For the nostalgic, it was grim work to patrol the battlements and keep watch against the Soviet empire. The Cold War becomes shorthand for a yearned-for clarity, though clarity of a spartan kind. As the Cold War recedes into the distant past, it becomes almost attractive compared to today’s unsettled “threat picture,” with revolutions and invisible enemies, an imploding Middle East, and repeated fiscal crises. Politicians and professional militaries appear to see our current season of globalized insecurity as singularly complex and dangerous. Yet, this warm tale of a simple and stable Cold War is inaccurate and dangerous. Today’s rivals in China, North Korea and Russia “ are not rational, not logical, they’re nuts.” James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, misses the time of rational bipolar stability when both understood mutually assured destruction, both “knew” what the other “had,” and the Soviet Union could restrain its client states. For Secretary of State John Kerry, compared to the bipolar world, “today’s world” of accelerating change and connectedness “ is more complicated than anything we have experienced.” More complicated, and therefore more dangerous. Gates recalled the Cold War as a “less complex time,” being “almost nostalgic” for its return. When he was secretary of defense, Robert M. The American people knew what the rules were.” Others share Clinton’s nostalgia. “We had an intellectually coherent thing. “ Gosh, I miss the Cold War,” President Bill Clinton remarked in 1993, with a chuckle.
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