The “Cold War” Was It Such a Bad Thing?

I was watching the world news last night on the television, it was filled with horrific reports of terrorists claiming the lives of innocent civilians and soldiers alike.  All four corners of our world seem hell-bent on murder and terrorism.  I am sure there are people like me around the globe that are mystified and shocked at the escalation of terrorism.

I was born in the 1960s which has given me a chance to have lived through the “Cold War” which came to a close with the removal of the “Berlin wall” in 1989.  I remember the celebrations around the world because the world was now a safer place?  Is the world a safer place? I don’t believe it is. 

I cant remember my exact age but I was possibly seven or eight when my father sat me down one Sunday afternoon and explained his version of the Cold War.  He went onto explain about “Nuclear weapons” and the theory of “Mutual assured destruction” explaining that the “Soviet block” countries had just as many Nuclear weapons as the “Western block” countries and In the event of a Nuclear war all the planet would be rendered useless and lifeless for hundreds of years.

This was not exactly a nice father son chat but it gave me a limited understanding of the world I was living in at the time.  When I was older and attending college we also studied politics and peoples choices in the way they lived their lives.  I studied and wrote a paper on “Tribalism” and “Isolationism”  This paper did not impress my tutor and he claimed my theories were too radical and simplistic, well he may have been right?

I remember watching video tapes of life in Russia during the Cold War, I saw prison like buildings which was reportedly accommodation for the masses.  I saw check-points with armed soldiers checking citizens papers and permits.  My tutor told me that to live in Russia was horrendous and oppressive.  Because of the Cold War, travel into Soviet Block countries was very limited an average working class man would never be able to travel there to experience Soviet life for himself.