As you correctly implied, the Cold War was "cold" in name only. It had plenty of "hot" episodes, like in Korea, Vietnam, or Budapest. The "Cold" War also claimed millions of lives in places where it was fought "internally", from the Soviet Gulags and to the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
In fact, the "cold" war was much more similar to our current conflicts than WWII. It has been fought to a large extent by proxies. Intelligence operations were of central and utmost importance. We were facing Communism - a State based and sponsored quasi-religious movement, whose members fully believed that their "deity" - some sort of a World Spirit of Materialistic History, if you will - was totally and entirely on their side, and against ours.
Unreformed Communists were in some ways a lot like Wahhabis and Jihadis.
Perhaps, in order to become more successful in the war against Islamist terrorism we need to study more closely the experience of the Cold War.
Could the Cold war have been prevented? Well, I suppose the entire history could have been "prevented", had Eve not been seduced by the Serpent. The point is not to "prevent" the past, but to learn from it.
As an afterthought - I can't wait for John LeCarre to come up with some good new novels about the war on terror. The problem is that this great writer allowed his anti-Americanism to get the better of him... for all I know, he may even turn evenhanded. That would be a disaster. |
