Common Meaning:
An argument that never goes away. It simply fades into an unspoken animosity between two major groups of people. See: EmacsVsVi
Original Meaning:
(1945-1991)
A war, despite millions of people dying from hot weapons, called "Cold" as fear of MutuallyAssuredDestruction maintained agreement that the SovietUnion and the UnitedStates would never to use nuclear weapons against each other.
The ColdWar was also a winking agreement between the MilitaryIndustrialComplexes of the USA and USSR. They essentially colluded to make money selling weapons in proxy wars, and selling nukes to their own governments, and colluded to defuse each instance of DeferredViolence? before it escallated.
- DeleteWhenCooked I disagree. I just can't believe that the USA and USSR wanted the ColdWar. While they sometimes colluded to defuse volitile situations - it was simply a case of self-preservation (MAD and all that). A few things make no sense, such as "selling nukes to their own governments." How can a government sell something to itself? The whole paragraph seems like a ConspiracyTheory, esp. evidenced by the keyword, Military Industrial Complex, and your "minor edit" which wasn't. I don't think your viewpoint - although valid - is popular among scholars. Furthermore, I'd like to keep this page as a short resource free of too much controversy: there are much better pages on the WikiWikiWeb for information and analysis of the ColdWar than C2.com. For these reasons, I request that you delete the above paragraph and this one, unless you feel a compelling need for it. -- JimmyCerra
- The countries did not want nor premeditated the cold war. But it was convenient to keep it going for a number of reasons, including serving the interests of influential groups within the respective countries.
- Someone had to want a cold war or else there never would have been one.
- Nobody wanted the cold war. It is a convergence of factors (just like the InvisibleHand) and timing and mentality, etc. Once it became a pattern, then there are identifiable entities (e.g. military which is part of, but not whole, government) who perpetuated it. I think the academic institutions are Not.Reluctant players in the game as well. Scientists want to understand and engineers want to build. Coming to think of it, the Think.Tanks need problems to think about, so most intellectuals on both sides were involved in varying degrees -- dl
- Lots of people wanted a cold war. Nixon wanted a cold war. He didn't want a nuclear war (probably), but he wanted the US and not the USSR to extend its power after WW2. Stalin wanted a cold war. He didn't want a nuclear war (probably), but he wanted the USSR and not the US to extend its power after WW2. You can't realistically say no one wanted the cold war. Too many people worked too hard to make it happen.
Many
real battles were indirectly fought between the two nations during this period, usually through the covert support of rival regimes. For example, the
UnitedStates and
SovietUnion had diametrically opposed goals for
GermanyCountry. The
SovietUnion wanted to weaken Germany so it could never fight back, and they succeeded. On the other side of the Berlin Wall, the buffer/kill zone which Western Germany maintained wasn't in Western Germany, it was in Eastern Germany. So from the
SovietUnion's perspective, the West's actions were indistinguishable from a prelude to full-out assault.
- Most famous real battle is the KoreanWar?. To this date (2004) there is only a stalemated truce (over 50 years now!!!)
- There are huge economic and trading wars being waged in this period. I would suggest the tension between China and US is a continuation of the ColdWar, and even though Russia is more like a partner to US, it may realign itself with China if doing so serve its interests best.
Some feel that the
ColdWar was called off because
TheBestIsTheEnemyOfTheGood.
- Please explain "The Best" would have been winning the Cold war. "The Good" is not losing.
I think page is useful as a "warring antipattern" -- dl
CategoryOffTopic
Cold War