4 ms·

The Suicide of the East?

21 points by pg 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
I remember the Pristina standoff between the Russians and Nato forces and thinking oh oh... that was a very close call. We'll never know how much we owe Mike Jackson.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Wars are not just lost; they have to be won. Traditional accounts of the Cold War understandably focus on the United States and the Soviet Union. But that contest was a kind of global election, and the swing states were in Europe and East Asia. Ok. I'm done. No, not at all. If you think the cold war was a kind of global election, you need to go back and study up some more. Somebody has convinced you that you know what you are talking about, and that person has, unfortunately, defrauded you. I guess the rewriting and oversimplification of history will continue as long as there are writers. But it sure is a pain in the ass.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The cold war had many elements that you could attribute to an election, lots of places had to choose which party to align with, and the dividing lines were drawn in the 'not-sure' portions of the globe. Western-Europe was in one camp pretty much by default, and lot of us feared what would happen if world war III would break out. The peace movement had a slogan which doesn't translate very well but which effectively was 'better red than dead'. States that didn't align themselves openly with either the Soviets or the western block were bullied or bribed in to doing so, one way or the other usually proximity determined the outcome there. I don't think it was a global election either, but there were definitely elements of an elective process in there, and to this day there are plenty of people in former eastern bloc countries that would gladly return to the former state of affairs simply because life was more certain for them then. In a true elective process these people would vote for a re-alignment with Moscow in a heartbeat (even today). They're a minority, but they do exist. So, even if the analogy is flawed it does have its valid points.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    The cold war was a very complex thing. To understand it completely you really need to go back to mid-19th century ideology. I can't summarize it in a few hundred words. If I could then my point would be invalid! Suffice it to say that the voluntary parts of the non-aligned countries were based just as much on the use of soft and hard powers, ideologies, and internal political disputes as some overall narrative. I don't mind simplification and the use of analogies. And I agree that in the long run the natural democracy of the populace will win out, no matter what the system. But to say that somehow these countries were acting in the same sense as a person acts when they go to vote is really taking the broad brush a little too much, I think. Ideally you use analogy to illustrate a point or to carry an idea further. When you just throw it out there, mid-essay, it shows that you're taking a lot of shortcuts in your thinking. Shortcuts that may not be justified upon closer inspection.
- pchristensen 17y ago
  It seems like you have something really useful to say, some additional perspective that I'd love to hear. Unfortunately all you wrote were non-specific and inflammatory criticism.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    Sorry so terse. It's just when I think of Soviet tanks rolling through Checkoslavakia, or the Peacekeeper missile debates and protests of the 80s, or the almost continual bush wars in Africa, or the domino theory, or the struggles in Latin America, or the demonstrations and marches against communism, or Lysenkoism -- the issues go on and on. Over the past week I have read about a dozen articles about the Berlin wall falling. Each of them made a completely different argument for why it fell! And each were credible and well-sourced! So when the author just threw out the analogy of other countries as voters -- as if the world operated like some giant election -- I simply had enough and bailed out. It's a great topic for an article, but if I let the author get away with an oversimplification half-way through I have little confidence that it's going to end up anywhere worth going. Kind of like building a house on the sand. But I was wrong to be so terse here. Sorry about that. If I had something to say, I should have taken the time to explain myself.
tokenadult 17y ago
"Yet divided after Mao's death among competing visions of national development, the Chinese made a pivotal choice in 1978. They rejected the Soviet model, opting instead for market-oriented economic reform, but without political reform. (At about the same time, Hungary's Communist leader, János Kádár, with his similar market-opening program of 'goulash communism,' showed how such a model could work in Eastern Europe, too.) "The Chinese were probably influenced less by the example of the United States itself than by U.S.-backed examples closer to home, such as Japan, South Korea, and--although they would not admit it--Taiwan." Yes. The startling fact near the end of the 1970s is that the economic gap between China and Taiwan had become so large (because Taiwan was prospering while China was stagnating) that Taiwan's overall economic strength was becoming almost as great as that of all of China, even though China has SIXTY times the population. That much economic strength attracts the attention of a dissatisfied population in a poorer nearby country. ("Democracy Wall" writers in this transition period referred to the example of Taiwan as a basis for criticizing the Communist Party regime in China.) And that much economic strength provides more military options even to a country that is heavily outnumbered. (Meanwhile, China's army was humiliated during its brief incursion into Vietnam in 1979.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War So China had no choice but to loosen economic regulation and tacitly reject orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist doctrine to catch up to Taiwan. And, yes, Korea's south prospering while the north stagnated was also a cautionary example to the rulers of China.
- pg 17y ago
  I bet Hong Kong was also an influence.
  - tc 17y ago
    Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural resources raised its standard of living above that of the UK, its colonial parent. There's an old story that once, in a meeting, Milton Friedman was chastising Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary, for not collecting the economic statistics that Milton and other economists wanted. Cowperthwaite replied that the omission was intentional; he knew that if he collected the data, the bureaucrats back in the UK would see the numbers and expect him to do something about them.
martythemaniak 17y ago
Wonderful article, I have a bit to contribute: "The words "Soviet" and "union" are worth a moment's reflection. They were extremely meaningful, and they were originally devised to replace two other words: "Russian" and "empire." If the republics were no longer bound together by their supposed Marxist-Leninist ideological fraternity, what would happen to a "Soviet Union"?" This is not clear to non-slavic speakers, but Soviet is the anglicized form of "suvetski", from the base "Suvet" meaning "committee". These Suveti/committees were the secret gatherings of communists/bolsheviks dating back to the late 1800s/early 1900s.
nmeyer 17y ago
Paul -- as a fun aside, one of the books in that article (The Year That Changed the World) is my father's latest book. Let me know if you want to borrow my copy ;-)

