Late 1990 and early 1991: Washington turns its focus toward the Gulf after Iraq invades Kuwait.

Gorbachev becomes increasingly concerned about separatist movements and gives the head of the KGB permission to proceed violently.

1991: Gorbachev asks capitalist countries for huge loans. They say no.

January 12-13, 1991: Soviet troops enter Lithuania to take back property for the Soviet state. Lithuania fights; Soviet tanks attack.

In Moscow, thousands march to protest the crackdown. Gorbachev defends the return to ‘old ways’.

January 13,1991: “Bloody Sunday” in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Tanks attack protesters; Gorbachev’s image is further damaged.

January 15, 1991:  President Bush sets a deadline for Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions for a withdrawal from Kuwait. Gorbachev tries to extend the deadline, but Bush refuses.

Hussein does not comply with the deadline. A US-led coalition begins an air attack the following day.

February 1991: The Warsaw Pact declares an end to its military activities.

Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland establish “Visegrad cooperation,” a three-way partnership meant to coordinate their appeals to the European Commission and NATO.

April 29, 1991: The CIA reports that “all the ingredients are now present” for rapid regime change in the Soviet Union. This could “quickly sweep away the current political system.”

May 1991: Bush speculate about the consequences of diminishing Soviet power with the Hungarian president.

June 1991: Violence is rising in Yugoslavia. Slovenia and Croatia declare independence, prompting an attack by Serbia. The region spirals into war.

June 12, 1991: Russia holds its own election even though it is still part of the USSR. Yeltsin wins and is now the Russian president-elect. Even before the election, he makes a televised call for Gorbachev’s resignation.

June 20, 1991:  Bush receives president-elect Yeltsin in Washington.

July 15, 1991: At a meeting of the Group of 7 (G-7) in London, Bush remains reluctant to provide financial support to the Soviets. He expresses concern over “long-range missiles . . . aimed at the United States, and about the ongoing Soviet biological weapons program.” This view diverges from that of Bonn, Paris, and London.

August 1, 1991: Bush visits Ukraine in a pre-coup trip to the Soviet Union.

On this trip, he signs the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Bush is primarily interested in shoring up Gorbachev and maintaining central authority in the USSR.

August 18, 1991: Gorbachev is placed under house arrest in Crimea.

August 19-21, 1991: A “coup” forces Gorbachev out of office. He is unable to contact the outside world.

Yeltsin becomes the symbol of a ‘free Russia’, and defends Gorbachev and the constitution. The “coup” doesn’t succeed in seizing power outright.

August 22, 1991: Yeltsin, now in command, sends a plane to bring Gorbachev back to Moscow.

Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary of the Communist Party.

August 29, 1991: In a show of nuclear independence, the leader of Kazakhstan decrees that he is closing a Soviet nuclear test facility (the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site) on Kazakh territory.

Autumn 1991: The US National Security Council (NSC) concludes that chances of “a long-term role for Gorbachev” are “nil.”

September 1991: Bush is focused on the status of Soviet nuclear weapons.

September 25, 1991: The Ukrainian leader visits Washington. Before his trip, the Ukrainian parliament passes a declaration of independence and schedules a public referendum on that declaration.

October 1991: Brent Scowcroft, Director of the NSC, begins assessing what Soviet disintegration will mean for NATO’s future. The coming Soviet collapse is expanding NATO’s opportunities.

November 26, 1991: Bush receives a letter from Yeltsin announcing that “Russia is breaking with the Communist past.”

November 27, 1991: The US Senate passes the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act.

December 1, 1991: Ukraine holds a presidential election as well as a referendum on the declaration of independence.

Yeltsin tells Bush that if Ukrainians vote for independence by a margin of greater than 70 percent, he will immediately recognize Ukraine as a separate state.

With a turnout of 84 percent, 90 percent of Ukrainians vote for independence. No single district came in below 50 percent support, including parts of the country that Gorbachev had predicted would resist independence.

Bush announces that he will recognize Ukraine.

December 8, 1991: Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine act to dissolve the Soviet Union and set up a ‘commonwealth of independent states. They notify President Bush before they let Gorbachev know what they have done.

