War and Empire: The American Book Report

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Korea became the first identifiable danger. Of course, the Korean conflict was only the first of hot-spot conflicts in the Cold War. "To police the world, to risk nuclear war, to eradicate the creed of communism, all in the name of national defense, the new national security priesthood would wage bloody war in Korea and Vietnam, overthrow the democratically elected governments of Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, and assassinate the elected president of Congo, nearly come to nuclear war over Cuba, foster civil wars throughout Africa, topple the regime in Indonesia and enable reigns of terror by right-wing death squads throughout Central America" (Atwood, p.177). Atwood cites numerous examples, beginning with the treatment of combatants (tattooing them with anti-Communist slogans that would prevent them from reassimilating into their societies after the war) and non-combatants (bombing civilian targets) of ways that the United States violated the human rights principles it said it was protecting in Korea, and then highlights how those violations occurred in later wars, particularly Vietnam, where the United States and Russia used foreign lands, generally occupied by brown-skinned people, as a staging area in their battle for world dominance.

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Throughout this chapter, Atwood links the Cold War to some of the major social changes in U.S. society and to the structure of the United States government. For example, he cites the overlap between protestors opposed to the Vietnam War, civil rights advocates, and women's liberation advocates as a major impetus for change in the 1960s and 1970s (Atwood, p.199). However, he also demonstrates how Cold War policies have left the modern United States vulnerable in many ways. For example, he discusses how Cold War political posturing, particularly the use of Afghanistan as a proxy arena for war, helped establish the modern volatile situation in the Middle East and the make the United States a target for jihadists. He also discusses how America's symbiotic relationship with Saudi Arabia has ensured that America will have access to oil in the event of future wars, but has also placed American in the position of defending the very type of regime it claims to find immoral. This dichotomy is but one example of the cold war / hot war conflicts that Atwood believes describes the Cold War.

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