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Nam Pham
Author's Bio
Martin J. Walker, born in 1947, over the last twenty years, has self-published several books and articles investigating politics in the United Kingdom. Walker is scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research in New York. Martin Walker has had many pieces of work in his lengthy career as a political. His books include "Waking Giant: Gorbachev and Perestroika," "America Reborn," "Clinton: The President They Deserve" and "The Cold War, A History" Walker is now known for being part of the BBC, a very popular news telecast in the United Kingdom.
Martin Walker's Cold War
The Cold War, a History, is Martin J. Walker's look on the topic of the Cold War and several relative events. Throughout the book, he gives many facts and statistics based on surveys and death tolls given by the government of numerous countries that were involved with the Cold War and the events leading up to or following the Cold War. This book gives many facts to help understand the foreign policy of the nineties. The book is an excellent source of information on the last half of the twentieth century. Many innocent deaths have taken place over countless wars that have become unaware to the common public eye. Facts like the United States being so much further in debt than any other countries. The many facts of what is exactly happening in the time of the described actions taking place are very detailed in the given statistics. Martin Walker's successful books, reports, and articles have given him a very well respected reputation in the entire media world. Walker has written many pieces of literature that can be found all over the world to be read. Topics are covered in great detail to a point of not needing to know any further explanation, but other topics are briefly looked over.
Walker covers many different events throughout the book. The events go from the events at Yalta, which took place "on February 4 1945,"1 to the ends of Bill Clinton's presidential reign. Such important events like the launching of the Soviet Sputnik and the Cuban Missile Crisis, led by Fidel Castro, are some of the events listed in the book. The Sputnik program was a series of space missions launched by the Soviet Union on October fourth, 1957 to show the scientific use of satellites it included Sputnik 1,the first man-made machine to orbit the Earth. According to the New York Times, that on the first day that Sputnik was successfully in the outer space. This was a very proud day for the Soviet scientists and gave stiff competition to the United States level of technology. "On its first day in space, the Sputnik had been tracked in four crossings over the United States." 2 On December 7th, the United States attempted to launch a miniature satellite at the Cape Canaveral launch pad in Florida. The four-pound rocket was attached to a vanguard rocket, which helped propel it into space with little effort. The United States reacted with the creation of a four pound satellite connect to a vanguard rocket. "It rose just twenty-five inches from the Cape Canaveral launch pad, before falling back in full view of the world's waiting news cameras." 3 This was a very humiliating moment for the United States because the failed launch was lively broadcasted by many new stations which included the Daily Mirror, a London newspaper, summed up the disaster with a front-page headline with the term "Phutnik" as a apposed to Sputnik. 4 Sputnik 2 was launched on November 3rd, 1957 and carried the first living passenger in a spacecraft, a dog named Laika. The dog was attached to a recorder to keep track of the noises that went on in the spacecraft to check for natural noises for future missions for humans. Messages and reports were recorded by the ears of a secret United States committee, who were hired to create the "Gaither Report." 5 The Gaither Report was a compilation of the information gathered by the Soviet scientists received by the United States in order to steal the information received from the Soviet Union.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a political conflict among the government of the United States, the government of Cuba, and the government of the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis started on October 14th 1962. Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," and the Cubans called it the "October Crisis." The event was referred to as a Missile Crisis because it was at the point where the Cold War was about to become a nuclear war between the rivaling technologies of the two growing nations. Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a socialist republic and entered an alliance with the Soviet Union leading to a major upgrade of Cuban military defense. This alliance created problems for the United States because this gave the United States two things to worry about, other than the many workers' strikes taking place in numerous sections of the growing United States. More problems were created in the United States as the Russians in Moscow captured an American spy. Considered the West's best spy, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in Moscow on October 22nd, which is the same day that "Kennedy announced the presence of the missiles on American television." 6 Though he was caught, Penkovsky succeeded in his job by supplying the United States government intelligence with useful information which showed a clear weakness of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. This was a giant plus for the United government to know that they do not have much to worry about in terms of there being included in a nuclear war.