December 12, 1991: The Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act goes into effect. This is meant to facilitate the transportation, storage, safeguarding, and elimination of Soviet weapons.

December 16, 1991: Secretary of State Baker meets separately with both Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

December 25, 1991: Gorbachev resigns.

Russia becomes the successor state to the USSR in the UN and other organizations.

End of 1991: The US insists that Moscow is responsible for all Soviet debt – estimated at $65 billion.

Beginning of 1992: Russia receives bilateral assistance from the US along with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid package.

February 1, 1992: During Yeltsin’s visit to Bush at Camp David, the two leaders announce that the US and Russia are no longer adversaries and that the Cold War has ended peaceably.

March 1992: An internal Pentagon strategy paper is leaked to the New York Times. It says that the US post-Cold War mission is not to cooperate with Russia but “to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge.”

________________________________________________________

Want to learn more about the last days of the Cold War. Check out our post titled The End of the Cold War: A Cold War Timeline. You can read it here.

Follow with The End of the Cold War (1990): The Last Days of the USSR. Read it here.

This timeline draws from Not One Inch: America, Russia, and The Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by M.E. Sarotte.

Featured Photo: Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33285605

1990 was an event filled year, culminating in the unification of East and West Germany, and the eastward expansion of NATO. Some of you may have been following the debate between those who feel Putin was threatened by NATO’s expansion and those who say the enlargement of NATO served as a deterrence to Putin’s ambitions.

An argument in favor of further NATO expansion was published by Brookings in 1997. You can read Enlarging NATO: A Questionable Idea Whose Time Has Come here.   The article (by Richard Haas) lays out the pros and cons of expansion and concludes that “. . . the right answer may be qualified, even wistful, but it is “yes” nonetheless.”

Perhaps the most vocal proponent of the more provocative direct threat argument, John Mearsheimer is a distinguished professor in the political science department at the University of Chicago, and has been described as the most influential realist of his generation. He’s known as  one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, and his lectures  on You Tube regularly see over a million viewers. Here’s a link to his 2014 lecture titled Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? 

Which view do you favor?  Perhaps this fact based timeline will provide more context. Want to start at the beginning? Read our first post on The End of the Cold War here.  Then come back for a follow-up.

Background on NATO

April 4, 1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Pact, was signed on April 4, 1949. Its underlying premise was that European defense could not be entrusted to the United Nations.

NATO, therefore, was designed to “create not merely a balance of power, but a preponderance of power” to deal with the Russians from “positions of strength.”

Twelve nations signed the pact including the US, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Great Britain, and the Benelux. These nations pledged to use force only in self-defense and to develop “free institutions,” particularly through the encouragement of “economic collaboration between any or all” of the parties.

Article 5 of the agreement was central. It stated:

The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them . . . will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.

Article 11 modified this commitment by adding that the pact’s provisions “shall be carried out in accordance with each nation’s constitutional processes.’” $11.2 billion for European military aid was the immediate financial price for the NATO commitment.

1952: Greece and Turkey are added to NATO.

May 1955: West Germany is added to NATO.

Later in the month, the Soviet Union forms its own collective security alliance, the Warsaw Pact.

1982: Spain joins NATO.

The Last Days of the Soviet Union: 1990

(NOTE: In the timeline below, NATO related activities will be italicized. The timeline draws on Not One Inch: America, Russia, and The Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by M.E. Sarotte.)

1990: According to Robert Gates (Assistant to the US President and Deputy National Security Advisor), 1990 is marked by one overarching objective: to bribe the Soviets out of Germany.

West Germany offers the Soviets a great deal of money to agree to

the unification of Germany fully in NATO, meaning the extension of Article 5 to its eastern region . . . the fight for German unity and the fight for NATO’s future beyond the old inner-German dividing line became one and the same.

The United States advances proposals designed to make “unification in NATO” acceptable to Gorbachev. The idea is to give him something he can use to quiet his domestic critics.

