In an odd job here or there a young girl once asked me “What was the Cold War?” I was astonished that here was this fine young savage who knew nothing of the twentieth century and hence must remain ignorant of contemporary times. The era I grew up in largely from the 1960’s-1990’s was largely forgotten, by the next generations of Millennials and Generation Z. They could not understand its impact on their world. We could take this dialectical principal all the why back to the Fall of Rome but that would be beyond the scope of this blog. Let’s just look at our times, the previous century and possibly the future because they are immediately relevant. Young people cannot recall the horrors of the Nuclear Arms Race or the joy of seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Soviet Union. The presence of President Ronald Regan showed strength to the Russians in rebuilding the armed forces, especially the introduction of the MX missile. A weapon that was capable of carrying up to 12 warheads, the explosive device inside a hydrogen bomb. 50 were deployed in roving bands around the countryside. They made a total of six hundred bombs in addition to the thousands of other nuclear devices in the army and the navy including nuclear submarines capable of destroying the world. We can combine this paranoia with the possibility of introducing the neutron bomb, but was never deployed. A weapon targeting infantry and tanks, but could just as easily be used against cities by destroying all the people but leaving the infrastructure intact. It was dubbed by the Communists or the Soviets as a “dirty bomb” because it would kill all the people but leave the real-estate. This they thought reflected Capitalism’s or Imperialism’s ethic of survival of the fittest, kill or be killed. The fact is if the West created a neutron bomb so would the East. People today can make small neutron bombs that explode in a densely populated areas causing catastrophic damage. They can turn a nuclear power plant into a neutron bomb, even by accident they blew themselves up at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. This is a legacy of the Cold War, nuclear power and the threat of international terrorism. Terrorists existed in the twentieth century from Ireland to Islamabad including state sponsored terrorism as in the Republic of Iran, or Libya, but it was the big boys who held their figure on the button we worried about the most. Nuclear war was a constant threat since 1945 and reached its height under Regan, after that of course United States became the world’s super power.
The Cold War returns between lesser powers such as Pakistan and India, also a democracy verses an Islamic State, or Israel and Iran. Everyone armed with nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) in an International Mexican Standoff. A proxy war with Russia has already begun in the Ukraine.[1] And will start with China when they capture Taiwan. We see a classic East West match off. NATO verses China and Russia, the odds are in favor of the East because they have equal the fire power and eight times the population. They have the human resources to win the next war. This would still entail mass genocide; even if they had half the population they have today they would still outnumber us two to one. Now it’s something like eight to one ratio. The numbers add up to a conventional victory over nuclear weapons. The West will simply lose its fighting capacities and capitulate.
We had a double hatred for the Russians and the Iranians, Marxists or Muslims something that persists to this day. The Iranian Hostage Crisis represents the perfect example of another legacy from the twentieth century, the ever widening of the gulf between East and West, especially with the current World War with Islam.
I believe there have been six great global conflagrations in modern times between East and West not including Greece verses Persia or Rome verses Parthia. We are only talking about contemporary times. The Napoleonic war was the first world war of Western aggression. This expresses the West’s ambitions to rule the world in the person of the French Emperor who was exporting democracy to the less enlightened world, very much like Alexander brought Greek culture to the East. The so called “First World War” or the Great War became the second global conflagration. The East responded in kind to the French in the Franco-Prussian War and decades later in World War One. This was followed by World War Two, which in my opinion was actually World War Three. The Reich represented the East in Western clothing; one of Mussolini’s daughter’s once called Hitler “Attila the Hun in a raincoat.” The Axis Powers were definitely Eastern in orientation, with their lean to absolute control verses democracy. There are still Westerners stranded in Hong Kong, an essentially Western City State under Chinese occupation, which began in 1997, just like they occupy Tibet. Hitler was equal to the Emperor of Japan the land of the Rising Sun, the Kings of the East, both of whom who fought offensives wars and had aspirations to global domination.
