This reality cannot be denied, despite the understandable sensitivities that such a conclusion provokes among the tenderhearted in the West and some of the former leaders of the defeated side.Ī simple test reinforces the above assertion.
The Cold War did end in the victory of one side and in the defeat of the other. And, given its designation as a form of war, it is appropriate to begin with an assessment deliberately expressed in terminology derived from the usual outcomes of wars, that is, in terms of victory and defeat, capitulation and postwar settlement. Not only geopolitics but philosophy-in the deepest sense of the self-definition of mankind-were very much at issue.Īfter some forty-five years of political combat, including some secondary military skirmishes, the Cold War did indeed come to a final end. Each side understood that either the successful ejection of the one from the western and eastern fringes of Eurasia or the effective containment of the other would ultimately determine the geostrategic outcome of the contest.Īlso fueling the conflict were sharply conflicting, ideologically motivated conceptions of social organization and even of the human being itself. Geopolitically the struggle, in the first instance, was for control over the Eurasian landmass and, eventually, even for global preponderance. By extension the Cold War can be defined as warfare by other (non-lethal) means. Karl von Clausewitz defined war as the continuation of policy by other means.
0 kommentar(er)