The US is adamant that “NATO’s ability to extend Article 5 across all of Germany must not come at the cost of having to move nuclear weapons out of the country.”

Central and Eastern European leaders realize that Europe will remain divided between NATO and non-NATO states. They choose sides.

1990: Divided Germany has the highest concentration of nuclear arms per square mile of anywhere on the planet.

Early 1990: A quarter million people protest in Moscow for greater democracy and more regional autonomy.

Winter 1990: The Soviet led order is disintegrating at home and abroad. Economic problems lead to widespread misery in the USSR.

Discontent and strike threats are so severe that Gorbachev announces the cancellation of all foreign commitments so that he can focus on domestic problems.

January – February 1990

January 23, 1990: Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth of Hungary announces Moscow’s pullback of all troops in his country. The actual withdrawal begins in March 1990, with the last troops withdrawn on June 19, 1991.

February 1990: Chancellor Kohl of West Germany agrees to go to Moscow for bilateral negotiations with the Soviets. He doesn’t inform Washington.

With the Wall gone, the East German economy is crumbling.

The massive flow of Easterners to the West is causing overwhelming problems for West Germany.

The East German regime is collapsing, and the state-centered economy is collapsing as well.

March 1990

March 1990: Polish leaders call for “billions in reparations” for World War II.

March 7, 1990: Speaking to an interviewer, Gorbachev absolutely rules out membership for a united Germany in NATO.

Meanwhile the US State Department is beginning to put NATO into its thinking on Central and Eastern Europe. They are learning that Central and Eastern Europeans will not feel secure until they are in NATO.

March 18, 1990: With more than 93 percent voter participation overall,  an election in East Germany is a game changer.

According to the West German ambassador in Moscow, the voting results make clear to the Soviets that

the political system of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which they had built up over decades, had no democratic legitimacy.

March 21, 1990: The Polish foreign minister pays a visit to NATO headquarters, spurring a sequence of contacts between alliance leaders and Central and Eastern European representatives.

March 23-24, 1990: A number of Central and Eastern European foreign ministers take part in a special European Community (EC) ministerial meeting in Lisbon. They want to see what forms of Western affiliation might be open to them.

April – May 1990

April 1990: The West German embassy in Moscow reports that a high level Soviet official says:

the collapse of the Warsaw Pact was not a decisive issue for the Soviet Union. . . . It made no difference to them what Hungary, the Czechs, and possibly even the Poles did.

East Germany, on the other hand, is a different  matter.

Separatist movements are putting additional pressure on Soviet leadership. A Lithuanian push for independence is particularly undermining Gorbachev.

May 1990: Boris Yeltsin becomes the elected leader of the Russian republic.

May 18, 1990: In a meeting with US Secretary of State James Baker, Gorbachev complains about his Warsaw Pact allies wanting to join NATO.

May 31, 1990: A US-Soviet summit begins in Washington DC.

After the main session in DC, Gorbachev and Bush fly to Camp David by helicopter. The leaders discuss Germany, the future of Europe, and Moscow’s economic problems.

The Washington summit does not finalize German unification but Bush and his advisors succeed in getting Gorbachev to confirm that the future of European security will follow the Helsinki principle.

The Helsinki principle was granted to all signatories of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 which said that all could choose their own military alliances. On paper, the Soviet Union is committed to this principle.

Per the Helsinki principle, the choice about NATO is up to Germany itself.

June 1990

June 1990:  Upon his return home after the summit, Gorbachev is required to contend with Boris Yeltsin’s rise to prominence.

June 7, 1990: The Hungarian prime minister calls for the “immediate liquidation” of the Warsaw Pact’s military organization.

June 25, 1990: West Germany commits to pay 1.25 DM in “stationing costs” for Soviet troops in the second half of 1990. In other words, East Germany will continue to be occupied by the USSR even after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

July – August 1990

July 1990: Yeltsin announces that he is leaving the Communist Party.

July 1, 1990: German economic and monetary unification occur. This is well in advance of political unification.

July 5-6, 1990: NATO holds a summit.

July 2-14, 1990: The Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union holds a meeting.

