Mikhail Gorbachev

I always had a bit of a soft spot for Mikhail Gorbachev because it always seemed to me that the whole Soviet Union break up thing was a situation that he began rolling which kind of got away from him and before he realised what was happening, it had snowballed and he had done himself out of a job.
As a Cold War kind in the 80's, i remember the quick turnaround of Soviet Leaders from Brezhnev to Andropov and Chernenko who all seemed scary men in a nation armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles and then along come Gorbachev in 1986 with his Perestroika and Glasnost and meeting with the Western leaders to reduce the Nuclear Arsenals and finally it seemed that the insanity which was Mutually Assured Destruction was a reducing threat.
It was Andropov who realised that the Soviet Defence budget was crippling them and he started the reformations which Gorbachev continued although during later interviews, he admitted that he envisioned a gradual change to a form of Socialism over the course of a decade or two but within a few short years the Soviet Union had broken up and Communism was falling all around Eastern Europe.
It may have earned him the Nobel Peace Prize but as the USSR crumbled, his powers were transferred to Russian President Boris Yeltsin who's political endeavours are best summed up by the story that he once was so drunk while flying to a meeting in Scotland that he couldn't get off the plane.  
Gorbachev never made any secret that events just overtook him and my memory of him will always be in my minds eye, as he cleared his desk that final day in 1991, he looked around him and thought 'How the hell did this happen?'

MAD then But Just Mad Leaders Now

My fellow Generation X'ers must be having quite the feeling of déjà vu as we watch the World become less safe over the past week after the United States pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987 by Washington and Moscow which was a pivotal moment in the Cold War.
With Reagan and Gorbachev having been replaced by Trump and Putin, the USA has suspended adherence before formally withdrawing from the pact which prompted a predictable response from Moscow that they were also quitting the treaty and claiming that they would be developing new intercontinental missiles.
Throw into the mix the nuclear-weapons-of China, North Korea and a nefarious Israel then it seriously ratchets up the chances of a nuclear confrontation.
With the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, (START) which limits nuclear weapons, due to expire in 2021, things are looking pretty grim again after a woefully short period when the dream of a nuclear free World was starting to look plausible.
Generation X may have already been there as we shared our formative years under the shadow of the Cold War but then we had the doctrine of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) but looking at the current leaders holding the red buttons in 2019, MAD seems a very apt description for them.

Remembering The Last Cold War

The UN's Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has said the Cold War is back and if we put aside the threat to all life on the planet, the last Cold War heralded some important inventions so put on some leg warmers and shoulder pads and let's see what the last Cold War gave us.
We can thank the Cold War for the Internet which came around as a way to keep communications open during a nuclear attack and satellites which beam our TV signals around the World.
The Sat Nav in our cars was another Cold War Inventions as was Microwave ovens and the Space Race which ended with a human on the Moon was due to the competition between the USA and USSR.
Apart from the inventions and some fantastic Soviet propaganda posters, there were a few great songs like Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 2 minutes to Midnight by Iron Maiden and London Calling by The Clash although they were far outweighed by the stinkers like Nena's 99 Red Balloons, Final Countdown by Europe and Land of Confusion by Phil Collins so as we are entering another Cold War, then the quality of songs will need to improve.
Then there was the Cold War films and the Soviet 'bad guys' in characters like Ivan Drago in Rocky and the mumbling John Rambo fighting alongside Al Queada version 1 against the Soviets in Rambo and Red Dawn where the Soviet paratroopers are defeated by a bunch of American teenagers led by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen in his pre-drug addled days.
With the man-child Donald Trump in Washington and the macho idiot Vladimir Putin in Moscow we could be seeing pretty mushroom clouds before we get anything decent out of this one but at least we may get to hear 'Two Tribes' again.

