Cold War redux

In his April 25 article, “What Kim 3rd craves above all else”, Gwynne Dyer attempted to look at the Korean problem from both sides and understand why the North Koreans have been forced to develop a nuclear arsenal to protect themselves from the United States. His underlying argument was that the problem is, in reality, a microcosm of the Cold War situation which has existed since World War II. I’m old enough to recall the problems the UK faced in the years following the war.

Having spent five years reading frontpage headlines about the heroic exploits of ordinary Russians in the face of a common and unscrupulous enemy, who were, after all holding down vast German land forces, people gave vent to warm and friendly feelings toward them.

People were very much aware of the appalling suffering the Russians endured, with 20 million dead, mostly civilians. They were forced to torch their own homes and crops, and kill their livestock under the “scorched earth policy” that was necessary to deny supplies to the advancing enemy.

After the war, most Europeans understood that the Russians’ devastated country faced a gigantic hurdle just to get back to normal living conditions, mainly food and shelter. It really wasn’t such a big issue that they were Communist. Young Europeans had some interest in the writings of Karl Marx. The underlying tenet of Marxism, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” seemed an ideal basis for them to deal with the dilemma, albeit as a “stepping stone” to some improved system at a later date.

American-style capitalism, based on an “every man for himself”, “dog eat dog approach” was not possible, let alone desirable.

The Americans saw it differently: Communists were atheists, whose objective was to take over the world and force the same philosophy on them. Fat chance of that!

This from a country where all the civil- ian population knew about the war was what they read in the newspapers and saw in newsreels at the movies. In fact, the US economy benefited enormously from it in financial terms. Providing and selling arms to favoured participants was a massive boon to their economy.

This was all building up to the now infamous “Un-American Activities Committee”, where you could be regarded with suspicion just for joining a trade union!

This steady demonisation continued over the years, including the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War. It was not met with much enthusiasm by the other participants, which finally led to the current imbroglio. Unfortunately, recent world events seem to have shown that nothing much has changed over the years! TONY ASH Cha-Am