July 16, 1990: Gorbachev says he will allow German unity if NATO agrees that no nuclear weapons, and only German troops, can be stationed in East Germany after a Soviet withdrawal.

August 1990: Gorbachev raises the possibility that the Soviet Union might dissolve.

August 2, 1990: Iraq, a Soviet ally, invades Kuwait, resulting “in the First Gulf War in 1991 and decades of US fixation on the region.”

September – October 1990

September 5, 1990: The US national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, informs President Bush that “a major problem has arisen in the negotiations for a final settlement document on German unification.”

September 9, 1990: Bush meets Gorbachev in Helsinki for a brief summit to discuss the crisis in the Gulf.

September 13, 1990: Gorbachev asks US Secretary of State Baker for a no-interest credit of $1 to $1.2 billion. Baker suggests asking a third country instead of the US.

October 3, 1990: Germany unifies as planned.

NATO’s full legal jurisdiction, including Article 5, is extended immediately to cover all of East Germany. The alliance has started its post-Cold War expansion to the east.

October 15, 1990: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Gorbachev.

October 22, 1990: The US State Department produces an analysis of “Eastern Europe and NATO.” The main conclusion:

It is not in the best interest of NATO or the US that these states be granted full NATO membership and its security guarantees. . . the United States should expressly refrain from organizing an anti-Soviet coalition whose frontier is the Soviet border.

November 1990

November 1990: Gorbachev signs a new treaty of friendship and cooperation with Germany.

November 7, 1990: Economic conditions within the USSR are terrible and discontent is high. Shots are fired at Gorbachev during the October Revolution Day Parade in Red Square.

November 19, 1990: Gorbachev attends the summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, hoping the CSCE will become the heart of a pan-European security system involving both Western and Eastern states. While there, he signs the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.

The treaty eliminates the Soviet Union’s advantage in conventional weapons in Europe.

December 1990

December 1990: Shevardnadze resigns, warning of a hardline coup. Gorbachev changes tactics and brings hardliners into the government.

December 20, 1991: Shevardnadze abruptly resigns as Soviet foreign minister.

End of 1990: The legal process of uniting East and West Germany concludes.

_________________________________

Featured Photograph titled Berlin: Brandenburg Gate is by Jorge Franganillo (Flickr)

NATO flag: Photo: © Crown Copyright 2014; Photographer: Sergeant Paul Shaw LBIPP (Army); Image 45157525.jpg from www.defenceimages.mod.uk

New York Times – Gorbachev resigns: nsarchive.gwu.edu

Fall of Berlin Wall: Gavin Stewart (Flickr)

War Memorial – Old Town Warsaw: Jerry Clack (Flickr)

NATO and Warsaw Pact map: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Boris Yeltsin: NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s photostream (Flickr)

Kuwait War: airborneshodan  (Flickr)

Gorbachev – Nobel Peace Prize: Wikicommons

Germany Unifies – By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1990-1003-400 / Grimm, Peer / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5425931

Do you enjoy solving crossword puzzles?

If so this week’s post should be right up your alley. It’s my first attempt to create a puzzle for you. Here’s just a taste of the clues.

Just click on the link below to start the puzzle. You’ll find the clues below the puzzle.

Or you can download a pdf here.

Want the answers? Click here for the key.

PS: For some reason, the type on the first clue is small. Sorry about that. The rest are easier to read. And if you have questions or problems, post them in the comments. I don’t know if I’ll be able to help, but I’ll try.

It’s just about impossible to keep up with world news without hearing something about the ongoing Climate Summit (COP-26) in Glasgow, held from October 31-November 12, 2021. But are you aware of the Biodiversity Conference that preceded it? This meeting was held in Kunming, China, on October 21, 2021. About that meeting,  The New York Times wrote: 

countries are gathering in an effort to stop a biodiversity collapse that scientists say could equal climate change as an existential crisis.

Concern over environmental issues, including biodiversity, isn’t new. At the height of the Cold War, Dr. Seuss wrote of the danger in his book The Lorax. The book came out just before the first anniversary of Earth Day in 1971. 