Much information was given about how much the flight-fighting technology has been highly transformed and developed throughout the times of the Cold War. New tanks like the T-34 were romping through Budapest. There were 2500 tanks that invaded Budapest. There was a reported 20,000 dead, but in reality, a final death toll of "around 3000" was a realistic number of deaths due to the massacre. 7 New forms of combat machines, include the United State's F-86's or the Chinese MiG-k's. "The Israelis, using American F-15 and F-16 fighters, destroyed Soviet MIG-21 and MIG-23 aircraft." 8 A famous Soviet form of spy-ware was created through the form of flight by creating the U-2.U-2 planes were countered by President Kennedy because he created SAM sites, which are missile launchers in the ground aimed at planes floating above head. He created these to keep out the spying Russians and the Cubans. Tanks were often used to crush the weakly armored infantry, but its only weakness was its slow pace and its need for many crewmembers. Planes are used to destroy buildings with little effort using bombs dropped from thousands of feet from the sky. These new metal monsters created an immense amount of death tolls through the times. Though the new creations made war much more efficient, but the machines cost tens of thousands to make and millions of dollars to develop and perfect. Today, war machines are still trying to be perfected by the top scientists all over the world.
At the end of his book, Mr. Walker offers an alternative view other than his own. Which contradicts himself to a point of disbelief in his previous claims and statements. This creates a whole new look on what the reader has completed reading and makes deep thinking easier to follow through Martin Walker's point of view. He claims that the Cold War could be "between nation-states." 9 He also says that the Cold War is a war that is based on technology levels. Though there was bloodshed, these were very little compared to wars in the past. The war was a between two rising powers that came face to face with each other across the Atlantic Ocean. Martin J. Walker finds himself on very controversial grounds when he compares the very complicated issues, like the Marshall Plan and the Soviet reaction, to a cheap and common "American game." 10 His claims may be bold and controversial, but they have proved his points time and time again as he continues to write on and on about issues he feels should be spoken about to the public.
Though Martin J. Walker is from the United Kingdom, he still chooses to focus on the United States side of the war, rather than the Soviet Union's point of view. Walker only seems to show charts that have United States information or charts that have the United States included into the chart. He briefly shows the rise in oil prices in the seventies in the United States, but seems to ignore the new Global Technical Revolution taking place during the time period of the rise or the oil prices in the United States. Martin Walker pokes fun of names of the two sides by instead of giving the titles of the superpowers of the two main forces involved in the Cold War and renames them "superlosers." the title of the last chapter of the book. 11 The information that Walker produces to the reader involve death tolls, prices of a variety of objects, including crops, livestock and oil, and also involves the rate of a country's financial debt. These charts are very helpful to the reader by being able to show the number figures to see how much something has developed over time or how something has decreased over time.
The book's biggest weakness is that Martin Walker does not really argue thoroughly about his case that, "the Cold War was a conflict of nation interests."12 Towards the end of the book he goes from event to event with in times which don't flow very well. Martin Walker claims that the United states has "won" the cold war because it was able to create a model sense of economy for the world could look up to with a large growth in population and technology to further the production of how life goes on in the home in the United States with help "its huge growth of trade, and ultimately bankrupt Soviet economy." 13 The book is very dull due to the fact that through out the book gives very important facts, but does not tend to keep the reader hooked and interested and instead gets straight to the point and tends to commonly become repetitive on various subjects and topics chosen by Walker. Walker may have a large variety in his topics, but the way he delivers is very intelligent and has a wide lexicon, which only limits his audience of readers.
The strengths that this book shows are a complete coverage of the events that took place in around and during the Cold War. He even includes various Asian countries that were briefly involved in sections of the Soviet affairs, but he does include his thoughts on the war in Korea and the War that took place in Vietnam that covered a few years. His overviews of important topics were very well thought out and include many statistics that were helpful in research of a certain topic. Since Martin J. Walker worked for many popular and well equipped shows that have various and mainstream resources that get the straight facts, it must have been fairly simple for a such a supplied man to come up with a well filled book with many forms of useful information. This book turned out to be very informative of the unknown parts of the war. The book has shown the ups and downs to both sides of the war and has chosen to have the United States be the victor in the war because of its overall success in the future of the competing soviet union. The judgment of Walker has offended many; he has been able to take these chances because of the powerful views he can openly present to the public. His large reputation of being an excellent reporter and a superb, but boring, book writer has given him the rights to write about his view points no matter who it offends in the process.
