Posted on 08/28/2008 7:40:25 AM PDT by maquiladora
The conflict in Georgia has awoken fears of a new Cold War between Russia and its allies and the West, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But will the animosity come back to haunt Western imaginations as it once did?
"We share the same biology, regardless of ideology. Believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too"
That couplet might be a mere piece of lyrical doggerel to any listener born after 9 November 1989, but when Sting released the single Russians in 1985, it came out of a deep mine of anxiety in the West about the course of the Cold War.
For nearly five decades, the Cold War provided a rich seam running right through popular culture in the West, throwing out films, music, novels and even computer games that carried the fears, conscious and subconscious, of millions.
In the 1950s, science fiction movies were often allegories about different aspects of Cold War politics. Invasion of the Body-Snatchers was interpreted as a reference to McCarthy-era paranoia, Invaders from Mars as a parable of communist infiltration, and the Day the Earth Stood Still as a simple fantasy that some higher supernatural power would come to try and sort everything out.
After the world reached the brink of war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, there was another wave of Cold War-inspired fiction, with Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove perhaps the most notable example.
With the detente of the 1970s the Cold War thread became less noticeable, but with worsening relations in the early 1980s, both sides of the Atlantic were suddenly replete with fictional Cold War dystopian scenarios....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
A Cold War is better than “no war” because there is no such thing as “no war”, only a false sense of security that makes us get sloppy and primed for attack. Meanwhile a Cold War helps keep us on our toes and primed for action.
I welcome Cold War II.
I spent many weeks on hard alert paired to a B-52. Before that missile guidance system analyst in ND. I have my cold war medal.
Now that we have seen the Russian war machine in action in Chechnya and Georgia, the pathetic disintegration of the Russian Navy, etc. we see how feeble it is and how impossible it would be for Russia to mount a credible conventional threat to the US.
So the main fear we have is that Russian lunatics will use their nuclear arsenal.
In the old days the Russian soldier was considered formidable, not laughable. That's certainly changed.
...here’s just a few things I remember about the cold war:
1. air raid drills in elementary school.
2. people putting bomb shelters in their back yard.
3. stock piles of rations and medical supplies in the basement of our church.
4. bomb shelter signs at the football stadium tunnel.
5. the movie “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”
Unfortunately, some of us cannot get over the fact that the Cold War is over. Indeed, some of us can’t live without it. With his childish, shoe-pounding antics and intemperate public statements, that is, in addition to his irresponsible, counter-productive actions, Pooty has shown that he needs some serious post-Cold War let-down therapy.
The man is being pandered to when he should be laughed at.
Show me the opposition in Russia.
Perhaps if there were checks and balances in Russia you would have a point, but there are none.
Make no mistake - Putin is a very dangerous man.
I was born 2 years before the Soviet Union collapsed, but that doesn’t really matter because it’s in the process of being reborn. Putin is insane.
I’m not sure how much the Russians do actually love their children, in the broad sense, because they’re not having many. The abortion rate is much worse than it is here in the US. The demographics are dismal. Not much future there.
Because of his nuclear arsenal, and because of his nuclear arsenal alone.
He can barely project credible conventional force 50 miles from his own borders.
And as far as his nuclear arsenal is concerned, the Russians only claim that 60 of their 16,000 warheads are both operable and able to evade US missile shield systems.
And our missile shields continue to improve dramatically.
What makes Putin dangerous is his apparent need to reassert Russia's imaginary "greatness" before US technology completely outmodes his one trump card.
Interesting. Do you have a source for this? In addition to obsolete warheads, I suspect most of those ICBMs arent in very good shape either since those things are difficult an expensive to service and maintain.
basically everything written in the press about Russia's Topol-M platform includes their claim that Topol-M can evade any missile system.
I believe there are about 60 operating units - the amount may vary from article to article.
I dunno. I'm prepared for it, but I don't “welcome” it. I miss the old days of the titanic struggle in a bipolar world, with clearly delineated lines, familiarity with a worthy opponent, the endearing enemy. I miss characters like Nikita Kruschev and Chairman Mao. I understood them. In their time they posed daunting challenges, but they weren't completely mad. Putin is mad. He's the little kid brandishing his father's gun. I don't miss the recurring nightmares of a flash on the distant horizon followed by a rolling ground blast as it sweeps my house and family from the face of the earth. That I don't welcome...not at all.
I remember my father telling me where the missile silos where, and if I saw one going up to start praying because Omaha, Nebraska was the most targeted place on earth.
I remember listing to the Civil Defense tests every month on Saturday morning, waiting to watch cartoons, and wondering if one day it would be for real.
I remember learning all the different siren calls (tornado, earthquake, invasion, nuclear attack) in grade school.
And I remember the smile on my grandfather's face as he opened up the bag that had a little piece of the Berlin Wall. I remember the Wall going down, and the old woman walking through the Brandenburg gate in the arms of West and East German soldiers. I remember my cousin flying over night to Berlin with a pick ax to “help tear out that d@$m wall”.
It wasn't all bad times, but this is different. Russia is acting as Russia again, and we as a nation have to decide where we will draw the line. For they still view Alaska, and other parts of North America, as holy Russian territory.
And we have at least 50% of the population who think they are the good guys in this.
Bah! Everyone knows that Cthulhu is our OverLord... and Nyarlathotep is his Viceroy!
Well, there are certainly plenty of chinese and muslim waiting to take up the slack on their borders...
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