What in the hell is a Cold War?

The Cold War refers to the military and political tensions between Western world powers i.e. the United States and the Eastern world i.e. the Soviet Union. The two super powers had extreme differences in their military and political philosophy. The word "cold" refers to the fact that it the war actually never featured direct military actions since both super powers possessed "nuclear weapons," and those weapons would certainly guarantee mutual destruction. It is interesting to note that although the war was considered "cold" there were many "hot" moments such as the Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It would take economic upheaval and collapse of the Soviet Union before the "cold war" would be officially over.

United States of America and Soviet Union Flags show the two superpowers who controlled the Cold War

World renowned author and journalist George Orwell wrote of the threat of nuclear warfare in his essay entitled "You and the Atomic Bomb," he contemplates in his essay about the destruction and fear of this new form of warfare, he states "For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbors."

Words and Pictures by Grant Snider

This new technology placed in the hands of humans the ability to destroy the world if provoked which is dangerous especially since the world itself was made by no man and certainly will be here after man is extinct. Of course this logic is not palpable to the capitalistic nature of colonialism. The thought that this world belonged to all of humanity is an insult to most Americans and a sure way to be labeled a "Communist" (that title will be thrown around as much as the word terrorist was used during the Bush Administration). U.S. President Harry Truman and his "Truman Doctrine" would emphasize the war as a contest between free people and totalitarian regimes however consider the many peoples in the alleged "free world" that did not feel free. Most blacks in America during this time would not have seen the U.S. as a free world especially as they were subjugated to the laws that limited their freedoms i.e. Jim Crow/Separate but equal. Truman's assertion that the war was between free and those that desired to suppress freedom is ludicrous and supremacist to say the least but in the land of the free I guess its easy to point fingers at others while accepting no responsibility for a horrible track record of mass suppression of American citizens.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949 to protect Western Europe from Soviet aggression. It was countered in 1955 by the Warsaw Pact, formed by the Soviet Union and its European satellites. Shown here is President Truman signing the treaty that created NATO.

The Jim Crow Era