#cold war language

[theenglishnook]

Churchill's Iron Curtain speech coined Cold War terms, shaping political language with phrases like superpower and containment, leaving a lasting mark on global discourse and international relations.

Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech – Shaping Cold War Vocabulary in English

[theenglishnook]

Fall of the Berlin Wall – A Defining Moment in Political Language and Global Unity

November 9, 1989 On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, a powerful symbol of the Cold War, was breached. This event marked not only the beginning of German reunification but also the end of an era defined by global tension, nuclear standoffs, and ideological division between East and West. The fall of the Berlin Wall quickly became a turning point in international relations vocabulary and…

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[newstfionline]

Dusting Off the Language of the Cold War

By Alan Cowell, NY Times, March 27, 2014

BERLIN--Checkpoint Charlie. The Iron Curtain. The Wall.

Only old cold warriors, or fans of very early le Carré, hanker for the days of Europe’s division when watchtowers and razor wire divided a continent, and a concrete barrier sundered this city--twin scars of competition between East and West.

Suddenly, though, with President Vladimir V. Putin’s takeover of Crimea and the massing of Russian troops near eastern Ukraine, the Cold War lexicon has been dusted off, along with the logic that underlay it.

A top NATO general speaks of Russia as an adversary. A former British commander urges reinforcements along the Rhine. Their words seemed to revive familiar imagery of the past--armor and infantry moving across the checkerboard of a divided Europe.

But the Continent’s leaders do not have the resolve, or the means, to rejoin a battle once backed by the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction. While NATO has been expanding its membership among nations once held in thrall to Moscow, it has also been drawing down the forces it once marshaled to confront the Red Army.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Germany, where the presence of Western troops deployed to maintain the peace and the status quo after World War II has fallen drastically.

Redeployments have cut the American military presence in Europe to 67,000 troops, a fraction of the almost 280,000 United States Army personnel in Europe in 1962. British troops, once so cozily ensconced that they ran their own fly-fishing club in the Eifel hills, are set for a major drawdown in Germany in 2015 and a complete withdrawal by 2020 as part of broader cuts in defense spending. Already their numbers have fallen to 20,000 from around 50,000.

So what might the newest saber-rattling achieve?

“The cold war dinosaurs who still tramp the corridors and editorial columns of London and Washington seem almost to pine for the virile certainties of 1945-1989,” the columnist Simon Jenkins wrote in London’s Guardian newspaper. “Russia must ‘pay a heavy price’ for Crimea, if only to make cold warriors feel good.”

“That is unlikely to make the bear slink back to its cave,” he said, referring to Russia.

The calculation might help explain why Chancellor Angela Merkel has been among the most cautious of European leaders in formulating the Western response to Mr. Putin.

Far more than most, Germans know from their history the perils of unpicking the patchwork of frontiers holding their continent together. They are aware, too, of hair-trigger sensitivities bequeathed by the clash of empires, as if the Cold War had merely spread an ideological fig leaf over a far older contest.