Butter Battle is an entertaining story about two fictional cities and their arms race. It is also as misguided allegory about the Cold-War and arms races in general. Yes, it is a children's book, but like so many of Theodor Seuss Geisel's works it hits people over the head with its moral.
And that moral is what, exactly? Sure it is laudable to encourage us to concentrate more on what unites us than what divides us. It is even a good thing to encourage international cooperation. But to equate the differences between the Warsaw Pact nations and the Nato west to a difference in butter application is just plain wrong. To point out the obvious, many Warsaw Pact nations enjoyed intermittent periods of shortages of butter and bread -- they would have been happy to eat it butter sideways if it were available. On a less literal level, and whatever your political inclination, Soviet socialism versus Western (particularly Anglo-American) democracy is not a mere question of preference and custom.
To make the point even clearer, nuclear weapons were not developed in a Cold War with the Soviets, but in a hot war with the Axis powers. There is no doubt that Germany was developing nuclear capability during the war. Should the US have refrained from nuclear weapons research putting their trust in their (less than inevitable) victory in the conventional war? Once the weapons were developed they were used against the enemy who attacked us at Pearl Harbor. What does a nation do at this point when the genie is out of the bottle? Furthermore, hindsight is 20-20, which is to say that there was no way of assuring another half crazed dictator wouldn't crop up with his eyes on developing nuclear weapons. The second Gulf War has shown the incredible difficulty in ascertaining credible threats and neutralizing them.
In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children.
And that moral is what, exactly? Sure it is laudable to encourage us to concentrate more on what unites us than what divides us. It is even a good thing to encourage international cooperation. But to equate the differences between the Warsaw Pact nations and the Nato west to a difference in butter application is just plain wrong. To point out the obvious, many Warsaw Pact nations enjoyed intermittent periods of shortages of butter and bread -- they would have been happy to eat it butter sideways if it were available. On a less literal level, and whatever your political inclination, Soviet socialism versus Western (particularly Anglo-American) democracy is not a mere question of preference and custom.
To make the point even clearer, nuclear weapons were not developed in a Cold War with the Soviets, but in a hot war with the Axis powers. There is no doubt that Germany was developing nuclear capability during the war. Should the US have refrained from nuclear weapons research putting their trust in their (less than inevitable) victory in the conventional war? Once the weapons were developed they were used against the enemy who attacked us at Pearl Harbor. What does a nation do at this point when the genie is out of the bottle? Furthermore, hindsight is 20-20, which is to say that there was no way of assuring another half crazed dictator wouldn't crop up with his eyes on developing nuclear weapons. The second Gulf War has shown the incredible difficulty in ascertaining credible threats and neutralizing them.
In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children.
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