Friends,

I don't know if I mentioned this before but the Cold War seems to be very similar in dynamic to Greek mythology.

Greek mythology, perhaps all mythology in which humans are involved, seems to me to be about the rivalries of the gods of Olympus with each other. They could not fight each other directly because their elemental powers would risk destroying all of them, the whole world. Therefore they had to channel their conflict through a safer channel, humans.

Wasn't it very much this way with the United States and Soviet Union? They could not fight each other directly because of their nuclear weapons, which could destroy the world. Therefore they had to channel their struggle through a safer channel, the Third World. It was in the Third World where their international propaganda war and violent secret operations were waged. The goal would seem to have been to convince a greater share of the world, than the other power, that they, either the Soviet Union or the United States, was the light and the way. I think all of the espionage, secret operations, economic outreach - if you want to call it that, propaganda, and all the rest of it can be seen in this light.

In other words, the United States had to prove that American liberal democracy and capitalism was superior to Soveit communism, and vice versa. We saw this when Francis Fukayama triumphantly declared the "end of history." It was like the football player who scores the touchdown and spikes the ball, and perhaps dances a little jig, in the in-zone.

The purpose of the imperial conflict between the gods of Olympus was to win the most followers. The ultimate strategy can be understood, I think, as each god trying to have the most humans, by far more than any other god, declare that he or she is the most glorious deity.

The United States, having won that battle for glory, became isolated and in fact finds that its glory, paradoxically, is rather hollow without someone else to challenge it - like Alexander, so the legend goes, who wept when he found no more worlds to conquer.

And the U.S. in its isolation has folded in on itself. Its isolation in foreign affairs in several of its policies, I've previously mentioned, is a morbid manifestation of Alexander's tears. This is why the war on terror or the war on drugs (Is that one still on?) can never stop; or if it does, some other war must replace it.

wingedcentaur