Page 196 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

and the era of perestroika, ‘Cold War’ is an apt phrase for the
pre-war decades too.
From the political communications perspective, the Cold War is
an interesting case for two reasons. Firstly, it was a real conflict,
fought over spheres of economic and political influence which at
times, such as the Cuban missile crisis and the Korean Airlines
disaster, could have led to the direct exchange of fire between the
USA and the USSR, with unthinkable consequences for the entire
world. Secondly, the Cold War furnished the US and other Western
governments, for most of this century, with an ‘enemy’. The ‘threat’
posed by this enemy—expressed in military and moral terms—was
frequently invoked in the service of domestic politics, such as the
undermining and eradication of socialist parties, trade unions, and
as late as the 1980s, anti-nuclear protest movements. Symbols of
the ‘communist’ or ‘Red’ threat were used to justify resistance to,
or refusal of, social welfare improvements, workers’ rights, and
other ‘left’ causes throughout the century. 1
There is a sense, of course, in which the 1917 Bolshevik revolution
did present a real threat to the Western capitalist powers. The
revolution occurred at a time when millions were dying in Europe
over an imperialist struggle for territory and resources. With the
help of propaganda techniques and atrocity stories young men from
Britain, France, Russia and the United States were being persuaded
to lay down their lives in the struggle against Germany. As hundreds
of thousands died in battles for a few metres of land here and there,
opposition to the war increased, spearheaded by the Bolsheviks
and their socialist allies in the Third International. When they took
power in Russia the Bolsheviks withdrew from the war and agitated
for an international proletarian revolution to replace the imperialist
conflict. This ‘export’ of revolution was a potent slogan, rightly
perceived as threatening by the custodians of the capitalist order in
Europe and America.
Faced with this threat, and a rising tide of socialist opinion, the
Western powers, having defeated Germany, sanctioned the invasion
of Soviet Russia by a multinational expeditionary force including
troops from Britain, France, the United States, and Japan. These
forces entered the civil war then raging in Russia on the side of the
anti-Bolshevik ‘white’ forces. The intervention failed, and the
Bolsheviks went on to consolidate their power in Russia, which was
eventually renamed the Soviet Union. However, the attack established
a state of mutual hostility between the Soviets and the capitalist
powers which continued virtually unaltered until the Gorbachev era.

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