The Cold War has affected today's public by giving us many forms of new technology. The United States citizens have gained much respect for the citizens of Russia. The Americans have been able to fear the powers that technology can produce. The strengths of bombs, which were also followed by realistic movies that are testing of bombs and the effects they can make on the city or nearby town. They also had to watch Sputnik float above their heads as they wonder what its true purpose was for. Some thought it was for spying on the United States. Other people thought the Russian satellite was for holding "nuclear weapons" 14, but the truth is that Sputnik was for space studying that the Russians built the first satellite for. During the war, everyone had to learn how to duck and cover in times of a bombing. The emotional scarring from the bombings in Russia has people going insane. The immigration of Russians towards the United States has increased due to the end of the war. Though the United States was allegedly claimed the victor by Walker, it was a sad time for the Soviet Union as it has collapsed and thus bring Russia as a whole. The USSR has fallen because of the poor economics that followed the Cold War and has overwhelmingly gone in the favor or the United States. Most people, during the war, had a high prejudice based on that the fact that someone would be of Russian decent, even though they could be born in the United States. Peace was soon spread throughout the United States, but there is still some prejudice left in the United States towards the Russians.
During the times of the cold war, it has overall affected the world by separating two Asian countries. The Superpowers has also divided the great country of Germany. The two Asian countries have been divided into two parts, North and South. The Cold War "divided Vietnam and divided Korea." 15 Coincidentally, The Northern halves of both divided Asian countries have both become the communist part and the south being the much more free part. Though Vietnam still remains to be the same single country, Korea has split completely in names and has created a North Korea, which is now led by Kim Jong Il, and South Korea, which their nation's capital is now Seoul. Germany has been separated in the middle with the Berlin Wall, which separates the country between the east and west parts of the country. Later in the future, the war destroyed to keep from a divided country. The conflicts between nations and civil wars have created many unnecessary deaths within families to create a massive heartache all around the world. The superpowers of the Cold War fought or arranged conflicts between distant countries such as the "clash between Angola and turkey and Nicaragua and Yemen." 16 This war has created a new country and split others, but it could have been for the best for the world. It marked a clash between different ways of "organizing mankind."17
This book was an overall success because it got its point across to the reader and has made many key facts to help teach the reader about what the reader needs to know about the subject of the Cold War. The Cold War is a very broad issue and Martin J. Walker was able to fit fifty years of history into a 350-page book of text. This well written book is a slow paced, but very informative piece of literature. "It was a total war between economic and social systems." 18 In the conclusion of the informative and highly readable history book, the opportunities of our hard earned peace could be lost and "Russia left once more dangerously estranged." 19 Powerful viewpoints were given by a powerful man in the world of media. Martin Walker will definitely be remembered for his many pieces of literature in this time period.
Endnotes
1.Walker, Martin The Cold War, A history. Henry Holt 1993 pg 8
2.Walker, Martin 114
3.Walker, Martin 114
4.Walker, Martin 114
5.Walker, Martin 114
6.Walker, Martin 176
7.Thompson, Gale The Cold War. Economist 1993 pg 97
8.Heilbrunn, Jacob The Revision Thing. New Republic 1994 pg 8
9.Thompson, Gale 97
10.Thompson, Gale 97
11.Heilbrunn, Jacob 8
12.Thompson, Gale 97
13.Thompson, Gale 97
14.Walker, Martin 119
15.Thompson, Gale 97
16.Thompson, Gale 97
17.Thompson, Gale 97
18. Thompson, Gale The Cold War; A history(brief review). American Heritage 94 pg 102
19.Thompson, Gale 97
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