The Long War

The discussion has started in our Unit 1 discussion forum. I expect to see the thread growing through the weekend as those who haven't yet commented join in also.

One of our presenters will be away for part of next week so he will not be in a position to respond for a bit. That shouldn't hold back the rest of us. I've nothing I'd like to add yet except to pick up on something from Gordon's post in which he said:

Whilst I do not subscribe to the notion that the Cold War started in 1917 its
roots can certainly be traced back to this period and as such an understanding
[of it] is important.

Gordon has hit on something that I'd like you all to file somewhere in your minds for later which is the idea that what is called the Cold War from c. 1945-c. 90 should in fact be seen as just half of what was a larger eopchal war beginning in 1917 with the Russian Revolution which was fought in order to determine whether the 19th century's imperial constitutional order would be replaced by nation states governed by communism, fascism or parliamentarianism. According to this theory the Second World War sealed the matter as far as fascism was concerned but left open the question of whether or not parliamenarianism or communism would ultimately prevail (parenthetical bad movie reference--you guess which: 'there can be only one!'). I find it a pretty compelling idea, personally. It was brilliantly argued in Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History and to my mind is essentially a main element of what Francis Fukuyama's The End of History argues: at the end of the 20th century parliamentarianism 'wins'--thuogh he himself does not use the term Long War.

Anyway, we will return to this idea when we get to the end of this course when we look at the End of the Cold War so I'm glad that it's made an appearance right at the very beginning. There's a word for this which is, frustratingly, escaping me at the moment... foreshadowing. Thanks Gordon!

Ps. It would seem that most of you have now aggregated your blogs as I appear now to have fifteen subscribers which sounds about right to me. But you're not done yet. You need to aggregate each others blogs too. If you're only reading mine then you're missing half the discussion. Moreover, you won't have the faintest idea what a 'sturmtruppenkampfgruppe' is. Nick has that all sorted out on his blog. If you go to the homepage of the module you'll see a folder there with the addresses of all our group's blogs with the exception of Peter's which I'll have added to the list as soon as our site administrator gets around to it. (Steve are you listening? I'll send it to you by email anyway.)