Mapping the Cold War: Cartography and the Framing of Americas International Power by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

5: The End of Cartography

State Control and Radical Change in the Nuclear Geopolitics of the Second Cold War

On February 27, 1984, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger made good on a promise to debate Marxist historian E. P. Thompson in front of the famed Oxford Union Debating Society.1 The resolution? “That there is no moral difference between the foreign policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.” This was one curious Cold War confrontation: the appearance of Weinberger, as a major, high-ranking U.S. official and the prominent face of deterrence and nuclear policy, opposite one of the most significant leaders of the antinuclear movement in Europe, was not only startling but in some ways courageous.2 The U.S. Embassy in London, the State Department, and even members of his own Defense Department staff warned Weinberger that this trip was a fool’s errand, a debate that was unwinnable, and may even damage the Reagan administration’s “ability to hold anti-Communist allies together.”3

As Weinberger would later quip, “I had been on my feet in the Union only five minutes when I decided the Embassy was absolutely right.”4 Students from both the university and Oxford Polytechnic protested outside the Union, shouting “Weinberger warmonger, Britain out of NATO!”5 Colin Powell, a senior military assistant to Weinberger at the time, remarked that “the students in the packed house reminded me of Romans at the Colosseum waiting for a Christian to be thrown to the lions.”6 Five hundred attendees voting on the motion crowded around the two debaters in their three-plus hour exchange, which was also broadcast live over BBC radio and eventually premiered on PBS in June across the United States. The clash of rhetorical styles was stark; Thompson’s impassioned and dramatic approach, representative of the notorious Oxford Union style, stood in contrast to Weinberger’s quiet, calm, even “dispassionate” demeanor, “almost as if … believing his argument was self-evident, [he] has decided not to extend himself.”7 Overall, a tense and confrontational atmosphere hung over the exchange; Thompson’s case posited the two superpowers as “towering terrorist states” and “mutually exacerbating military structures.” He singled out the United States, in particular, for its imperialistic nuclear occupation of Europe with Cruise and Pershing missiles as “symbols of menace, of ‘posture.’ ”8 Thompson joked to loud applause, “When friends come to help us it’s fine for them to stay in the house for three or four days. When they stay for three weeks we get a little bit restive. But after 35 years …”9 Weinberger’s case, in turn, offered the morality of American ideology as the key difference between the foreign outlook of the two superpowers: “It is very simple. It’s all about freedom. Individual, personal, human freedom and whether we and our children will be allowed to exercise it… . Who among the Soviets voted that they should invade Afghanistan? Maybe one, maybe five men in the Kremlin… . Nobody else. And that is, I think, the height of immorality.”10 To much surprise, “Cap” Weinberger was declared the winner by a decisive margin of 271 to 232.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.