Then the Communists came. A fourth world war between East and West erupted. This was the era of proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. This was war between China, the Soviet Union and the United States and their allies also called the Cold War where East and West throw libelous speech and epitaphs at each other; Nikta Khruschev slammed his shoe on the podium at the United Nations, vowing “we will bury you!” The East called them names like “Capitalist Pigs” or the West called Communists “Reds.” The fifth war is currently being fought between Christian and Secular Society and Islam or even Islam verses the modern world. It is difficult to tell who’s winning. Look at Afghanistan and the success of the Taliban or the advances of China who have expressly declared that they want to be the Hegemon; or a super power that will replace the United States on the world scene. The sixth war will be against China and possibly a Chinese-Russian-Iranian Axis. Already there is a new Cold War between the East and the West, the stakes are Ukraine, Taiwan and Jerusalem. Napoleon was the last offensive world war the West has undertaken. Colonialism which propelled the West to world dominance preceded this. War’s two through six were all lead by Eastern aggression. The West has been on the defense ever since. Three times within a century the Germans invaded France. The West has so far barely won its defensive wars against the onslaught of the Kaiser, Genghis Khan, the Ottomans and the Arab Caliphate, I know I’m deviating from the present moment but they are a great examples of East verses West match off, but at great loss to population and land. The entire Middle-East and North Africa and Asia Minor were once Christian and were wiped out by Muslim Arabs and the Turks. The next Great War can only result in disaster for both sides. It is difficult to tell who will win given the East’s overwhelming population and the West’s formidable defense. President Richard Nixon thought the East will win the showdown given the superiority of their population. They can afford massive casualties and still recover their population. Mao called the Atom Bomb a “Paper Tiger.”
The Soviets had an equal amount of warheads but the Russians kept upping the ante, by building more and more. The world was afraid of Regan. Here is the most powerful man in the world arming for disaster. Did he really believe a war between East and West was inevitable? This is the atmosphere Generation X grew up in including Heavy Metal music as a form of protest against the indecency of it all. Ozzy sings his most popular tune Crazy Train, “Heirs of a Cold War, that’s what we’ve become/Inheriting troubles, I’m mentally numb/Crazy, I just cannot bear/I’m living with something that just isn’t fair.”[2]
People felt secure knowing that Ragan was in office, one young man once remarked, “I sleep peacefully knowing that Regan is President.” Regan ruled the 1980’s, another said he had been given the “mantle of leadership” after bombing Libya and killing Gaddafi’s daughter. The West takes no prisoners. Many experts attribute his aggression for why we won the Cold War. He was also inspiring, a Great Communicator, I remember him saying, “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!” People also hated Regan mostly those on the Left and called him a war monger. I had one Marxist professor, who ironically enough taught American Government, say he wished Regan dead. Of course he was shot but not killed. The Pope was shot by a Muslim and survived but Anwar Sadat did not. Muslims still hate the Jews, any alliance with them was considered an offense to Allah.
The twentieth century brought Rock ‘N’ Roll, Hip-Hope, Rap music, counter-culture and popular culture, such as Beat Nicks, the Beatles, Hippies, Woodstock, Punk Rock and Elvis Presley; it gave us the first Space Race which covers for the Arms Race something that now continues between the Americans, Russians and Chinese. Instead of Mars it was the Moon we aimed for.
Madonna was the essence of divine female sexuality. The prototype to today’s many Divas. She believed herself a master of sex or gender, a Matriarchy of Amazons above men. She believed in the Kabbalah because it expresses the divine feminine, a female avatar. And she lived the part, she was often depicted as a catholic school girl and acted like the Holy Mother giving birth miraculously without the intervention of sex. She had a daughter of course by means of artificial insemination. Madonna was also beyond sexual intercourse. She was the Holy Mother during the Cold War. In fact she replaced The Assumption of Mary (1950) and Marilyn Monroe in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The war between Israel and Islam also had its origins in the twentieth century, such as the birth of the Israeli State (1948). The twentieth century also brought with it computers, cell phones, the automobile and most of the world we know today, an energy crisis, cocaine addiction, Nancy Regan’s “Just Say No” only underscored the problem, the destruction of the rain forest, war between East and West. The long-standing war in Iraq and the Middle East happened right after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s and persists to this day. President George Bush Senior said that by winning the Gulf War America had kicked the Vietnam Syndrome, fear of sending troops to fight in international conflicts. The shooting war between Islam and West may even go beyond that back to Lebanon and its war between Christians and Muslims and the death of hundreds of Marines. Sexually transmitted disease, such as AIDs and Chlamydia followed the Sexual Revolution and the birth control pill. The Spanish Flu like the Covid plagues killed millions of people, “open the window and in flew Enza,” was a children’s rhymn. This was the original worldwide pandemic, something we are causally aware of in the 21st century. We can mention more things like Vatican II, a reassertion of Western values for the 20th and 21st centuries, peace movements like anti-Vietnam protests or “No Nukes.” The 21st century will continue the war between East and West completing what was begun in the 20th century, with Eastern offensive wars against Western defense. We can only speculate what this will mean for the 22nd century, either war and revolution or a peaceful assent into technological bliss; maybe both at the same time. What happens to the world once the dialectic between East and West comes to an end? This will mean nirvana on Earth, a return to atoms.
[1] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, War in Ukraine (2022); https://dr.terlizzese.com/?s=Ukrain
[2] Ozzy Osborn “Crazy Train” in Blizzard of Oz (JET 1980).