Keep Calm And Think MAD

By far the most asked question i have fielded this week is are we on the brink of a nuclear war?
As a Cold War kid it does have a certain feel of the 80s about it only with North Korea taking the role of the Soviets in this latest incarnation and most importantly two very unstable leaders threatening to incinerate each other.
Where we had the relatively stable Ronald Reagan on one side and Mikhail Gorbachev on the other, we now have two leaders who are anything but stable in Donald Trump and Kim Jung-Un and that is where it is different.
Where the USA and USSR had thousands of nuclear tipped weapons pointed at each and if used would wipe us all out several times over, North Korea have a handful with limited range but are backed by China who more than make up for a lack of numbers.
One of the things that stopped us all burning up in a radioactive firestorm in the 80's still holds today, the appropriately named MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction.
This is a doctrine in which use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender so America won't launch a nuclear attack on North Korea or China as it will mean the end of America and to the same end, North Korea or China won't attack America for the same reason, it would be as equally incinerated at its target. 
That was always the reason given to us kids who asked the same question to stop us worrying as it just wouldn't happen, neither the Soviets or the Americans would be that insane to condemn their country to such a fate.
Trump and Kim Jung-Un will continue to bluster, threaten and try to intimidate each other because they are both bullies and pathetic human beings but neither will want to push so hard to test the MAD theory that stops any cold war becoming hot.

MAD Keeping Us Safe

Growing up in the 70s and 80s i was a cold war kid and my over-riding memory was the school drill where in case of a nuclear attack we were to dive under our desks in the hope that a couple of inches of wood above our heads would save us when the mushroom cloud went up.
Up to 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to be, the Soviets and the West had enough nuclear devices aimed at each other to wipe us all off the planet several times over but thanks to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), nobody really expected the cold war to turn hot because as the acronym implied, it assured both countries destruction if it did.  
There was a brief period when Ronald Reagan came along and you thought that bloke could just be crazy enough but he turned out to be even crazier than we thought, making important decisions based upon advice from his astrologer so it was only by the grace of his 7th house not disappearing up Uranus that we escaped unscathed.
Now we seem to be drifting back into another Cold War period with the Russians and Americans bickering over who is blowing up hospitals in Syria and who is invading who and therefore the greater danger.
The United States has 4,500 nuclear warheads and Russia 4,700 so still enough to send us all to a fiery death but the rules of MAD are still there and keeps us safe or at least until we get another Ronald Reagan figure in control.
In the West Vladimir Putin is portrayed as the loose cannon and our leaders point to Ukraine and Syria as evidence while the Russians point the West towards Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria as evidence that the West is at fault.
With America due to elect a new President in 2016 and Russia in 2018, we may be able to avoid another fully fledged Cold War with new leaders but as both countries need a bogey man to frighten their populations into backing the massive military expenditure, to keep us safe, this could just be the start.  
Just hope we get another song as good as Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes' out of it if we do.

A New Arms Race Looming?

As a Cold War kid of the 80s, i look back at that time and think it wasn't so bad, the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction was a comfort which kept the nukes in their silo's and we had great songs like Two Tribes and Two Minutes to Midnight.
Sure we had to watch public information films telling us the way to stay safe in the case of a Nuclear War was to turn the sofa upside down and crawl underneath it but although the chances of the Cold War becoming a hot one was remote, if it did the Earth would be lifeless now except for cockroaches.
Thankfully the threat of nuclear war has diminished and the arms race has died down but we could be on the cusp of another one, this time with artificial-intelligence-based autonomous weapons.
Such luminaries as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have signed a letter warning against the dangers of starting a global arms race of artificial intelligence technology unless the United Nations supports a ban on weapons that humans 'have no meaningful control over'.
The letter was presented at the International Joint Conference On Artificial Intelligence in Argentina and explains that: 'If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow'.
The risks, the signatories say, could be far greater than those posed by nuclear weapons.  
As the history of the human race has been one stupid decision after the other i'm sure the warnings will be dismissed and drones are just the beginning of the latest wheeze to kill us all and this time we won't have the background music of Frankie Goes To Hollywood to soothe us as a robot with face recognition software kicks down the wrong door and blows up an innocent family at the dining table.

