After the second world war, when Europe collapsed in the most dramatic fashion since the fall of Rome: When Russian and American tanks roamed freely along Austrian, German, French and English roads, something unique happened. More so than Hitler’s horrific rise, it dawned on Russian and American leaders one thought even more monsterous: The world was theirs to take.
For Americans it may have been a desire to spread the plum candy liberal democracy of being able to spin a wheel and get money, for Russians it may have been a hard working sombre but highly educated man wiping his brow after a day working in “the peoples” field but in both of these imaginations they totally disregarded the core concept of free will and self determination.
After decimating the Japanese empire with nuclear weapons, there really were no alternative ideologies left to give pause to the onslaught of liberal capitalism and communism, except for each other, and so; with German scientists at their command, America and the Soviet Union began to mutually threaten the world with Armageddon.
Once they reached the stage of MAD (mutual assured destruction) other weapons were soon employed the most potent of all being….the simple lie.
When a child discovers the art of misrepresenting the facts it is a glorious event. The child lies just to see what its all about. It lies because lying is possible. It lies for attention, it lies so it doesn’t look bad, it lies to avoid stress the child lies because its parents lie. Mom and dad lie to them about beings that give them stuff for being good in case of the fat red man, free as in the case of the bunny or in exchange for something, like the tooth fairy. One can see why lies were appealing to thinkers in Moscow and Washington DC.
The lie has always existed in state affairs. Propagation of truth is always mixed judiciously with exaggerations and opinions as the propagator sees it and would like to be seen. Weilded correctly, the truth is a devastating weapon. My former professor, a military IO (information operations) man, once said that the best weapon is the truth. I agree, but unfortunately the truth is an expensive weapon in a society of morally corrupt individuals and even though one drop of truth has the potency of 100 Hiroshimas, a thousand lies are just as effective and easier to make.
France, a badly broken and belittled belligerent in the bellicose of the early 20th century was first to jump onto this fact. Perhaps fostered in the courts of Louis and Napoleon, the DeGaullists, desperate to denounce the dualism in the world spread rumours (perhaps via their cousins in Britain and Moscow) which helped to ratchet up the rhetoric and tensions between the two super powers. Once they obtained their own nuclear deterrents (and began proliferating technology to Syria, Saddam’s Iraq and Libya) they perhaps began to feel slighly more at ease. At ease, because they too can now trigger the deaths of millions.
The lies, cloaked truths, creation and spread of secrets was perhaps the most devastating weapon used in the cold war. Devastating because unlike the weapons of science, the weapons of the “humanities” were used indiscriminately.
20 years after the fall of the iron curtain, we live with a nuclear legacy that continues to endanger the lives of billions of people who don’t give a shit about the choice between capitalists raping us or communists enslaving us. In truth we probably want neither, nor do any of us care for nuclear weapons. Now all 6 billion of us have to deal with a few thousand Islamists grabbing those same weapons and exterminating us in their war against a few hundred imperialists.
American President, Barrack Obama has admirably made great steps on the trudge back to “Global zero”. It will take 30 years just to get rid of half of the current capability. We will have to deal with cold war nukes for a long time to come but the lies that were also created and continue to be created will last even longer.
