Cold War

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  3/19/2023
  

  We Miss Dr. Strangelove now that We've Learned to Stop Worrying and Forget the Bomb

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Kubrick's classic film forced viewers to confront the possibility that the controls of the world's nuclear weapons were held by fools, fanatics, and outright lunatics. Today, it's too easy to ignore it altogether. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  3/21/2023
  

  Despite Ike's Warning, We're Still Nailed to a Cross of Iron

  by William Astore

  At the start of his presidency, Eisenhower warned of the dangers and costs of escalating militarism. By the end of his term, he was convinced the Military-Industrial Complex had entrenched itself. It was only getting started. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  3/15/2023
  

  The Victims of Communism Museum is a Propaganda Machine for Normalizing the Hard Right

  by Billie Anania

  The museum, which counts numerous Nazi sympathizers among its founders, peddles a spurious notion of "double genocide" that lets fascists off the hook by promoting the number of 100 million victims of communism. How do they get that tally? Including every German soldier killed on the eastern front and every victim of COVID-19. 

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  3/12/2023
  

  Whittaker Chambers's Odyssey from Communist Spy to Conservative Hero

  by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell

  Praised by the right and loathed by the left, Whittaker Chambers entered the public eye when he accused State Department worker Alger Hiss of being a Communist. But his story before and after reveals much more about the political history of midcentury America. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  2/24/2023
  

  Biden Should Remove Cuba from List of State Sponsors of Terrorism

  by Guillaume Long

  After Obama removed Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, Trump reinstalled it for petty political reasons. The Biden administration should reverse the decision again. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/24/2023
  

  Is Ukraine Headed for a Cease Fire? And Is That the Best Option?

  by Sergey Radchenko

  After an essential stalemate between 1951 and 1953, a cease-fire in Korea enabled the parties to avoid both defeat and the cost of victory. Is this the best chance for resolving the war in Ukraine? 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  2/27/2023
  

  There's a Long History of Indoctrination in Florida Schools—on the Right

  by Tera W. Hunter

  The author's experiences with a state mandated course contrasting "Americanism" with "Communism" echo in today's attacks on curriculum, and the exclusion of ideas challenging a social order of economic and racial inequality. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/16/2023
  

  Who Poisoned Pablo Neruda?

  by Ariel Dorfman

  "In retrospect I wonder if perhaps I was so tired of tales of torture and disappearances, so full of death and grief, that I could not deal with one more affront. I preferred to shield the sacred figure of Neruda from the violence."

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• SOURCE: NBC
  2/14/2023
  

  Forensic Experts: Chilean Poet and Pinochet Opponent Pablo Neruda Killed by Poison in 1973

  The poet, a Communist and ally of democratically-elected President Salvador Allende, died shortly after the coup that installed General Augusto Pinochet as dictator. There had been longstanding suspicion of the official explanation of his death. 

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• SOURCE: Hollywood Progressive
  2/11/2023
  

  In "Argentina, 1985" Progressive Values Win

  by Walter G. Moss

  The true story depicted in the Oscar-nominated film shows the necessity of persistence and the power of hope. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/25/2023
  

  Canada's Hottest Tourist Attraction Could be the Government's Doomsday Bunker

  Canada's Diefenbunker was decommissioned in 1994, and today is one of the few places where tourists can see the preparations made to preserve government in the event of the unthinkable. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  1/12/2023
  

  Why George Kennan Thought He Failed His Biggest Challenge

  by Patrick Iber

  After urging the United States to firmly oppose the expansion of Soviet influence as a way of bringing the USSR's internal weaknesses to the forefront, Kennan grew disillusioned at the militarized tack later versions of "containment" took. A new book revisits and challenges canonical studies of the diplomatic thinker. 

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• 1/15/2023
  

  Martin Sherwin's "Gambling with Armageddon" Strips away the Myths of Nuclear Deterrence

  by Lawrence Wittner

  As Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis . . . is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”

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• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  1/3/2023
  

  The Ghosts of Kennan and Lessons of the Cold War

  by Frederik Logevall

  George Kennan was instrumental in defining the doctrine of containment, but later objected to the bellicosity undertaken in its name. Key parts of his intellectual journey have remained obscure; a new book tries to examine them and draw lessons for foreign policy today. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  12/17/2022
  

  Energy Secretary: Revoking Oppenheimer Security Clearance Was Wrong

  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated that the revocation of the physicist's clearance after his opposition to the US hydrogen bomb project was the result of a biased process, one historian Kai Bird calls a "kangaroo court." 

• 
• SOURCE: The China Project
  12/7/2022
  

  The 1979 Formosa Incident Sparked Taiwan's Democracy Movement

  by James Carter

  An explainer of the wave of protests that began on December 10, 1979, that disrupted the one-party authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang in Taiwan.

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• SOURCE: ProPublica
  12/3/2022
  

  The Cold War Legacy in America's Groundwater

  The government has failed to regulate or control groundwater pollution from the uranium mines that built America's nuclear arsenal. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/6/2022
  

  Don Luce, Activist Against Vietnam War, Dies at 88

  Luce helped expose the torture and human rights abuses carried out by the government of South Vietnam, and campaigned against the war after being expelled from South Vietnam as an aid worker. 

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• 12/4/2022
  

  What's New About Putin's Nuclear Threats? Just that the US is on the Receiving End

  by David P. Barash

  From the American perspective, the seeming danger of Putin's nuclear saber-rattling is partly due to the novelty of being on the receiving end. 

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• SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
  11/22/2022
  

  From Solidarity to Shock Therapy: The AFL-CIO and the End of the Cold War

  by Jeff Schuhrke

  The AFL-CIO's leadership saw the emergence of the Polish Solidarity movement in 1980 as an opportunity to advance their anticommunist agenda. Did they also undermine the ability of a post-Soviet left to protect workers' interests against global capitalism?