In this article, the first in a series, we will take up the unfolding international balance of class forces coming out of World War II that limited U.S. imperialism to a policy aimed at “containment” of the Soviet workers state and the revolutionary actions of workers in Eastern Europe that ended in further overturns of capitalist property relations. That period came to be known as the Cold War, even though Washington and its allies waged many hot wars using devastating firepower during that half century.

A second article will focus on U.S. imperialism’s slowness in recognizing the consequences of the new international balance of class forces resulting from the end of the Cold War and making adjustments to respond to them.

The last article will take up the false and reactionary charge by liberal critics of the Bush administration—a charge also peddled by middle-class radicals and rightists—that U.S. foreign policy has been highjacked by the “neocons,” often described by these forces as a “Jewish cabal.”  
 
Outcome of World War II
The U.S. imperialist rulers came out of World War II on top of their rivals in Berlin and Tokyo. But they failed to achieve two other important objectives. The first was the overthrow of the Soviet workers state. Washington hoped that through the war German imperialism would weaken the USSR to the point that it would fall, if not then soon after. Not only did that course fail but capitalist social relations were overturned across Eastern Europe.

Secondly, while Washington strengthened its position in the Pacific vis-à-vis the weakened British, Dutch, and French colonial powers, the war opened the way for a new upsurge of struggle by the peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They took advantage of the falling out among the imperialist powers—the “civilized hyenas” as Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin aptly called them—to fight for their independence. Victories in China, Korea, Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam inspired revolutionary movements across North Africa and the Americas.

Having sent the world a message with the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. rulers began immediate preparation coming out of World War II for a third world war to finish the job in soviet Russia and to teach the colonial peoples, especially in Asia, a lesson.

They immediately bumped into obstacles, beginning with the U.S. working class. In 1943 miners led a victorious strike against unsafe conditions in the mines and the government’s wage freeze and price controls. As the war ended the biggest strike wave since the 1930s swept the United States. It also opened the battle for Black rights, beginning with demands to end discrimination in the war industries.

Tens of thousands of GIs stationed in Asia that Washington aimed to use to block the Chinese revolution held rallies and circulated petitions demanding to be brought home. The story of this hidden chapter in the U.S. class struggle is told in the article by Mary-Alice Waters “1945: When U.S. Troops Said ‘No!’” in issue 7 of the Marxist magazine New International.

Rumsfeld alluded to this turn of events in a speech on the lessons of the Cold War for today that he gave March 2 at the Truman Library. “Our country was tired after the Second World War,” he said. “And strong strains of isolationism still persisted. Many Americans were not in the mood for a global involvement.”  
 
Cold War: a series of hot wars
U.S. imperialism would be dealt its first military defeat by the people of Korea aided by thousands of Chinese troops. Moreover, mobilizations by working people in China against imperialist threats resulted in the expropriation of the last big capitalists in the cities and brought a workers state into being.

The USSR’s development of nuclear weapons and space technology in the 1950s convinced the imperialists that the risks involved in a direct military assault on the Soviet Union and Eastern European workers states were too high. The strategic goal of overthrowing the soviet workers state shifted to one of containment: applying pressure on the Stalinist bureaucratic caste—which had usurped the October 1917 Russian Revolution—to police working people in the USSR and Eastern Europe, squelch all political initiatives, and isolate them from the struggles of workers and peasants around the world.

To this end Washington maintained massive bases across Europe housing tens of thousands of troops, heavy armored divisions, bombers, and land- and sea-based ballistic missile platforms. Under the umbrella of this military standoff, the imperialists conducted many hot wars against peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America fighting against colonial domination.

These included the U.S.-led wars against Korea and Vietnam and the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic; the French imperialist war against Algeria’s independence; Portuguese imperialism’s efforts, with Washington’s and Pretoria’s aid, to hold onto colonies in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, to name a few. These imperialist wars represented the fiercest assaults last century, using the most firepower besides World War II. To cite one example, Washington dropped more bombs on Indochina than had been dropped in all previous wars combined.

So why did the prevailing attitude in bourgeois public opinion become that this was a “cold” war period? It had to do with the development of nuclear weapons by the USSR and the widespread belief that the nuclear standoff between Washington and Moscow precluded an atomic war. This belief made millions numb to the hot wars the imperialist powers waged.  
 
 
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