COLD WAR NOSTALGIA

             The impact of Cold War Policies and Politics on the current course of America's War on Terrorism
             1.Introduction: Exit Cold War, Enter War on Terror
             The State of the Union address by US President George W. Bush on January 19th, 2002, rang clear of America's unflinching dedication to the War on Terrorism. Beside the obvious rhetoric of unilateralism and the overt threat against the "axis of evil," the issue over the war's limitless scope remained and still remains unresolved. President Bush and his administration «as a very long and difficult struggle», however, have repeatedly articulated this new struggle against global terrorism. Admiral Michael Boyce, Chief of the British Defense Staff, was even more direct then the Bush administration in forecasting the length of the war: "[The War on Terrorism] may last 50 years." Cold war nostalgia immediately resurfaces in
             the American consciousness, invoking the memory of the longest war in American history which consisted of not only proxy wars from 1945, but of economic, political and ideological confrontation until the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. For most Americans, however, wars are fought in weeks or months and are recognized by clear geographic boundaries.
             They don't impinge on domestic matters. And they begin and end at a time of America's choosing. Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo all fit that mold. Even Vietnam, which was long in duration and chaotic at home, began and ended according to Washington. On a broader scale, the cold war and, apparently, the war on terrorism do not reflect this contemporary war conception nor are both these struggles necessarily identical. So, what makes these two conflicts stand out and at what point do they begin to loose their likeness? This paper will specifically focus on assessing the multifaceted issue of cold war and war on terrorism parallels. M...

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COLD WAR NOSTALGIA. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 11:08, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/20870.html