According to earthday.org, on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970:

Groups that had been fighting individually against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness and the extinction of wildlife united.

Inspired in part by Rachel Carson’s New York Times bestseller Silent Spring, over 20 million Americans demonstrated against the impact of 150 years of industrial development. Their effort was quite successful.

By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first of their kind environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act,  the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act.  Two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act.  A year after that, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act and soon after the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. These laws have protected millions of men, women and children from disease and death and have protected hundreds of species from extinction.

Although Seuss later called The Lorax ‘straight propaganda,’ the book found a receptive audience in the context of the growing environmental movement, appealing to those concerned with the interrelatedness of ecosystems and/or those concerned with the environmental dangers of capitalism. Take your pick. A case can be made for both.

The Lorax Disappears: Interrelatedness of Ecosystems

Seuss begins his book by tackling a topic that’s of great interest today, deforestation and its impact on biodiversity. A creature called ‘the Lorax’ is missing and there are many questions:

What was the Lorax?
And why was it there?
And why was it lifted and taken somewhere
From the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows?

We soon learn that there is someone who knows the answer to these questions, a man called the Once-ler.  

The Once-ler is a bit greedy and he will only tell you how ‘the Lorax was lifted away’ if you agree to pay. Once you do, he’ll call you by Whisper-ma-phone and tell you secrets that are ‘for your ears alone.’ Lucky for us, a young boy named Ted Wiggins hears the story and decides to pass it on. 

The Once-ler paints Ted a word picture of an idyllic pre-industrial environment, populated by Humming-Fish splashing around, Swomee Swans, and “Brown Bar-ba-loots frisking about in their Bar-ba-loot Suits as they played in the shade and ate Truffula fruits.”

But those trees! Those trees!
Those Truffula Trees!
All my life I’d been searching
for trees such as these.
The touch of their tuft
was much softer than silk.
And they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.

The Once-ler is so taken by the trees that stretch for “mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze”  that he knows just what to do:

In no time at all, I had built a small shop.
Then I chopped down a Truffula Tree with one chop.
And with great skillful skill and great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft, and I knitted a Thneed.

Now, we’re off to the races. The Once-ler will soon cut down all the Truffula Trees to create a product called Thneeds, and as Thneeds become a ‘must have’ item, more and more trees will be harvested. 

I’m sure you can guess what happens. Soon there are no more trees, and no more Bar-ba-loots who lived in the trees. Sound familiar?

Today one million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, and many of the ecosystem services essential for human wellbeing are eroding.

So, as it turns out, Seuss was quite prescient. But, even so, I’m a bit confused about the focal point of The Lorax. Environmental concerns in the 1970s weren’t primarily focused on desertification, coral reefs, biodiversity or extinction. Instead, the major issues of the day centered on nuclear and chemical pollution, Three Mile Island, oil spills, soil contamination, toxic waste, herbicides in South East Asia, and, later, the ozone layer.

So why was Seuss concerned with issues of deforestation and biodiversity? I’m just surmising, but one can make an argument that it was all about the Cold War. We know that Seuss was political and perhaps he picked up on a theme that’s detailed in a relatively recent book titled The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields by Simo Laakkonen, Viktor Pál & Richard Tucker. The book, published in 2016, sees the Cold War as signifying “a global power struggle over the control of natural resources.” It argues:

The Cold War was not only for the hearts and minds of people, it was also for their mouths and bellies, that is, for food, energy and raw materials . . . In addition to the increasing consumption of natural resources and resulting pollution, the destructive capacity of the weapons of mass destruction compelled human beings to recognise that their activities could ultimately endanger the planet earth. The Cold War was a propagator and framework for the birth of global catastrophism and also for the emergence of a global environmental awareness. Nature, its exploitation and also gradually its protection, opened up yet another front in the Cold War . . .

In fact, some of the areas most impacted by the Cold War have ended up as protected nature preserves. A good example can be found in Germany where former Soviet military bases are being turned into grasslands. You can read all about it here, and, if you find the topic of interest, there are more articles listed at the end of the post.