1989 Again?

I woke up this morning and on the radio was Mikhail Gorbachev talking about the Berlin Wall and an American General talking about how dangerous the Russians were and how American actions was aimed at protecting the West from the leaders in the Kremlin.
Great i thought, i've woken up in 1989 again and was just joyfully contemplating another chance to witness Guns 'n' Roses before they turned into Bon Jovi and be able to wear jeans with the knees ripped out again when the interviewer announced that it has been 25 years since the Berlin Wall came down.
Putting back into the cupboard the 'Ronald Reagan: The President's Brain Is Missing' T-shirt, it did strike me that even 25 years has gone, the Cold War is still ongoing.
'We wasted the chances that the end of the Cold War presented. It started so well, but some people didn’t like it' Mikhail Gorbachev said, obviously pointing at the Americans.
Noam Chomsky then chimed in asking why NATO continued to exist and then answering his own question by explaining that it's to 'control the international, the global energy system, pipelines. That means to control the world' which is hard to argue against as since the Wall came down America and NATO have been involved in plenty of wars in oil rich Middle Eastern and North African countries.      
It has always seemed that the West, America especially, have been trying to get a handle on Russia since it became obvious that the country wasn't going to play ball and knuckle down to America's will, with the opposition to attacking Syria and then the Ukraine the pre-text to finally try and bring it to heel using cold war rhetoric and Obama absurdly branding the Russians as the second greatest threat to the World.
From where i am sitting it isn't the Russians bent on reshaping the world by all means necessary for it's own interests or the country with military bases all around the World ready to attack anyone who threatens those interests.
At the moment the new walls being erected are only virtual and it isn't a Cold War so much as a tepid one but as the rhetoric grows, against Russia as well as that other great threat to America that is China, we may all be back in the pre-1989 days only without the decent music on the radio and cool fashion this time.

Not Quite The Cold War

With all this talk about Communist nuclear bombs raining down on America, it takes me back to the 80's and the Cold War all over again.
I can still hear my school disco's playing songs like '99 Red Balloons', 'Dancing With Tears In My Eyes' and the ultimate Cold War song 'Two Tribes' which more than made up for the threat of global destruction and the hours of having to sit through 'When the Wind Blows' which was a cartoon about an elderly couple who turned their sofa upside down to survive the nuclear war.
Then there was MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction which meant that a nuclear war was unthinkable because the Soviets and Americans would destroy each other, and the rest of us, so neither side would dare use their weapons and so an uneasy stalemate would ensue. Then Ronald Reagan came along and you thought that bloke from the films with the monkey is just crazy enough...
Then there was the Cold War films and the Soviet 'bad guys' in characters like Ivan Drago in Rocky and the mumbling John Rambo fighting alongside Al Queada version 1 against the Soviets in Rambo and Red Dawn where the Soviet paratroopers are defeated by a bunch of American teenagers led by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen in his pre-tiger blood days.
Then there was the propaganda and the threat of the Red Menace sweeping across the west and making us all Communists and the added spice at things like the Olympics and the gloriously over the top posters.
We are not getting any of this at the moment and it is unlikely that we will but while it we won't be seeing a mushroom cloud over Washington or Pyongyang anytime soon, it does seem like an eerie flashback to my younger days watching the news recently.
I would keep your sofa close by just in case though.

