Cold War

The Cold War is invoked as a history of geopolitical hostility whose hatred is experiencing a revival. Its reference places renewed political antagonism among the accumulating signs of crisis that the characters might have recognized but instead had reason to deny.

Reference in the Narrative

The Cold War appears in a reflection on information that had long been available to the characters. Alongside the gradual death of Lebanon’s cedars, the disappearance of the river dolphin, the discovery of fission, and vessels crowded with Africans, the resurgence of Cold War hatred forms part of a broad catalogue of warning signs. The passage gives no specific conflict or political actors; its emphasis is on hostility returning as part of a worsening global condition.

Significance

The reference challenges the idea that the crisis is wholly unforeseeable. G. H. would have pointed out that people had ample evidence, and that ignorance could be willful: awareness did not require studying a curve or reading newspapers, since phones repeatedly indicated how bad things had become. The Cold War thus functions not as a detached historical aside but as one element in an argument about collective denial—the persistence of political hatred sits beside environmental damage and human suffering, all visible before the characters can fully confront what is happening.