The Lorax Attacks Corporate Greed and Excessive Consumerism

As more and more trees are cut down, it becomes obvious that the Once-ler only cares about making more and more Thneeds and more and more money, ignoring warnings about the devastation he’s causing. When confronted by the Lorax who now “speaks for the trees,” the Once-ler says:

“Look, Lorax,” I said. “There’s no cause for alarm.
I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm.
I’m being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed.
A Theed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People Need!”

Well, one thing leads to another and soon the Once-ler’s Thneeds are jumping off the shelves. 

Confronting the Threat of Communism

The consumerist culture that the Lorax encounters reminds me of the rush to consumerism in the beginning years of the Cold War. The motivation is different though. The Once-ler just wants to make money but, in the early 1950s, some believed that the threat of communism could be countered with consumerism. The US pushed consumerism and manufacturing in order to flood European markets with American goods, aiming to combat communism with refrigerators and washing machines. 

Europeans weren’t the only consumers, however. Between 1945 and 1949, Americans purchased 20 million refrigerators, 21.4 million cars, and 5.5 million stoves, a trend that continued well into the 1950s, peaking in 1959 with a “Kitchen Debate” between Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev and the US Vice-President Richard Nixon.

Nixon took advantage of the debate opportunity to show off the standard of living available to ordinary Americans under capitalism. You can read more about it here and then watch the YouTube video below for a taste of the debate which took place at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959. The description for the YouTube video points out that “an entire house was built that the American exhibitors claimed anyone in America could afford. It was filled with labor-saving and recreational devices meant to represent the fruits of the capitalist American consumer market.”

Back to The Lorax

Getting back to The Lorax, just as Americans couldn’t buy consumer goods fast enough in the aftermath of World War II, the greedy Once-ler can’t keep up with the demand for Thneeds.

Now, chopping one tree at a time seems way too slow so he invents a Super-Axe-Hacker to speed things up, and soon he’s making Thneeds four times as fast as before. As production increases the air is filled with “smogulous smoke” and the pond is glumped “where the Humming-Fish Hummed.” When confronted with the damage he’s causing, the Once-ler makes clear again that he’s going to just keep on doing what he’s been doing. 

And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!
From outside in the field came a sickening smack
of an ax on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.
The very last Truffula Tree of them all!

Past Choices Are Haunting Us

In today’s world the choices we made in the past are haunting us. Here are just a few examples from Robert J. Gordon’s 2016 book titled The Rise and Fall of American Growth (The US Standard of Living Since The Civil War) that show an impact on resource use in the United States. 

• Although the early postwar years reflected a decline in housing quality, gradually there was a turnaround, with an inexorable increase in the average square feet of space in the typical single-family housing unit.
• Suburbs were developed farther from the center city than in most developed nations. Superhighways were built not just to connect cities, but also to facilitate commuting within cities. . . . Except in the densest part of a few central cities, households were forced to use automobiles for shopping, commuting, and travel for all other reasons.
• Particularly after 1970, there was a complete transition from domestic to imported clothing together with a transition to “big-box” mass merchants such as Walmart that helped to achieve a sharp decline in the relative price of clothing. (Think “fast fashion” and its ramifications.)
• Food and food production were also affected as refrigerated transportation was common for meat, and prepared, processed, and frozen food became commonplace. 

Note: If you’d like more specifics about how building and transportation work together, check out this article in Treehugger.

It’s interesting to note that agriculture contributes to greenhouse gas emission and is negatively affected by  changes to the environment as well when conditions disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality. But that’s a story for another day.

I think it’s safe to say that many of us would like a redo. But since that’s not possible, maybe we should take to heart the message the Lorax passed on to the Once-ler by way of Dr. Seuss:

“But now, says the Once-ler,
“Now that you’re here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.

Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax
And all of his friends may come back.

_________________________________________________________

The Featured Photo is by Bryan Rosengrant. You can find his work on Flickr.

Here are some more articles related to the impact of the Cold War on the environment as well as post Cold War changes.

