilling blood.
However I won't say it's much different now. We could meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but never hold a meeting with some others.
Back then we could meet with certain leaders who weren't allies and not with others. You would never see ? sitting down to discuss politics with the US. -
This is a very good question, and if it's any indication of what you have to offer you damn well better stick around this forum.
I think the population in general was more naive in the 60s and 70s - and that includes many of those in the countercultural movement. The spread of information through the internet and cable news has made the current population more skeptical but not necessarily better informed. Misinformation and propaganda are rife still today. Propaganda, from what I understand, was pretty heavy still in the 60s and 70s but journalists also had a more no-nonsense approach to the news.
The key difference between the Soviets and the Islamic fundamentalists, Iran aside, is that the Soviets had state machinery behind them. They were a political entity. With Al-Qaeda, they are less a political force and more a death cult. The Soviets certainly had irrational and murderous aspects to their ideology, but they directed that inwards . . . and to rebel forces in unstable developing countries. -
What about the United States? Is launching a Global War on Terrorism which includes the invasion and occupation of two foreign countries....over one terrorist attack, really rational? Terrorism is sort of a game changer in the sense that they aren't rational but their actions can elicit irrational behavior from us.
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Bah.
This whole "oh the Russians had a rational worldview" is a NeoConservative propaganda ? explanation for why we CAN NEVER EVER EVER IN A MILLLLLLLLLION YEARS tolerate, negotiate, or generally not-go-to-war-with a Nuclear Iran even though we negotiated with the Soviets (Soviet Union was more than Russians) for decades with ICBMs aimed at D.C and NY. The NeoCons #1 goal is a war with Iran right now so they're throwing all kinds of ahistorical ? out there. "IRAN IS JUST LIKE ? GERMANY IN 1938!!!" etc.
The TRUTH is...........during the Cold War, the military hawks were always gassing up the idea that the Soviets were crazy enough to launch a surprise nuclear attack. And in the Soviet Union, their military hawks were always gassing up the idea that the Americans were crazy enough to launch a surprise nuclear attack.
In fact, when we did a big WW3 practice drill in 1983, the Soviets thought it was for real and put all their forces on high alert. This scared the living ? out of Reagan and convinced him that maybe negotiating with the Soviet Union wasn't such a bad idea after all.
"Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did … During my first years in Washington, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike … Well, if that was the case, I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us."
- from Reagan's memoirs
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you know, it wasn't all bad, because this gave us the greatest movie of the 1980s: RED DAWNSwiffness! wrote: »The TRUTH is...........during the Cold War, the military hawks were always gassing up the idea that the Soviets were crazy enough to launch a surprise nuclear attack. And in the Soviet Union, their military hawks were always gassing up the idea that the Americans were crazy enough to launch a surprise nuclear attack. -
lol rational worldview?!
hmmmm.....lets see, a nation which government has strong armed nations economies, which never showed restraint while dropping cluster bombs on civilians(all over the world lol not just Iraq)....A nation which has veto'd every UN resolution that sanctioned/did something to Israel regardless of substance even (which has been the last years) basically every other UN member voted for said resolutions...a nation which basically does what it likes unless it gets strong amred itself.
if you are talking about the world, look at it from a non american view, u will notice that US foreign ploicy (just like basically every other nation on this planet but on smaller/diferernt scales) has never ever been one of ration, one of reason.....purely based on actions, the US is actually that big terrorist network which we cannot reason with. not just al qaeda lol.
The US displays less reason and ration than those legion ? at nipton in new vegas lol -
Lol @ blood not being spilled. What is a proxy war?
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In some ways the propaganda/paranoia ratio has vastly improved since the time of the Cold War, particularly with increased global access to information (due to improvements in technology etc) but what is being done with the information is the sticking point. Whereas in the past information was tightly controlled, whether by the Soviet or other nation states, and then used as justification for all manner of murderous acts, you could argue that resources such as Wikileaks can stop that from happening now. But at the same time, the giant that is China continues to succeed in dominating its population and even manipulating massive companies like Google, which was forced to kowtow to Chinese rules. In an ideal world it would be argued that the world is a more rational place in the 21st century but we only have to look at the multiple wars raging across the world, in the name of religion, wealth, protection, whatever, to see that we have only exchanged one type of hell for another. Islam is merely one of the avenues.
