I remember the good old days…..mine were the days and years of the Cold War…..can you remember the Cold War?
The Cold War was a five-decade long period of political and military tension, beginning after the end of World War II and ending in the early 1990s. The phrase ‘cold war’ was coined by writer George Orwell in late 1945 to describe a geopolitical situation of “horrible stability”, where two powerful nations or alliance blocs – each capable of destroying the other – might refuse to communicate, consult or negotiate. Orwell’s dire prediction came to pass in the wake of World War II. As Soviet forces liberated the nations of eastern and central Europe from the tyranny of Nazism, they remained in these places, pushing socialist parties into power, installing puppet governments and creating satellite nations that took orders from Moscow. The dangers of Soviet occupation and communist infiltration were quickly recognised by western leaders like Winston Churchill, who warned of the “Iron Curtain” descending on Europe. The US too recognised the threat that communism posed to war-ravaged Europe; its response was the European Recovery Plan, better known as the Marshall Plan, a four-year $13 billion aid package to restore European capitalism – and with it, liberal-democratic political systems. By the late 1940s, mainland Europe was firmly divided into two camps: US-backed democratic nations in the west and socialist Soviet bloc nations in the east. – See more at: http://alphahistory.com/coldwar/#sthash.W9xqZPnd.dpuf
A brief intro into the Cold War in case you are too young to know what the Hell it was…….but why would I term it the “Good Old Days”?
We has ONE enemy…..the USSR. Everything we did in foreign policy was to stop any spread of the “Red Scourge”……we knew where to find the bad guys. Today we are confronted with many bad guys on many fronts and each one takes a specialized response…..and we are more often than not caught off guard with the response we get from the horde of opponents.
The policy makers had ONE target…..it was to stop the Soviets and their rush for world domination…..having one target made it a simple decision on how to react or act…..point-counterpoint type of global game…….today the game is not so simple…..we have new threats coming out of the woodwork daily and disappear as suddenly as they appeared……making the policy makers having to constantly readjust their thinking and strategies……..which in turn left gaps in the thinking that made certain attacks possible. Then the ramping up of intel gathering did very little to stop the spread of anti-American ideologies for the holes in our knowledge left wide openings for exploitation.
During the Cold War we had one mission…..stop the spread of Soviet influence…..today we have so many missions that one interferes with others. Instead of one known opponent we have many today…….and it is so convoluted that at times it seems we are fighting ourselves…….there is even an explanation if you care to see what I mean…..
During the Cold War we were worried about so many things…but we went to bed feeling safe and secure………..with the world as it is today……. can you say that now?
