Cold War Retrospective

[ComradeMan]

How do you think people in 500 years time will view the Cold War.

Many people look back to golden ages that produced art, science, discovery- forgetting about the warfare and bloodshed that occurred.

The Renaissance in Italy- produced the finest works of art and led to the Age of Enlightenment and so on. The states were constantly at war and there was all the usual famine and plague and gross injustice. The Dutch were at war against Imperialist Spain for 80 years and this led to their "Golden Age" etc.

The Cold War saw a.o. :-
1. massive strides in technology
2. the space race
3. enormous leaps in science
4. the social movements of the 1960's
5. the dawn of the age of information

What do you think? Will people in 500 years time perhaps not see the Cold War in a very different way once they are divorced from the negative aspects by time and no more living memory?

[Bud Struggle]

I think the world will look back and breathe a sigh of relief that we all didn't blow each other up to smithereens. There was a LOT of real fear and hatred. I remember hiding under my desk when the practice sirens blew for our air raid drill.

I was brought up to HATE the Soviets. Later when I wnet there in the eighties--I spoke to many Soviets that had the exact experience as I had (only on the other side.)

And it all about the American leaders AND the Soviet leaders wanting to hild ont power. The ideologies, on both sides I think, were always lied about and portrayed in fuzzy generalities.

When I was in the SU and in the Iron Curtain countries I never saw any dislike for me as an American--I certainly didn't dislike any Soviets--it was all something concocted by our leaders on both sides.

It is the same thing now--why is it exactly we are fighting the Iraqis?

[Revolution starts with U]

Aren't they already called the "greatest generation?" I think people are going to love the Cold War, maybe even call it the "Pax Americana" if we don't indebt ourselves to death too fast.
History is written by psychopaths :thumbup1:

[timbaly]

I think more people will believe the United States was far more responsible for the start of the Cold War than the USSR. People will also believe that the USSR was an "affirmative action" empire that gave concessions away to its allies as a way of keeping them in the camp. People will also realize that Jimmy Carter began the policy of outspending before Ronald Reagan became president. Most importantly people will realize that the USSR had basically no chance in overtaking the American economic supremacy, they'll also realize that the USSR was never much of a threat to the USA in terms of military might, economic power, or global influence.

[Weezer]

I think people in the next 500 years will laugh at it.

[ComradeMan]

What about the advances though? The space race and the technological spin offs? Even the internet in a sense is a result of the Cold War....

[Havet]

How do you think people in 500 years time will view the Cold War.


In 500 years time people will be missing Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, not the cold war

[Jimmie Higgins]

How people in the future see the cold war depends on what kind of society people live in. If there was a socialist society and certainty if there is a classless/stateless society, IMO, the cold war will be looked at as just a phase of imperialism - another way in which the powerful divided up the world.

They might look at the USSR and 20th century "socialism" the way we might look at early bourgeois revolutions that had varying success, but were always mixed (religious ideas mixed with economic and class ideas) but mostly failed. Do people spend much time thinking about the Bohemian revolution or revolutions in central or north-west Europe long before the French Revolution?


What about the advances though? The space race and the technological spin offs? Even the internet in a sense is a result of the Cold War....

Really in a long-view perspective, the achievements made by state-capitalism in Russia, China and so on will be seen along the lines of other late-to-the-game capitalists who used state-capitalist policies to "catch up" with the earlier capitalist countries like the UK and US.

If society stays pretty much the same... well I'm doubtful there'd even be anyone left with much time to look back and analyze history (or left at all).:(

[danyboy27]

The cold war was an elitist pissing contest between 2 elitist regimes.

the end.