BF2S Forums Was the Cold War really "cold"?

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

I beg of you not to go about life thinking you must be right because you are in the majority however. Question your ideas on their own merit, not by their coinciding with general consensus.

lol

Kmarion wrote:

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

I beg of you not to go about life thinking you must be right because you are in the majority however. Question your ideas on their own merit, not by their coinciding with general consensus.

lol

Why lol? What he said was common sense.


baaahhh tbh.

My "general consensus" has been Scholarly Journals written by those with Doctorates in the relevant fields. It only becomes a general consensus after it's agreed upon as the accepted term. Hence my laughing out loud, as it were.

I also chuckled at the irony of his post. Thinking he is right and everyone else is clearly wrong, that it doesn't matter if he is in the minority of those drowning in the ocean of knowledge rather than sailing upon it majestically. (c whut i did thar?)

Kmarion wrote:

Present your own case. Cite the examples used by the "general consensus" if need be. You hit a wall and your response amounted to, "oh yea.. well he said so". C'mon Mr. Scholarly, you can do better than that. I've seen it .

Aaaw. Do I have to?

Unravelling the different strands of change since the end of the old bipolar order continues to present a far more complex and protracted task than many imagined. Not surprisingly, a number of assumptions about putative new world orders have already been challenged. After the cold war, not unreasonably, expectations about the prospects for greater peace and security were high. So, perhaps less reasonably, were expectations about the universal acceptance of prevailing Western political and economic values. Victory in the cold war and globalization, now unfettered, lent substance to such hopes and seemed to point the way to an international reality where—as different scholars predicted—history, geography, and ideology would become things of the past, subsumed in a new, highly interpenetrated and interconnected international order. This admittedly utopian vision had parallels in idealist thinking after the First and Second World Wars: the end of a major war, even a ‘cold’ one, not unnaturally gives rise to hopes for the evolution of a just, peaceful, and prosperous international order.

Source:
Fawcett, Louise, and Yezid Sayigh. The Third World Beyond the Cold War - Continuity and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford University Press. 14 November 2008

Then you have: (sorry but it's a big read)

The essays in this volume bring together evidence of how ten Cold War statesmen thought about nuclear weapons, especially at moments when they had to contemplate setting in motion chains of events that might present them with a clear choice of using or not using such weapons. The essays deal not only with Truman, Churchill, and Stalin but with Truman's immediate successors: Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy; Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev; Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles; and three leaders of other nations: France's Charles de Gaulle, Germany's Konrad Adenauer, and China's Mao Zedong.

These essays aim to promote debate about John Mueller's thesis. They do not pretend to test his propositions in any remotely scientific way. There are logical grounds for questioning whether historical evidence can ever be used to test propositions about statecraft.11 In any event, Mueller is sensible enough not to pretend that his propositions lend themselves to empirical verification or falsification. He simply puts forward a line of reasoning which has some internal coherence and which gains some plausibility with each additional year of what John Lewis Gaddis has labelled the ‘long peace’—the half-century and more after World War II marked by no armed conflict among major powers.12 The question for a reader of this book is whether evidence regarding ten key statesmen of the first decade or two of that era seems to match Mueller's line of reasoning or to match better the more conventional reasoning captured in the phrase, ‘nuclear revolution’ (and in political scientist Elspeth Rostow's remark that the atomic bomb should have received the Nobel Peace Prize13)—that dread of nuclear war, not of war per se, transformed the calculus that had governed inter-state or international relations ever since states and nations came into being.

This journal tests the theory that Nuclear weaponry was essential to have a Cold War, by analyzing the key political thinkers at the time and their motivations to go to war or avoid it.

As the reader will discern, these Cold War statesmen appeared to think that nuclear weapons were revolutionary in character. They invoked the awful power of these weapons as a reason either for caution on their own part or for expecting caution on the part of others. But Mueller can rejoin that this was rationalization, explaining choices that would have been the same, absent nuclear weapons, and that could have been equally well rationalized by reference to Passchendaele or the Blitz or Stalingrad or Dresden or the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

A reader's conclusion as to whether nuclear weapons really mattered or were ‘essentially irrelevant’ will probably turn less on the particulars in these essays than on pre-existing presumptions. The editors and authors doubt that anyone who starts this book inclined to agree with Mueller will put it down convinced that Mueller was wrong. We are even more doubtful that any reader initially disposed to question Mueller's arguments will come to our final pages concluding that, after all, Mueller was right. What the book does do is to present evidence challenging readers to examine more closely their own reasoning about the role and effects of nuclear weapons during the first twenty years of the Cold War.

Source:

Gaddis, John, Philip Gordon, Ernest May, and Jonathan Rosenberg. Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb - Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford University Press. 14 November 2008

One segment that has stuck with me for a long time (from the above source):

At one extreme, the words or implied words of any one of these statesmen can be taken as asserting that nuclear weapons were simply new weapons of war. In an ‘as-told-to’ autobiography, General Curtis E. LeMay, the architect of America's Strategic Air Command, asked why it was any worse ‘to kill people with a nuclear bomb than to kill people by busting their heads with rocks’

There is a lot of conjecture whether the US and USSR would even have started open war WITHOUT nuclear weapons. And that it could well have still been cold.

