Egalitarian Blues
The Real Purpose of the Cold War
If you believe the mythos of the Cold War, you believe it was a long-running war in which the ”free world” fought the communists in an attempt to preserve “freedom” by first containing, then rolling back, the ravenous red tide of communism. Perhaps there is some merit to that story, at least in Korea under Truman and in Central America under Reagan. However, it is a tale that quickly falls apart under closer examination.
If the goal was to fight communism, why would we destroy the political power of the only real bulwarks to communism in Indochina - the aristocracy1 and Catholicism2 - before leaving ignominiously and letting the communists gain control of it? If the goal was to fight communism, why the hostility of Franco’s Spain,3 the only country that defeated communism conclusively and one that was willing to fight it in any theater? If the goal was to fight communism, why empower the socialists in Italy4 and damn Churchill for trying to keep the communists out of Greece?5 If the goal was to defeat communism, why subvert Portugal and aid the socialists of the post-“Carnation Revolution” rather than aid it in its fights against vicious communist rebels in Angola and Mozambique?6 If the goal was to fight communism, why sanction and embargo South Africa7 rather than help it fight the communist rebels in Angola and Namibia?
And, most tellingly, if America wanted to contain communism, why did it work with the Soviet Union and Red Chinese to destroy Rhodesia?8 Why become one of the key reasons for Rhodesia’s defeat in the Bush War? The Rhodesians were more than willing to serve as the West’s wall against communism in Africa, fought for a decade and a half to remain free, and fought vicious rebels who would shoot down civilian airliners and bayonet the survivors when not torturing civilians to death. Further, they had no apartheid system, were a real republic rather than a tin pot dictatorship, and had loyal citizens, black and white alike, who were willing to fight the communists.9 Seemingly, then, they and their vast mineral and agricultural wealth would have been a steady and helpful ally in the war to contain and roll back communism.
The answer is that the Cold War was not a fight for “freedom,” nor was it a fight against communism.