21 points by pg 17y ago

I remember the Pristina standoff between the Russians and Nato forces and thinking oh oh... that was a very close call. We'll never know how much we owe Mike Jackson.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

Wars are not just lost; they have to be won. Traditional accounts of the Cold War understandably focus on the United States and the Soviet Union. But that contest was a kind of global election, and the swing states were in Europe and East Asia. Ok. I'm done. No, not at all. If you think the cold war was a kind of global election, you need to go back and study up some more. Somebody has convinced you that you know what you are talking about, and that person has, unfortunately, defrauded you. I guess the rewriting and oversimplification of history will continue as long as there are writers. But it sure is a pain in the ass.

jacquesm 17y ago
The cold war had many elements that you could attribute to an election, lots of places had to choose which party to align with, and the dividing lines were drawn in the 'not-sure' portions of the globe. Western-Europe was in one camp pretty much by default, and lot of us feared what would happen if world war III would break out. The peace movement had a slogan which doesn't translate very well but which effectively was 'better red than dead'. States that didn't align themselves openly with either the Soviets or the western block were bullied or bribed in to doing so, one way or the other usually proximity determined the outcome there. I don't think it was a global election either, but there were definitely elements of an elective process in there, and to this day there are plenty of people in former eastern bloc countries that would gladly return to the former state of affairs simply because life was more certain for them then. In a true elective process these people would vote for a re-alignment with Moscow in a heartbeat (even today). They're a minority, but they do exist. So, even if the analogy is flawed it does have its valid points.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  The cold war was a very complex thing. To understand it completely you really need to go back to mid-19th century ideology. I can't summarize it in a few hundred words. If I could then my point would be invalid! Suffice it to say that the voluntary parts of the non-aligned countries were based just as much on the use of soft and hard powers, ideologies, and internal political disputes as some overall narrative. I don't mind simplification and the use of analogies. And I agree that in the long run the natural democracy of the populace will win out, no matter what the system. But to say that somehow these countries were acting in the same sense as a person acts when they go to vote is really taking the broad brush a little too much, I think. Ideally you use analogy to illustrate a point or to carry an idea further. When you just throw it out there, mid-essay, it shows that you're taking a lot of shortcuts in your thinking. Shortcuts that may not be justified upon closer inspection.
pchristensen 17y ago
It seems like you have something really useful to say, some additional perspective that I'd love to hear. Unfortunately all you wrote were non-specific and inflammatory criticism.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  Sorry so terse. It's just when I think of Soviet tanks rolling through Checkoslavakia, or the Peacekeeper missile debates and protests of the 80s, or the almost continual bush wars in Africa, or the domino theory, or the struggles in Latin America, or the demonstrations and marches against communism, or Lysenkoism -- the issues go on and on. Over the past week I have read about a dozen articles about the Berlin wall falling. Each of them made a completely different argument for why it fell! And each were credible and well-sourced! So when the author just threw out the analogy of other countries as voters -- as if the world operated like some giant election -- I simply had enough and bailed out. It's a great topic for an article, but if I let the author get away with an oversimplification half-way through I have little confidence that it's going to end up anywhere worth going. Kind of like building a house on the sand. But I was wrong to be so terse here. Sorry about that. If I had something to say, I should have taken the time to explain myself.

tokenadult 17y ago

"Yet divided after Mao's death among competing visions of national development, the Chinese made a pivotal choice in 1978. They rejected the Soviet model, opting instead for market-oriented economic reform, but without political reform. (At about the same time, Hungary's Communist leader, János Kádár, with his similar market-opening program of 'goulash communism,' showed how such a model could work in Eastern Europe, too.) "The Chinese were probably influenced less by the example of the United States itself than by U.S.-backed examples closer to home, such as Japan, South Korea, and--although they would not admit it--Taiwan." Yes. The startling fact near the end of the 1970s is that the economic gap between China and Taiwan had become so large (because Taiwan was prospering while China was stagnating) that Taiwan's overall economic strength was becoming almost as great as that of all of China, even though China has SIXTY times the population. That much economic strength attracts the attention of a dissatisfied population in a poorer nearby country. ("Democracy Wall" writers in this transition period referred to the example of Taiwan as a basis for criticizing the Communist Party regime in China.) And that much economic strength provides more military options even to a country that is heavily outnumbered. (Meanwhile, China's army was humiliated during its brief incursion into Vietnam in 1979.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War So China had no choice but to loosen economic regulation and tacitly reject orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist doctrine to catch up to Taiwan. And, yes, Korea's south prospering while the north stagnated was also a cautionary example to the rulers of China.

pg 17y ago
I bet Hong Kong was also an influence.
- tc 17y ago
  Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural resources raised its standard of living above that of the UK, its colonial parent. There's an old story that once, in a meeting, Milton Friedman was chastising Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary, for not collecting the economic statistics that Milton and other economists wanted. Cowperthwaite replied that the omission was intentional; he knew that if he collected the data, the bureaucrats back in the UK would see the numbers and expect him to do something about them.

martythemaniak 17y ago

Wonderful article, I have a bit to contribute: "The words "Soviet" and "union" are worth a moment's reflection. They were extremely meaningful, and they were originally devised to replace two other words: "Russian" and "empire." If the republics were no longer bound together by their supposed Marxist-Leninist ideological fraternity, what would happen to a "Soviet Union"?" This is not clear to non-slavic speakers, but Soviet is the anglicized form of "suvetski", from the base "Suvet" meaning "committee". These Suveti/committees were the secret gatherings of communists/bolsheviks dating back to the late 1800s/early 1900s.

nmeyer 17y ago

Paul -- as a fun aside, one of the books in that article (The Year That Changed the World) is my father's latest book. Let me know if you want to borrow my copy ;-)