The Cold War and its Hot Spots

Abstract

History does not repeat itself, but certain echoes from the past may reverberate in later centuries. In 1945, for instance, the position of the United States was curiously similar to that of Britain in 1815 (see Chapter 6). In those two widely separated years each country had emerged from a long and arduous war not merely victorious, but richer and more powerful than ever before. Nowhere was this more obvious than at sea. In April 1945 the US Pacific Fleet assembled for the attack on Okinawa 18 battleships, 12 cruisers, 16 fleet carriers, 18 escort carriers and some 150 destroyers. When they were later reinforced by the British Pacific Fleet, the latter could only contribute one battleship, three fleet carriers (only six were in commission in the entire Royal Navy), six cruisers and 15 destroyers.² And, if the US Navy, with 1200 major warships, dwarfed that of Britain, it made the other navies of the rest of the world seem microscopic.³

The nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary (Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679).

With the defeat of the Reich and pending the emergence of the Asiatic, the Mrican, and perhaps the South American nationalisms, there will remain in the world only two great powers capable of confronting each other — the United States and Soviet Russia. The laws of history and geography will compel these two powers to a trial of strength, either military or in the fields of economics and ideology (Adolf Hitler, April 1945).¹