But FM thinks that to be defined as a Cold War, you need Nuclear weapons to be present and not be used.

Anyway, there's heaps of material online talking about what the Cold war is and why it was termed as such. I just decide to use wikipedia more often than sourcing the above because it can take awhile finding the sources you've read and remembered or searching for new ones.

Last edited by TheAussieReaper (2008-11-13 17:27:09)

A reverse pot of oatmeal if anything, where the edges (proxy wars) are hot but the core is cold, or perhaps lukewarm.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Lowing probably believes America is one of these dominoes that have fallen now Obama is in charge (or about to be, anyway).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … theory.png

See, this is the part that I fail to understand, even though I see it so often.  You do not agree with lowings ideas or positions, so you make fun of him instead of his ideas.  Anything he says is automatically rejected in the eyes of many here simply because he said it.  And, considering the political bend of those more likely to use that tactic, it is no wonder some of us nearer the right than the left refer to that as a 'left-wing' tactic.

I have not even abused rammunition the way you guys treat lowing.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

First of all let me say that while your sources are interesting, none directly pertain to the issue of why the Cold War was so frigid.

They say that a Cold war could have come about even without Nuclear weapons as a deterent. That the Cold War came about due to the conflicting ideologies of Capitalism vs Communism. This conflict was predicted even as WWII was ending.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

People thought the world was going to be awesome after the Cold War, as they do with most unparalleled wars, and as usual they were wrong. The bold portion does not pertain to the discussion any more than the rest of it does, barring that it put the word cold in quotations.

The first quote makes it really quite clear.

So, perhaps less reasonably, were expectations about the universal acceptance of prevailing Western political and economic values. Victory in the cold war and globalization, now unfettered, lent substance to such hopes and seemed to point the way to an international reality where—as different scholars predicted—history, geography, and ideology would become things of the past, subsumed in a new, highly interpenetrated and interconnected international order

It was a shift of political view, and even after the Cold war it was assumed that there would be extensive peace among many people because they would all be capitalist and no longer challenged in such a way.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Nuclear weapons changed the political playing field because of their incredible deterrent power, that being the primary cause for no direct conflict between the major powers in the latter half of the 20th century. My point exactly?

No you've misunderstood or chosen to ignore the point being made.

the half-century and more after World War II marked by no armed conflict among major powers

The thought was well before WWI, The Dresden bombing, etc there would be a point reached that the superpowers would fight proxy wars rather than fight in a conventional means.

But Mueller can rejoin that this was rationalization, explaining choices that would have been the same, absent nuclear weapons, and that could have been equally well rationalized by reference to Passchendaele or the Blitz or Stalingrad or Dresden or the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

As for the source being too confusing for you, I tried to pick one that went against the notion the Cold war wasn't about Nuclear weapons. That's why you'll see John Mueller's thesis brought up so often.

It wasn't cold at all, any slip and we could all have been vapourised.
At least those of us alive at the time

And really, what a total waste of time and resources.

Superior Mind wrote:

Perhaps it was "cold" between the Soviets and the US directly, but otherwise I think not. How shall we classify the Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghan War (1979), misc US interventions in Central and South America, US support of Chinese nationalists fighting Mao Ze Dong? Where not those conflicts all products of the "Cold War".

Yes. Basically the US and Russia wouldn't face off directly so they swung their dicks against each other in all manner of other places, with scant regard for the locals. It was only 'cold' for the two main protagonists.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

First of all let me say that while your sources are interesting, none directly pertain to the issue of why the Cold War was so frigid.

They say that a Cold war could have come about even without Nuclear weapons as a deterent. That the Cold War came about due to the conflicting ideologies of Capitalism vs Communism. This conflict was predicted even as WWII was ending.

Nuclear weapons as a deterrent to what? A deterrent to direct conflict, making the nuclear weapon the reason why the war was only fought in proxy?

In any case your sources say they aren't convincing...so why am I supposed to be convinced?

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

People thought the world was going to be awesome after the Cold War, as they do with most unparalleled wars, and as usual they were wrong. The bold portion does not pertain to the discussion any more than the rest of it does, barring that it put the word cold in quotations.

The first quote makes it really quite clear.

So, perhaps less reasonably, were expectations about the universal acceptance of prevailing Western political and economic values. Victory in the cold war and globalization, now unfettered, lent substance to such hopes and seemed to point the way to an international reality where—as different scholars predicted—history, geography, and ideology would become things of the past, subsumed in a new, highly interpenetrated and interconnected international order

It was a shift of political view, and even after the Cold war it was assumed that there would be extensive peace among many people because they would all be capitalist and no longer challenged in such a way.

