- “In summary, we have here [in the Soviet Union] a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world’s greatest peoples and resources of world’s richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism.”—George Kennan, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in an official cable to the U.S. State Department (“The Long Telegram”), February 22, 1946.
THE COLD WAR REMEMBERED
By Alex Ness
July 8, 2026
The archive of books that are non fiction regarding telling the story of the Cold War, tell generally the same story. It isn't that one side is evil, one side is good. The participants had their own perceptions of what was important. The Warsaw Pact as led by the Soviet Union argued that the countries in its orbit were economically and politically united, and part of a network of states that chose Communist organization of their own economies and politics. The NATO states were Western style democracies with free markets and free speech, led by a new style of treaties. Prior to the First and Second world war, the United States had not agreed to be drawn into wars by treaties. NATO was the moment when a treaty included joint defense across the Atlantic Ocean.
The fiction works shown are also worse than the reality of the purely historical non fiction. The idea of Cold War turned hot has disastrous endings. In almost any event, nuclear weapons are a last resort that are usually turned towards. Many writers of the Cold War period utilized spy thrillers to feature a means to going to war through an act of espionage. The so called information war before the active war, into the final nuclear war.
Viktor Suvorov's Icebreaker is generally a work experts do not altogether agree upon. However, it goes beyond purely history, if there is a particular quality of the work, it comes from a former Soviet Information officer, who defected, and filters out the reason to be of the USSR. Whether his argument is true, it is nonetheless accurate in presenting a world of war and outlook of state.
There are numerous excellent works collecting the events of the Cold War. The fiction works have an advantage, as, there is a world at peace, and when the book is finished one can start reading a new book, and deal only with a might have been.
The 10 Films shown are a form of fear, visualized. Paranoia as entertainment, they each have a discomfort about them at the same time as they have a purpose. While painting a nightmare on a film canvas, the stories told depict the 50 or so years of the stand off that led the previous world war to not be finished, officially, until the reunion of Germany, and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Chapters of the Cold War and human tales within are not easy movies to watch, as is right. The policies and strategies that were born from the anticipated war included conventional invasions through Poland into West Germany and Western Europe thereafter. The Fulda Gap would be filled with many armored divisions on both sides, and when the stalemate was established, the conventional war would enter nuclear exchanges. Perhaps limited, at first, but the tactics of nuclear war require destruction of the other... and until both sides are wiped from the face of the earth, the mutual assured destruction follows its course.
The truth of the Cold War wasn't that nuclear arms kept the world from a new and greater war. It was that the madness of using such weapons promised that it was more likely that an accidental event would destroy the modern world than a distinct and straight forward declaration of war. Numerous near misses occurred and thank the Creator, were avoided.
I have watched all of the movies depicted, and consider them to have value, if not always perfect execution. On the Beach, Fail Safe and The Bedford Incident are reasonable movies about the results of accidents that lead to further war. The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May speak to the domestic setting for an event featuring paranoia, espionage and war on a less physical setting. But between accidental wars, and secret events that might lead to war, war is the result.
MY POETRY: AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
MEDIA: Poplitiko.Blogspot.Com
PROSE THOUGHTS: AlexNessWritesv1.blogspot.com
My Published Works: HERE
Social Media
https://bsky.app/profile/alexanderness63.bsky.social
https://x.com/alexnesspoetry
- “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”—Winston Churchill, address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.
No comments:
Post a Comment