Time Papers By Nation 2: More on the Cold War and Hot War

>>From Osher Doctorow mdoctorow@xxxxxxxxxxx

Papers on two time axes or three times axes seem to be an appropriate
topic to ask what really happened in the Cold War and where we are now
in both the Cold and Hot Wars, especially since these papers in the
last 2 years show such a curious pattern between "East" and "West".

I suspect that the USSR realized around 1991-1992 that its dream of
catching up with the West industrially was unlikely for the rather
simple reason that the West was not as stupid as the Russians had
thought. Reagan's intransigence was the "last straw", but not in the
way that the Republicans thought and still think as to "destroying the
Evil Empire". It was the "last straw" in the way that J. Edgar Hoover
had warned about outlawing the Communist Party being a mistake that
would send it underground.

So the USSR arguably went underground in a new way. Most people don't
realize what great chessmasters the Russians have been for a long time.
They'd always been upset about having so little clout in the U.N., so
they combined "decentralization" with capturing a big part of the U.N.
They "gave up" most of the satellites as Poland, Hungary, Rumania,
Bulgaria, etc., have been called. They even gave up parts of the USSR
but not most of it, and now there's Kazakhstan, Kirgyzstan, Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, Georgia. A large number of these nations now vote with
Russia and China quite a bit of the time in the U.N., and they're often
economically close to Russia and China in trade, and their politics
overtly go up and down just like "independent" nations as far as
appearances are concerned. A billionaire named Soros from Hungary has
devoted his life to destroying Bush, making the War On Terror and the
USA's foreign troop use extremely unstable.

Shortly thereafter, in around 1993 or 1995, the prelude to 9-11
occurred with an attempt to bomb the Twin Towers, and we gradually
started hearing about Al Qaida. The story was that Al Qaida arose
from the resistance to the USSR in Afghanistan in those days, but what
was the USSR doing in Afghanistan in the first place other than
creating an excuse for itself to be "defeated" overtly? Stalin had
kept a firm policy of not doing "adventures" beyond the borders except
by proxy, and suddenly Stalin disappears and the USSR reverses its
policy 180 degrees and invades Afghanistan. Not too likely.

If you look at the list of two-time and three-time arXiv papers
2000-2005, there's Stalin's Georgia and two Russian contributions and
Kyrgyzstan and China, low key to be sure but far from dead mentally,
and Slavic Slovenia in the Balkans, and Poland which is currently in an
up-down-up-down mode.

In the Cold War, it was understood that East and West didn't invade
each other's declared "protected" nations, though they could
hypothetically win by "domestic rebellions". We didn't invade Hungary
or Poland or Czechoslovakia or Rumania, they didn't invade West Germany
or France or Belgium or Spain or Greece or similar regions, and South
and Central America and Mexico were only open to internal rebellions -
invasion by the East was off limits.

Today, we see a similar picture. We don't invade Iran or Saudi Arabia
despite their playing the main hand in the daily dynamics of the Middle
East together with Pakistan, and we don't invade Pakistan. Instead, we
invade Afghanistan which makes Africa look advanced industrially, and
we invade Iraq which to my recollection doesn't border Russia or the
former USSR and is arguably unprotected by Russia and China (or they
would have clamped down on the invasion). We don't invade Russia's
friend Syria, which was always the USSR's pet even more than Iran and
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan, by the way, was China's pet,
though arguably it may have also been the USA's pet - one of those
nations that is claimed by both sides which prevent each other from
invading, and where bin Laden probably figured he'd only be captured as
the very last resort since entering or exiting was out of the question.

Invading Iraq without simultaneously invading Iran and Saudi Arabia and
at least neutralizing far western Pakistan and Syria made no sense
since the Terrorists could escape across the border with or without
their alleged WMDs and come back to fight again as they've done from
Pakistan to Afghanistan.

What do we conclude from the last paragraph? My guess is that when we
found that the USSR had "gone underground," instead of debunking it the
Republicans took credit for it (it would have been hard to disprove
anyway, something like "God doesn't exist") and the idea of turning it
into a propaganda coup for Capitalism arose. Newspapers blared the
headlines: Communism dead, even though Chinese Communists were
untouched. "Reagan destroys the Evil Empire."

It looked for a while to Leftists in the West that the USSR was really
dead, since as newspapers were quick to point out, the Russian leaders
were falling over themselves to become Capitalists and millionaires and
billionaires. Of course, they said that about China too, which didn't
seem to hurt the Communist Party one iota.

Then along came bin Laden and 9-11 and guess who came to power in the
USSR? Old KGB man Putin, just in time to tell us where to get off and
vote against the USA and U.K. and Australia and Italy almost every time
in the U.N. with the help of China, France, Germany, Belgium, most
Islamic nations, most African nations, a sizeable number of Latin
American nations, some former Russian satellites and parts of the USSR,
etc.

Physics? Mathematics? Astrophysics? There never was time during the
old Cold War for adventures in those fields or in Engineering. It was
the straight old arms race that produced Stealth and Beyond Stealth and
Star Wars and Beyond Star Wars.

Osher Doctorow

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