A Possibility

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Clarissa

April 13, 2014

There is, of course, a possibility that the US is letting the USSR be reborn and Cold War re-initiated because it isn’t doing well without a concrete, single, well-defined enemy.

The Arab world is very unconvincing in the role of Enemy #1. The USSR was obviously much more helpful as THE mortal foe. Weak national identities (like the American, the Russian, the Israeli, and others) require a clearly defined, obvious enemy in order to continue existing. The Enemy motivates, holds together, and provides a reason or an excuse for pretty much anything.

After Spain’s dictator Franco died, the former dissidents popularized the saying, “Against Franco we lived better.” Is what we are witnessing now a case of the US leadership quietly agreeing that “Against the USSR everything worked out better?”

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15 responses to “A Possibility”

J. Otto Pohl

April 13, 2014

I don’t think so. The old saying “never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity” regarding the US seems to be applicable here.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 13, 2014
  
  I’m trying to convince myself that there has to be reason behind all this madness. It isn’t very pleasant to believe that this much stupidity is possible in our elected leaders.
  
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  1. J. Otto Pohl
    
    April 13, 2014
    
    Most Americans just don’t care about the world outside US borders and the intellectual elite that form the core of Obama’s support believe that evil only emanates from White American Republican Southerners. They are still fighting the Civil War, so they never even got on board with the first Cold War. Well they did, but on the Soviet side since they consider US racism and capitalism far more evil than Stalinism. Between these two types of parochialism, apathy from the masses and dogmatic ideological adherence to anti-Americanism and support for “socialism” by the elite there is a very limited support base for Ukrainians in the US. There are probably more people in Ghana percentage wise who are actively pro-Ukrainian.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 13, 2014
      
      The apathy of the masses could be whipped into an intensely emotional attachment to pretty much any cause (especially the one external to the US) within two minutes or less. It’s the unwillingness of the leadership to engage with the issue that is curious.
      
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Z

April 13, 2014

J. Otto Pohl, you must get your timelines straight. 1/ I do not know that Obama supporters have that view of “evil” — remember, part of Obama’s campaign platform was that he wanted to be like Reagan; there was a time when there were provincial white Democrats did have knee jerk reactions about Southerners and the USSR but it was in the early 60s, not now. 2/ “Still fighting Civil War” — again, uninformed and dated comment. Yes there are certain retro Confederates worried about that but they are fringe. 3/ Cold war ended ages ago and many Obama supporters were not even old enough to read in 1989. And the US left that worried about who was a Stalinist, who was a Trotskyite, and so on, disappeared long before that … this discussion corresponds to mid 20th century, not late 20th century or now. 4/ US elite supporting socialism, that is a true fantasy.

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1. J. Otto Pohl
  
  April 13, 2014
  
  I am only going by what I read on popular academic websites that support Obama like Lawyers, Guns, and Money. They are obsessed with US slavery as the world’s greatest evil. Most US academics on the net like those at LGM call themselves socialists. As far as I can tell these type of people totally dominate US academia.
  
  http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2013/04/academic-bias-in-us.html
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 13, 2014
    
    The people who dominate academia are not adjuncts but administrators. And they all vote Republican.
    
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 13, 2014
    
    I maybe know 3 people in US academia who are not profoundly conservative. Absolutely everybody else is. By conservative I mean: deeply anti-immigrant, very obedient to authority, quite racist, in thrall to patriarchal mentality, church-going, very uncomfortable with anything but the most traditional lifestyles. They are more like that at the Ivies than here in the Midwest, of course. Back at Yale, we couldn’t use any theory or philosophy at all because ultra- religious and conservative philosophy and theory don’t exist in the XXIst century and nothing else was acceptable to professors. I once mentioned Foucault and my thesis advisor started unraveling in a very scary way. Of course, she donates money to the Republicans, just like every single person at that department.
    
    Whenever you meet an academic who seems maybe a little progressive, ask him about immigrants, and see a worshiper of the Bushes emerge.
    
    It’s like that Tenured Radical person who proposes the ultra-conservative ideology but calls it radical.
    
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Fie Upon This Quiet Life

April 13, 2014

I worry that you’re right. I was terrified of Russians growing up, and I’m only 38 years old. The kids who ask me “What a communist” might not remember all that stuff, but I do, and Obama is only a few years older than my husband, who is 41. Surely Obama remembers the scary Russians. You didn’t have to live through Joe McCarthy to understand fearing the Russians/communism.

With the gridlock in Washington, it would make sense to allow a former enemy to become the #1 enemy again, because hatred of an enemy is one thing that democrats and republicans alike can get behind. The funny thing is that this strategy has been used throughout the ages. Henry V used it in 1413, pitting the English against the French, instead of giving people time to question his leadership and rebel against him. Shakespeare wrote about it in 1599, a time when everyone in England was still against the French, but also the Spanish. Really, anyone who was Catholic was on the list with England. (See? Common enemy!) But that common-enemy strategy really does wonders to unite a nation, especially one that has a ton of infighting. Prior to Henry V’s consolidation of hate, the British had been having rebellions all the time against Henry IV, and then again, when Henry V died young, there was a ton of mismanagement of the country, and then THE British civil war broke out. The problem? They lost France and didn’t have a leader who had the will to continue fighting them. So the English started fighting themselves again.

So there’s something to the idea of a common enemy. The only problem is that if we went to war with Russia, it would be World War III, which wouldn’t have to stay in Europe by any means. Fighting a power that has equal (or better?) military forces would be way different from bombing the crap out of Afghanistan. There would be real danger. And Americans don’t have the will to fight.

If this Ukraine thing happened 60 years ago, though? I kind of think we’d already be at war. Then again, I’m just a literature scholar. What do I know?

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 13, 2014
  
  I’m so sorry we didn’t get to meet, dear Fie. I have no doubt we would have had great fun together. You and I think alike about many things.
  
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  1. Fie Upon This Quiet Life
    
    April 13, 2014
    
    I know! Another time! I might bring my family out to STL this summer, so maybe then? I think we’d have plenty to talk about. 🙂
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 13, 2014
      
      Definitely! I’ll definitely have a license by then and hopefully a house, too.
      
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2. J. Otto Pohl
  
  April 13, 2014
  
  I was referring to faculty. But, Dr. Laumann who is a member of CPUSA is tenured .
  
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Jones

April 15, 2014

I’ve been hoping this would actually be the case, because it means that the US would seek the most competent enemy rather than the most convenient one.

The US has been too busy with “identity” fights to get behind the idea that there might be an inevitability of world events that might have to be dealt with …

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 15, 2014
  
  Jones: you are so right. The US politics has moved too far into the realm of fantasy.
  
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