The Cold War: Analyzing the Left

The inimitable New Sisyphus asks an important question: what lessons can be learned from the Cold War about both the Left and the Right?

During the Cold War years, the Left pointed to U.S. support of brutal dictators and neo-colonial ties to places like the Phillipines and Korea. Fighting Soviet expansionism was more about expanding corporate coffers and less about spreading democracy.

At the same time, the Right explained that war -- even a Cold War -- makes strange bedfellows.

Think about World War II: we allied ourselves with the Soviet Union to rid the world of the immediate threat National Socialist Germany represented. We supplied it guns, planes and tanks. Our diplomats shook hands and shared vodka with Communist Party functionaries and gave speeches in honor of Stalin. Does any of this mean that the U.S. was and is complicit in the Gulag or Russia's tyranny in Eastern Europe? No, of course not. What it means is that war makes strange bedfellows. As Churchill--a real statesman--explained at the height of WWII, if Germany invaded Hell, we should immediately sign a pact with the Devil to defeat it.

Further, to assume that a few high-powered corporate board members dictate U.S. foreign policy is naive: the conflicts of the world are far too complex for this to occur and the U.S. has always had a track record of evangelizing the cause of liberty and human rights - even among its ostensible friends.

Aftermath of the Cold War

With the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a unique opportunity to test both positions.

In Central America (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala...), the U.S. withdrew its support for dictatorial, authoritarian regimes. In South America (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay...), the U.S. severed ties with military governments and helped to strengthen the middle class.

In Europe, even though it was not in its financial interest, the U.S. pushed for the reunification of Germany and provided succor to emergent democracies in Eastern Europe. In Asia, Indonesia and Korea werre encouraged to democratize, which both have done.

...And when the newly democratic government of the Philippines asked for the keys to Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base, we shrugged, handed them over and said our good-byes. Hardly the act of "neo-colonialists."

The post-Cold War period provided time for citizens to evaluate the diametrically opposed positions of the Left and Right. New Sisyphus posits that most observers have begun to recognize the inherent failures of the Left to either depict or predict the nature of the real world.

...people are mostly rational and, with the facts being what they are on the ground, most people have begun to give credence to a philosophy that simply has done a better job of explaining the world around us...

The Right isn't so much winning people over as it is simply allowing the Left to repeatedly demonstrate its incorrect positions. Even today, the flawed viewpoints of the Left are highlighted for all to see: the Afghani and Iraqi elections are simply the latest milestones in a litany of failed predictions.

No wonder the Left continues to lose steam: its worldview has been wildly error-prone and, therefore, embarassing. The end of the Cold War exposed the Left's hollow arguments, but they are done yet. For even today, in the Mideast and elsewhere, they are still being exposed. Most U.S. citizens inherently understand that the Left is seldom right.

New Sisyphus: Testing Left and Right - the End of the Cold War