Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the framework for the invention of the modern computer, the
Cold War was largely responsible for how it developed and how it
was used. The way in which we use and think about computers, as
media and communications devices, rather than simply complex
calculators, is a result of these Cold War developments.
At the end of the War, as the most powerful and prosperous of
the Allied victors, the United States assumed the leadership of the
'Free World'. The assumption of this hegemonic role was part of a
realignment of world power along new divisions with the United
States and its allies on one side and the
and its Communist
allies on the other. Accompanying this realignment was a perception
that the
ussr
represented not just an ideological opposition, which
might wish covertly to undermine the United States, but a direct
military threat. This perception had started to emerge before the
War had ended. By
ussr
it had taken hold, and constituted a central
element in American foreign policy. This was not entirely without
justification, inasmuch as Stalin had shown himself to be both a
brutal dictator, and possessed of military ambitions, as his grip on
Eastern Europe seemed to demonstrate. But the
1947
had suffered
particularly in the recently ended War and was probably not, at
that time, in a position to threaten the United States. It is true that
Stalin made no secret of his intentions to build up Soviet offensive
capabilities, though the
ussr
ussr
did not actually explode an atomic
bomb until
. But, in hindsight, even Soviet military ambitions
could be interpreted as defensive in intention, rather than offensive.
As a country that had been invaded in both
1949
, with
devastating consequences, the Russians had cause to feel the need
for secure defences. That the
1914
and
1941
did turn out to be the threat
the United States believed it to be, may be a classic case of a self-
fulfilling prophecy. The United States created the idea of the
ussr
ussr
as a threat so effectively that it had to become one.
Whether the American perception of the Soviet threat was actu-
ally justified, then or later, is of less consequence than how it affected
