[lbo-talk] Losing to Win

[Chris Doss]

The notion of the USSR "losing" the Cold War is a little weird anyway. The Cold War ended in the late 80s, prior to the Soviet Union being dismantled (practically the only time in history that an empire has dismantled itself, by the way). During this period, the US was giving the USSR aid and trying to keep it from being dismantled.

It's like two boxers are going at it, then one guy says, "this fight is stupid; let's quit." The other guy says, "OK." Then boxer number 1 has a heart attack from his congenital heart condition and boxer no 2 tries to get help. Too late! Boxer 1 dies. Boxer 2 doesn't get to say he won the match.
 

----- Original Message ----
From: "dredmond at efn.org" <dredmond at efn.org>
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Sent: Mon, April 19, 2010 3:47:10 AM
Subject: [lbo-talk] Losing to Win

On Sun, April 18, 2010 2:22 pm, James Heartfield wrote:


> There is a reason that the USSR lost the Cold War.

Russia didn't lose a damn thing. They were poor village-dwellers before
the Cold War, and poor city-dwellers after the Cold War. If anyone lost,
it was the US -- the military-industrial complex screwed our economy,
corrupted our democracy, and spawned successive petro-fundamentalisms
("we'll use our big guns to take their oil") and market fundamentalisms
("we'll use our big guns to sell them bogus derivatives"), each more
self-destructive than the next.

The only winning move of the Cold War, to paraphrase the great movie
"Wargames", was not to play.

-- DRR

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