Neglected Classic Envisioned End of Cold War

Neglected Classic Envisioned End of Cold War
Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Seventy years ago, the political philosopher and geopolitical strategist James Burnham (1905-1987) wrote "The Coming Defeat of Communism,' the second book in his brilliant Cold War trilogy (the others being "The Struggle for the World" and 'Containment or Liberation?'). When the book appeared in early 1950, the Sino-Soviet bloc had formed, geographically adding China’s long eastern seacoast to Soviet control of the Eurasian Heartland. The Korean War—the first kinetic war of the Cold War—would break out several months later.

Burnham in "The Struggle for the World" (1947) called the U.S.-Soviet conflict the “Third World War,” and he noted that the first “shots” of that war were fired even before the Second World War ended. In "The Coming Defeat of Communism," he explained that during the spring and summer of 1944, communist forces aligned to the Soviet Union in Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece and China “virtually ceased their operations against [the Axis powers] and concentrated their efforts against the rival, non-communist resistance movements.” The term “Cold War,” Burnham wrote, was a misnomer because fighting between communist and non-communist forces extended from the Balkans to Southwest and East Asia, including Malaya, Indochina, and the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the Soviets extended their totalitarian empire to Eastern and Central Europe, while communist parties in Western Europe allied to the Soviet Union sought to achieve power by the ballot box in Italy and France.

 

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