JF:>>Also, the US by the mid-1970s was being perceived as starting to lose the cold war. Soviet-backed national liberation movements were making progress in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. The Vietnam War itself, had left the US exhausted with the American public less than eager to see US military intervention in other countries (what the US ruling class called "Vietnam syndrome").<<
I remember how the military establishment painted a bleak picture because they needed fear and panics in order to keep ratcheting up defense budgets, something they have been very successful at since the last two years of the Carter administration. I think the 1970s, in retrospect of course, saw a peak of forces and movements that were affected and even buffeted, by not wholly explicable, by the Cold War. That would be for example the zenith of Yugoslavia. The influence of 'third world movements'. Etc. The US military establishment probably did have something of a crisis. Not so much over their inability to keep Vietnam and SE Asia under US control but rather the worn out game they were playing in Europe--that they could bluster with nuclear weapons should the Soviet Union and its key Warsaw Pact allies (the ones that had armies cohesive enough to fight, like E. Germany) launch some sort of conventional blitz on W. Germany. The nuclear wild card that the US was so willing to play was not just in Europe but also in E. Asia too, which is why they 'tactical' nukes deployed by the thousands all over the world, even in certified 'nuclear free zones' (hardy harr harr). Hence the shift to 'high tech conventional weapons', even more air power than before, and 'special forces' (which are really nothing more than light infantry with extra-long training courses in skull-fucking each other). And that brings us to Poppy Bush attacking Iraq and largely conducting a fake war to 'prove' that the high-tech weapons worked. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ ELT in Japan http://eltinjapan.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
