This is coolbert: Many persons have commented on the low level of development that exists or existed in many communist countries around the world. In the capital cities, such a Peking or Moscow, well, things seemed to be at a level of development at least somewhat commensurate with those capitals of the western world. For the most part. You could always point to the lack of phones, cable TV, computers, etc., but you did seem to have vehicle traffic, paved roads, flush toilets, and a degree of modernity. But once you got say fifty miles, or not even that far, away from the capital, things went down hill quick. In say, China, you could go to some small village of say 1000 persons and take a trip back 1000 years in time. No electricity, paved roads, and oil lamps at night time. Animals stabled with persons in the same dwelling. There was even a few years ago a news network that had a periodic episode where they would send a reporter fifty miles out of Moscow just to see what he could see. Primitive conditions by western standards all around.

Now, Basil Lidell Hart, the British military writer [acolyte of J.F.C. Fuller], has proposed that as part of an overall military strategy, keeping a country primitive was in the interests of the communist powers. As in biology, where an organism that is specialized is highly susceptible to disruption, so is a modern society. Modern societies are highly specialized and easily disrupted. Just as the slightest disruption [disruption to the food supply for example] to a highly specialized animal organism can cause that organism to die, and usually rapidly so, the same thing can occur with highly specialized modern societies. Such as the U.S. We rely upon intricate systems for communications, transportation, food supply, defense, etc. [many of these systems are interconnected and dependent upon one another too]. Any disruption to these systems can lead to big chaos and a breakdown of the organism. The primitive communist societies, being less developed [by far in hindsight], are not susceptible to these disruptions. The society either does not rely upon complicated systems or is self-reliant and self-sufficient. We in the U.S. and in now the entire western world are not. Susceptible to attack at a number of points. Say from terrorists. Simultaneous attacks, coordinated, could create massive damage that would be difficult to recover from, and perhaps even endanger the survival of the organism itself, the U.S.

Now, was this concept something that the communist governments actually espoused as a weapon of war? Be primitive and we are less susceptible to attack and disruption? Just don't know the answer to that one. But, it is a fact, that when the Germans did invade the Soviet Union in 1941, the did not find an infrastructure to support their war-making effort as they did during their invasions of western Europe. This was a constant source of headache for the Germans and severely did impede their military effort.

coolbert.