I am responding to Asquith Rose’s letter in the Kaieteur News of March 29, 2011 in which he foolishly intimated that the Cold War was only an ideological battle and that there was no direct military conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. There was no physical military battle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Through the principle of Mutually Agreed Destruction (MAD), good diplomacy prevailed and two countries on the brink of a very real and very dangerous nuclear war with global implications of changing life as it was known, were able to bury their egos and come to an understanding. Asquith Rose certainly needs to re-examine the definition of conflict, since the Cold War was far more than just a military conflict, and much more than a ‘U.S. vs. Soviet Union’ concept. The nature of the Cold War, i.e., the threat of nuclear warfare, etc., could have escalated into an international crisis that would have toppled the existing status quo, and reshaped international relations forever.
The Cold War reshaped international affairs. The New World Order was established. Dr. Prem Misir was quite correct in asserting in his letter in the Kaieteur News of March 28, 2011, that America’s imperialist nature motivated U.S. foreign policy prior to Obama’s ascension to office. The names he quoted, Noam Chomsky, Professor Jerry Kloby, and Professor Chalmers Johnson, are all American academics that are quite outspoken about America’s imperialistic nature. In his book, “Inequality Power and Development, The Task of Political Sociology”, Jerry Kloby writes: “One of the most salient components of the old world order was the ability of the United States to impose its will on many of the nations of the Third World in spite of opposition from the Soviet Union, and from anyone else for that matter. In fact, much of the Cold War hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union can be better understood as a ploy to rally support for U.S. Third World policies.” Kloby further affirms that the underlining, most crucial factor of imposing American imperialist policies on the world’s political and financial institutions, is the use of their military force to impose their will.
Editor, I am aware, as we all are, that any fool can pass high school with difficulty, hence, I must posit to the Guyanese people, that Asquith Rose’s concept of the Cold War is not only naive, but also foolish. This fellow, who claims to be at the level of PhD (based on his letters, I am yet to be convinced), is completely wrong. Notwithstanding this fact, his quote of President Kennedy’s address, as taken from Misir’s letter is lacking in that he selectively chose only a short part of that quote, and conveniently omits the greater portion of Kennedy’s address. The full quote, as taken from Misir’s letter, should read: “We refused to help Cuba meet its desperate need for economic progress…. [W]e used the influence of our government to advance the interests and increase the profits of the private American companies which dominated the island’s economy….[A]dministration spokesmen publicly hailed Batista…as a staunch ally and a good friend at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people….[T]hus it was our own policies, not those of Castro, that first began to turn our former neighbour against us.”
Clearly, Dr. Misir, in his academic capacity, understands, as any true academic would understand after following the Libyan “humanitarian intervention” led by America, upon the request and invitation of the Libyan people, and only after the authorization of the United Nations and support of the Arab League, that President Barak Obama’s vision of humanizing American foreign policy was officiated in his approach to the Libyan crisis. Asquith Rose clearly lacks the capacity to understand and deduce logically, the ‘new order’ that Barak Obama represents for American foreign policy.