Other articles include a National Geographic article on Gunkanjima Island (also known as Hashima Island) near Nagasaki titled Abandoned ‘Battleship Island’ Is Crumbling. Can It Be Saved? The article starts by stating: “When humans left, nature prevailed. On Hashima Island, a 16-acre patch of land off the southern coast of Japan, grass and vines and flowers flourish as concrete and steel wither.”

Abandoned soviet military base. Laima Gutmane. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skrundas_armijas_pilsētiņa_-_an_abandoned_soviet_military_base_in_Skrunda_-_panoramio_(23).jpg

If you like pictures, you’ll want to take a look at CNN’s photo essay titled Wildlife is flourishing in these demilitarized zones.

An article in The Guardian tells How Wildlife is thriving in the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone, noting that “The forces that lock humans out of the DMZ have allowed other species to thrive . . .”

And, finally, the UN Environmental Program documents how “many people think the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is a place of post-apocalyptic desolation. But more than 30 years after one of the facility’s reactors exploded, sparking the worst nuclear accident in human history, science tells us something very different. You can read the article here.

_________________

The Lorax is now a Disney Pixar movie

Still looking for Christmas presents? Maybe you can get some toy ideas for girls from the Cold War!

According to American Cold War ideology, homemakers in the United States were a bulwark against communism, fortifying the family social unit that was basic to a democratic society. In contrast, in the Soviet Union, communism drove women out of the home and put them to work, forcing children into state-run daycare centers and assaulting the family.

In response, postwar American society emphasized the importance of the “traditional” family structure which had a male wage-earner and a female housewife and mother. This placed the domesticated woman at the center of American values and viewed her domesticity as a weapon against any subversive communist influences. According to US Census data, in 1950, 23.8% of American married women had jobs outside the home; the figure climbed to 30.5% by 1960, and 39.6% by 1969.

An article in Life Magazine in 1953 tied working women to the consumer society, saying she worked “to increase her buying power as a consumer, for herself and particularly for her family.”

The bottom line was that, for most women, life was home centered. Women cared for their homes and for the emotional and nutritional needs of their families. They nursed, cooked, cleaned, decorated, and shopped. Girls and their toys mimicked the activities of their mothers.

Women’s housekeeping tasks were faithfully reproduced by their daughters who played with their own child-sized sweepers, vacuums, and pots and pans, Some of these were made by the same companies who manufactured the working appliances their moms used. Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company sold versions for real use and also the “Little Queen Carpet Sweeper” for girls, a good way to instill brand name loyalty at an early age.

Vintage Little Queen Carpet Sweeper on Etsy

The Kenner “Easy Bake” and Deluxe Topper Corporation’s “Suzy Homemaker” toy ovens were also popular. They used a light bulb as a heat source that could bake real, but tiny, cakes. Packaged cake mixes from Betty Crocker were sold especially for this use. The Easy Bake slogan promised little girls that they could make “Food as Good as Mom’s.”

“SH-collection BradRoss” by Bradross63 (talk) (Uploads) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikipedia

Lessons in gender roles were seamlessly linked to lessons in the growing consumer economy. In the early 1950s, Americans began to spend more of their disposable income on food, not because of a rise in food prices, but because of marketing of new kinds of convenience foods. Toys reinforced the message that most food could be found packaged and processed.

Betty Crocker play cake mix from the 1950s.

The most important girl’s toy to come out of the Cold War era was the “Barbie” doll, introduced by Mattel in 1959. Barbie was sold as a fashion doll and ads promised:

Girls of all ages will thrill to the fascination of her miniature wardrobe of fine-fabric fashions . . . . Feminine magic! A veritable fashion show, and every girl can be the star!

Barbie didn’t cost very much when she was first introduced — only about $3 — but her clothes and accessory add-ons earned Mattel very healthy profits.

Barbie provided a contrast to then popular board games because some of the board games actually allowed for the possibility that women might be more than just a fashion object. She might, in fact, work outside the home, but only within a very narrow spectrum of possibilities.

