Virtual University: the Cold War, whence it came and why

The term "cold war" is a propaganda term introduced by Walter Lippman and first pronounced by Bernard Baruch. The purpose of the term was to cover US imperial operations as "defensive" on the premise that it was under invisible attack by the Soviet Union.

It was a conscious deception because the US regime was well aware that the Soviet Union had been so exhausted by the defense against Hitler's campaign that it would take at least 20 years for it to recover. It was also a deception because it denied that the US regime had passively supported the German invasion and as the Red Army approached Berlin already taken measures to continue its opposition to the USSR (incinerating Dresden), the planning of the atomic bombardment of Japan. After capitulation, US strategic policy aimed at first strike capability with second strike capacity on the basis that it would have to destroy the Soviet Union with atomic weapons.

 

Implementation of US strategy, also tied to the political decision to stabilise the post-war economy by continuing WWii level military spending and the absorption of Europe's commercial benefit from failing empire, Baruch spoke of a "cold war" to legitimate US aggression and its growing post-war military by calling it defense of an attack that could not be seen but was allegedly there.

 

Hence every US invasion was described as a defensive action against invisible Soviet forces. When Soviet forces did appear or were requested by the country invaded then the US regime argued that its "intervention" was thus preventive- when in fact it was always provocative.

 

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The publicly stated policy of the US was that it only fought defensively on its own behalf or for its allies. This was false. The classical smoking gun is the NSC 68 (classified until the late 1970s) and a related paper by George Kennan- not the "x" paper in Foreign Policy but a classified study that led to NSC 68).

 

My point is that among other things the term "cold war" has developed the connotations which continue its deceptive intent. The term is commonly understood as an undeclared state of war waged by two parties: hence the Soviet Union was considered by liberals as a co-belligerent. The US war against the Soviet Union was concealed. This was historically significant since the newly adopted UN Charter forbade aggressive war. Therefore the "cold war" denied the Soviet Union the claim in the UN that it was being attacked. It also permitted the US to present any Soviet aid to countries the US invaded as quasi-war justifying the US intervention. Even Soviet foreign aid could be defined as war.

 

The meanwhile declassified record of US strategy and many of its actual post-war operations verify on the whole that the US waged non-stop war throughout the world not only for corporate profit but to destroy the Soviet Union and these wars were not cold at all. Just the death toll in Korea and Vietnam was at least 6 million. During the same period the Soviet Union waged only one war, against US mercenaries in Afghanistan, a country not only allied with it but also adjacent to the large Muslim population of what were then Soviet Republics.

 

The term has been successful in establishing the false premises intended by those who introduced it. Namely it deflects from the criminal wars waged by the US by implying that they were fought defensively against an equal superpower whose belligerence was too subtle to be noticed by ordinary people.

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