Cold War Wasn't All Bad

Growing up during the Cold War did have its advantages as well as its disadvantages. Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes' was a massive plus but then we had Nena and her '99 Red Balloons' which almost had you praying for a Soviet missile to land on your roof.
Apart from the drawback of death to everyone and everything and having to watch 'When The Wind Blows' in school so we knew when to turn the sofa upside down and crawl into it, the biggest plus was the space race.
The competition between the Soviets in the red corner and the Americans in the red, white and blue one, pushed them both onwards and upwards to explore above the clouds.
The brave actions of Yuri Gagarin, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Laika the dog took us to the moon where we drove around in a buggy, stuck a flag in the ground and then just forgot all about it which is a real shame because we should have done so much more once we got there so we had a launch pad for further space exploration.
Now one half of the Cold War opponents have mothballed their space programme but the Russians have made two exciting announcements this week which may get us back on track.
Firstly the Russian Federal Space Agency are sending two lunar rovers and several landing stations aimed at scoping out an eventual permanent manned base up there on the moon.
Secondly, the Russians are developing a nuclear powered engine for long haul flights to Mars and to establish a network of bases on its surface.
Ideally NASA and the RFSA will get their head nerds together and do it for mankind but if not, i wouldn't mind another Cold War Space Race to make sure the plans don't get kicked into the long grass because going out into space and colonizing other planets is probably the only solution to avoid the problems of pollution, over-crowding, global warming and 99 Red Balloons still being on a radio play list here on planet Earth.

Who Won?

With the 40th anniversary of the historic moon landings, there has been a considerable number of programmes concerning this and other achievements in space that us humans have performed.
Especially interesting is the notion of a 'space race' between the USA and the USSR.
Piecing together information from the many programmes the question begging to be asked is did America actually win the space race?
Sure they were the first country to put a man on the moon but prior to that magnificent achievement, it seems that it was the USSR that made the greatest strides.
First artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, first animal sent into orbit, first human in space, first woman in space, first spacewalk, first craft to reach the surface of the Moon, first to land a craft on Venus and Mars and the first space station.
If it was a race to the moon then obviously America takes the plaudits. If it was a race to push the boundaries of space exploration then the Soviets win hands down.
So, who really won the Space Race?

When Two Tribes Go To War

Tensions between Russia and America are at the lowest point since the fall of the Berlin Wall in the nineties and British Foreign Secretary David Milliband has said that Russia has a "responsibility" not to start a new Cold War although the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said his country is unafraid of a new Cold War and the Russian media seem to be actively encouraging it with one newspaper running the headline 'Tak You!' above an image of a fist with its middle finger raised.
The last Cold War ran from the 1940's to the 1990's and although the downside was the threat of the destruction of the World, the competitive nature of the Cold War quickly fueled the creation of important inventions we use today so it wasn't all bad.
Use a Microwave Oven at all today? You can thank the Cold War for that invention as also the computer that you are reading this on and the Internet that the computer is plugged into. Hang gliders, the television signals beamed from across the Globe to our TV set in the front room, smoke detectors and the Sat Nav in our cars are all Cold War Inventions.
Apart from the inventions and some fantastic Soviet propaganda posters, there were a few great songs like Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and London Calling by The Clash although they were far outweighed by the stinkers like Nena's 99 red balloons, Final Countdown by Europe, Land of Confusion by Phil Collins, and the terrible Through The Barricades by Spandau Ballet.
If we are going to enter another Cold War, could we have a higher quality of song please and keep Phil Collins and Spandau Ballet away from a recording studio.

Cold War: Take 2

Someone dig out the Nena song '99 Red Balloons' because if the experts are to be believed, the Cold War is back on.
America has plans to place missile interceptors in Poland and the Czech republic which has piqued the Russian Vladimir Putin who in response, has successfully test-fired a new intercontinental missile armed with multiple warheads.
The proud owner of 10,000 nuclear weapons, the vast majority of Russia's nuclear arsenal are now to be pointed at European Cities. This is in the hope that these countries will put pressure on the Polish and Czech Republic who are only too happy to whore themselves to America's foreign policy instead of telling them where to stick their missiles as anyone else with a half self respecting Government would do, except England of course who whored themselves decades ago.
So it's 'When the Wind Blows' and 'Two Tribes' all over again unless, in the interest of fairness, the US let Russia place missiles on their doorstep. Cuba would be a good spot.