The Selchow and Righter Company made a board game called What Shall I Be in two versions, one for boys and one for girls. Interestingly, there was no overlap between the careers offered to each. Girls choices in the 1966 version included the “helping” professions, like teacher or nurse, with some very glamorous options like stewardess, ballerina, actress, and model. In the 1968 version, boys could try out becoming doctors, engineers, astronauts, scientists, athletes, and statesmen. Neither of the options touched on the majority of real women’s jobs, the “pink collar ghetto” of secretaries, clerks, and waitresses.

Selchow and Righter Board Game for Girls

Selchow and Righter Board Game for Boys

It’s interesting to note that, according to a recent article in The Atlantic, the marketing of toys is more gendered today than it was 50 years ago when gender discrimination and sexism were the norm. But that’s another story.

Cover photograph by James Vaughan (Flickr).

Would you rather read a comic book or a 500 page biography?

In 1948, President Truman’s campaign answered that question with a 16 page comic book published by the Democratic National Committee.

By this time, President Truman was used to the snickering of political cartoonists. They’d made fun of his stance on many controversial issues: the desegregation of the armed forces; his decision to drop the atomic bomb;  and the Republican takeover of Congress (called the Do Nothing Congress by Truman). Now that he was in the middle of the 1948 presidential campaign, political and editorial cartoons were everywhere.

Actually Truman sort of liked them. We know this because, after he left office, he became an avid collector. And, while in office — as we have seen — he used them to his advantage. 

Benjamin Franklin: Join, or Die?

Political and editorial cartoons have long been part of propaganda campaigns.  They trace their origins in the US to Benjamin Franklin and his cartoon Join, or Die (1754). The cartoon depicts the disunity of the Thirteen Colonies during the French and Indian War. It became even more famous later on when it was used to encourage the former colonies to unite during the American Revolution. 

Political cartoons were in and out of favor during the early 19th century, but in the 1880s, the media became popular again.

The 1948 Democratic National Convention

Some say the 1948 presidential campaign of Harry Truman is one of the greatest political campaigns in the modern era. No one gave him a chance of beating the Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey of New York. The Southern Democrats, called Dixiecrats, led by Strom Thurmond, and the Progressives, led by Henry Wallace, had both splintered from the Democratic party. In fact, Hubert Humphrey’s civil rights speech at the convention provoked a walk out.

Nevertheless, the convention re-nominated Truman and adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals.

Thirty-five southern delegates walked out of the convention. The move was on to remove Truman’s name from the ballot in the southern United States. The problem of course: Truman’s support for a stronger civil rights platform than they found acceptable.

The Democratic party lost faith, and refused to spend their usual large sums of money on the election. Truman’s prospects for victory were dim.

The 1948 Presidential Election

On election day, Truman went to bed at 6:30. He woke up about midnight just in time to hear NBC announce:

While the President is a million votes ahead of the popular vote, when the country vote comes in Mr. Truman will be defeated by an overwhelming majority.

Truman concluded:

. . . to the sorrow of myself, and to those who were listening with me, it looked very much as if the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives because, of course, it was not possible for me to get a majority of the electoral votes. I went back to bed, and went to sleep.

About 4 AM Truman woke up again.  This time he heard the NBC announcer proclaim:

While the President has a lead of two million votes, it is certainly necessary that this election shall go into the House of Representative. He hasn’t an opportunity of being elected by a majority of the electoral votes of the Nation!

Truman called the Secret Service in and said:

We’d better go back to Kansas City, it looks as if I’m elected!

The Media Had It Wrong

As it turns out, Truman was right. He carried 24,105,812 popular votes to Dewey’s 21,970,065. This translated into his winning 28 states and 303 electoral votes. Dewey ended up with 189 electoral votes from 16 states.

Not surprisingly, the cartoonists had been having a field day.

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Sources:

Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

Truman Comic Book: The Story of Harry S. Truman
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/story-harry-s-truman?documentid=NA&pagenumber=1

Truman Cartoons in the Library of Congress:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/cartoon-drawings/?fa=subject:truman,+harry+s.

Join, or Die (1754)
By Benjamin Franklin – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress;Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g05315. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10604794