Media and the Cold War
In May 1945, the World War II alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union ended. The U.S. tried to stop Soviet influence from growing further in Europe.
Therefore, to prevent the expansion of communist influence, the U.S. government announced a diplomatic ideology known as the Truman Doctrine. It aimed to maintain freedom and independence while providing military and economic aid to countries whose governments refused to be controlled by minorities.
In response, the Soviet Union formed Cominform, which is an organization of the International Communist Movement. The Communist camp also formed the Communist Economic Conference. It was an organization that nine socialist countries, including the Soviet Union, Poland and Romania, joined to achieve the planned development of the national economy. The organizations planned the promotion of industrialization and increased national welfare.
Since then, the capitalist and communist camps have been engaged in political, diplomatic, and military competitions in Europe (divided Germany), Asia and Africa. It was not until the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 that the U.S. and Russia reconciled. It’s because just before the nuclear war, both the United States and the Soviet Union were afraid that a nuclear war would break out and destroy the world.
In this cold war, the media greatly influenced both countries by reporting opponents’ new military, diplomacy policy and provoking each other. Instead of using weapons, strategic attitudes and threats using information about adversaries played an important role in their political and ideological confrontation. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union installed an intelligence agency.
In 1949, the U.S. set up an Office of Public Information in the Pentagon to announce media and correspondents (printed media, radio, news, movies, television, etc . It also analyzed military-related information activities, while the Soviet Union used the Cominform as an intelligence agency.
In
addition to the activities of intelligence agencies, government officials from
major countries had announced policies corresponding to enemy countries. Lots
of media presses reported it and made it widely known to the world, and
sometimes it determined the direction of the conflict.
For a while, international conflicts that divide ideologies and collide with each other disappeared. International relations have diversified. Powerful nations have tried to prevent nuclear weapons from spreading.
However, now, a New Cold War has been raging between the United States and China.
Unlike in the past, conflicts now involve technology, digital security, and economic disputes such as trading from the New Cold War. The role of the media will become more important as the information industry and technology develop. Managing them will be the nation’s power.
The position of the media will be stronger because it is the source of information as the conflict continues in a more peaceful way. There are no direct wars, no nuclear weapons development. Plus with the emergence of new media, there is no need for violent ways. Because nowadays, this is because media has been developed and widely distributed around the world, allowing people to widely inform the country’s military and diplomatic situation. Countries are competing through information such as technical information. In addition, using too much military power is strongly opposed by other countries.
Several conflicts have arisen between the U.S. and China, including trade disputes that began with retaliatory tariffs, criticism and blame, and clashes in the South China Sea.
In the process of resolving this dispute, the media should be appropriately utilized, and false information must not be spread by using information from an accurate source and verifying whether it is true.
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