Jan 17
Cold War 1.0 Results
During the 1980s and 90s, “Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights” won against “Authoritarianism” and “Dictatorship” in most, nearly all, parts of the world.
Lets take a very brief look at the effects of this victory in the decades after.
IN THE WESTERN WORLD:
All of the following describes the entire “liberal democratic” capitalist sphere; but some are more applicable to some countries, such as the USA.
- Nails were driven into the coffins of worker’s unions.
- Public services were gutted, as corporations further took over health, education, transportation, prisons, etc. (Drastic worsening of health care coverage; Coke machines and McDonalds in Highschools; failure of every planned rail project; explosion of prison population).
- Public funding of arts and culture largely evaporated overnight, and radio stations began to play the same 5 pop songs on repeat every hour of every day.
- Total economic financialization and capital fictionalisation where the GDP is based on speculation and money-printing.
- Total real estate monopolisation leading to sharp rise of cost of living and housing bubble crisis.
- Inequality sky-rocketed, and the number of owners of half of the world’s wealth went from 200+ in the 1990s to 32 in the 2010s to 6 in 2021.
- Financial crisis; homelessness population explosion; narcotics epidemic; mental illness epidemic; increase of police brutality, increase of mass shootings.
- Zero decrease of military expenditure in the USA, and instead, steady increase.
IN THE NON-WESTERN WORLD:
- 5+ million war deaths between 1998 and 2006 and continuing, in the Congo alone. If we include all of Central and Eastern Africa during the decades after the fall of the USSR, the figure becomes much larger.
- 4+ million war deaths between 2000 and today, and continuing, In West Asia, after 2 decades of USAmerican bombs continuously falling.
- Brutal, years-long US and NATO bombing and military campaigns on many countries such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, etc., with countless atrocities, war crimes, resulting in extreme humanitarian crisis and refugee crisis. Many of these countries were destroyed and became failed states overrun by warlords and right extremist groups, its national treasury often outright plundered by the US and EU, plunging countless millions into abject poverty and starvation.
- Extreme neoliberalisation and corporate take over in great many parts of South America and the attendant brutal suppression of worker’s collectives, indigenous and environmentalist movements, etc.
- All of Eastern Europe experienced sudden and extreme rising rates of economic crisis, debt, job loss, brain drain, human trafficking, and addiction, as many countries were de-industrialised and became client states on which excess commodities could be unloaded.
- Ukraine went from a prosperous and healthy region in the USSR to being the poorest country of all Europe.
IN PLACES NOT AFFECTED BY WESTERN VICTORY
By contrast, the “authoritarian dictatorships” which were not defeated by ceaseless imperialist/capitalist onslaught during the 1980s and 90s and remained sovereign, such as the People’s Republic of China, saw the building of 150,000 kilometers of rail with 40,000 km being high speed, average wages rise by 400% in terms of real purchasing power, drastic improvement of environmental health, explosion of technological and otherwise innovation, the fastest rise of living standards and greatest elimination of poverty in all of human history.
And Cuba developed a lung cancer vaccine.
IN CONCLUSION
The cold war was unidirectional, waged by the colonial capitalist West, against the socialist East which was only ever defensive. There is no clearer indication of this then the fact that after the war ended, after the West was victorious, and after their enemy the CCCP collapsed, Western animosity did not cease or even abate, but accelerated and intensified.
Since February of 2022, this became clear to a few Westerners with a modicum of courage to see and acknowledge reality which directly contradicts liberal imperialist propaganda, such as Jeffrey Sachs, one of the architects of the collapse of the USSR, and more will follow with time.
Today, we should draw conclusions about the world and its ideological camps from reality as opposed to fantasy, even if it contradicts what is commonly accepted in the Western sphere.
And we should ask ourselves, what would another victory of “Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights” mean for the world, for both the people of North America, Europe, etc., and for the people of Africa, of South America, of Asia?
