the truth about the Cold War

The outburst of rampant Russophobia in recent years, and now the equally virulent outbreak of Sinophobia, suggest something extremely interesting about the Cold War. Here’s my theory.

The Cold War had nothing to do with ideology. Americans did not hate the Russians for being godless commies. The proof of that is that today the Russians are hated for being Christian capitalists. The Chinese were also not hated for being godless commies. Today the Chinese are godless capitalists but they’re more hated than ever.

The Russians were hated and feared for daring to be a geopolitical rival. They were hated for not accepting the US as global hegemon. That’s mostly all there was to it.

The Chinese were hated and feared during the Cold War because they seemed to be a potential geopolitical rival. Today they’re hated and feared for daring to be an economic rival.

In the case of the Chinese there’s also unquestionably an element of good old-fashioned racism. It’s not socially acceptable to be openly racist any more but you can get away with it if you can make it look like it’s not really racism.

If the Soviet Union had embraced capitalism back in the 1950s it would have made no difference. They would still have been a geopolitical rival and would still have been hated.

Of course to be fair all great powers hate and fear rivals if those rivals seem to be growing in strength. There was hysteria in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century when Germany dared to construct a strong navy. And the British hated and feared Tsarist Russia throughout the 19th century because they saw Russia as a rival imperialist power.

Of course there’s a complication. Democracies don’t like to be seen to be engaging in cynical power struggles with rival powers. They have to turn everything into a moral crusade. So the Cold War was made into a moral crusade.

That’s my theory anyway.