Again, this has nothing to do with why the Cold War is called what it is. It said the word "cold war" and you assumed it had to do with why the war was so named...when in context it only means that even a war fought without fighting can bring a sense of optimism to the victor. Zero evidence for either side of this discussion.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Nuclear weapons changed the political playing field because of their incredible deterrent power, that being the primary cause for no direct conflict between the major powers in the latter half of the 20th century. My point exactly?

No you've misunderstood or chosen to ignore the point being made.

the half-century and more after World War II marked by no armed conflict among major powers

The thought was well before WWI, The Dresden bombing, etc there would be a point reached that the superpowers would fight proxy wars rather than fight in a conventional means.

But Mueller can rejoin that this was rationalization, explaining choices that would have been the same, absent nuclear weapons, and that could have been equally well rationalized by reference to Passchendaele or the Blitz or Stalingrad or Dresden or the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

As for the source being too confusing for you, I tried to pick one that went against the notion the Cold war wasn't about Nuclear weapons. That's why you'll see John Mueller's thesis brought up so often.

And I completely disagree, as do many of your published historians you hold in such high regard.

lolz at the source being confusing. You picked sources that at best brushed up against my views while not bolstering yours at all.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Okay, I don't know how many times I need to say it. A cold war is not the same as The cold war, and all cold wars should not be pigeonholed into one definition. Each one must be looked at to determine just what "lack of direct conflict" means in the context of the war.

I've been trying to explain the reason it's was called the Cold war, along with everyone else, is that direct conflict didn't occur. Proxy wars is why is was referred to as the Cold war.

No. There could have even been minor direct conflict, but in the unlikely event that that minor conflict remained minor, it would still be called the Cold War because everyone would have been quite happy with the relatively good outcome in the looming shadow of nuclear annihilation. It is a cold war because it was fought in proxy. It is the Cold War because no nukes were fired.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

ghettoperson wrote:

Take it up with my university professors if you don't believe me.  Are you trying to claim that every war since that hasn't come to nuclear war is a Cold War?

Very much so in the nuclear sense...would be stupid to think of it like that considering they didn't exist until recently.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Okay commonly accepted my ass. The term "cold war" is used because the conflict never escalated to any appreciable loss of life on either side, which was particularly important because the feared loss of life was massive with both country's hands wavering over the big red button. The threat of a conventional invasion (and your "direct conflict") was minimal compared to the exchange of nuclear weapons that could have resulted from a number of situations, most of which had nothing to do with the military.

Appreciable loss of life on either side? There were plenty killed in Vietnam, so much so the US pulled out. How can you define that as a non-appreciable loss of life?

Chicken feed compared to the number that could have been killed in a nuclear war. Wonderful word, relatively.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Since none of us have been able to change your single minded view, try some dictionary definitions:

So named because vast resources were poured into a bitter ‘bi-polar’ ideological struggle between the West, led by the USA, and the East, led by the USSR, which never quite led to open or ‘hot’ hostilities between the principals.

Source: Answers.com/Coldwar

cold war
n.
1. state of political tension and military rivalry between nations that stops short of full-scale war, especially that which existed between the United States and Soviet Union following World War II.
2. A state of rivalry and tension between two factions, groups, or individuals that stops short of open, violent confrontation.

Source: thefreedictionary.com

cold war
 
–noun
1.     intense economic, political, military, and ideological rivalry between nations, short of military conflict; sustained hostile political policies and an atmosphere of strain between opposed countries.
2.     a continuing state of resentful antagonism between two parties short of open hostility or violence.
3.     (initial capital letters) rivalry after World War II between the Soviet Union and its satellites and the democratic countries of the Western world, under the leadership of the United States.

Source: dictionary.reference.com

It's the accepted norm the Cold war is termed so because the US and USSR did not engage directly in combat.

It's the accepted scholarly basis that the Cold war is termed so because the US and USSR did not engage directly in combat.

If the only reason you think it's a Cold war because no Nuclear weapons were fired in anger, it's too broad a term and can classify all warns bar one.

You are trying to prove me wrong on a meaningless semantic level. You have said scholarly articles back you up, you haven't proven it. You are stupidly trying to apply my context of the Cold War to all wars, something no reasonable person would do if they were trying to learn from the past and not define it.

The Cold War is important because it never went nuclear hot. The effects of conventional direct conflict between the two powers on anything but an apocalyptic level would have been hardly a mark on the political and social future of the world, while the lack of nuclear attacks paved the way on a very fundamental level for the world we live in today. That is why that specific war was cold, not because it happens to coincide with a technicality.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

Haven't seen you post a single source, other than your professors... I wonder why.

Where did I post my professors?

FM is correct.  you are wrong.  deal with it.

TheAussieReaper wrote:

usmarine wrote:

FM is correct.  you are wrong.  deal with it.

*crickets chirping*

*\_/*

usmarine wrote:

TheAussieReaper wrote:

usmarine wrote:

FM is correct.  you are wrong.  deal with it.

*crickets chirping*

*\_/*

"What if you took all that time to type that and this is the reply you get..."