The coldest thing about the Cold War

The coldest thing about the cold war was the coldness with which proxy war's where fought, countless people killed, maimed, violated without ever at least being acknowledged.

Europe and North America were portrayed as the parties involved in the cold war, who through the politic of containment avoided a hot war.

While the Global East and West were freezing their guns, the big killing went on in the “South”. In Africa, in Asia and Latin America countries and people were forced to take sides and the only sides that could be taken were for either"democracy or communism." Millions died in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, China, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and countless other countries.

Enormous efforts were made to ensure that no alternatives could be attempted. To quieten social movements and uprisings in the whole world people were killed and jailed, dreams crushed and idea's discredited. Like the "Prague Spring" with its idea to create "socialism with human face" or the democratic movements in Guatemala and Chile, and many social, indigenous, racial movements, which were destroyed or brutally suppressed.

When we write about the history of the cold war, we should write the stories of everybody who suffered.

We in the Western World might then maybe begin to understand why the “Global South” refuses to take prescribed sides in the new cold war which turned hot in Ukraine and Gaza and Lebanon and Sudan.