1984: Were nukes ever addressed?

[Condescending_Robot]

@Syme

in Orwell’s time there was some resemblance to what he wrote, we had the Soviet Union, China, and the West. and China and the Soviet Union were then allies.

China was just ending its civil war when 1984 was being written; it was still exceedingly backwards and dependent on the USSR when he died. China as a world power was still thirty to forty years away. The states don’t correspond to any real-world states, but to the idea of large totalitarian empires.

[JohnT]

@Quimby

I always assumed that Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania were all in agreement that perpetual war helped them control their populations and the wars themselves were staged BS.

That’s what I thought. Hell, there was this one time in college where I argued that there was no war at all.

I was probably high, though.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@Condescending_Robot

China as a world power was still thirty to forty years away. The states don’t correspond to any real-world states, but to the idea of large totalitarian empires.

They do, however, correspond roughly to the Western alliance, the Soviet bloc, and China. In 1948 it was easy to imagine that all of western Europe might become Communist, filling out Eurasia. And even though China was poor at the time, given its history and population, it wasn’t difficult to imagine it dominating then-defeated Japan and Korea and forming Eastasia. Goldstein notes that Eastasia emerged somewhat later than the other two powers, “only after another decade of confused fighting”.

Orwell never indicates who makes up the Oceanic army, or what happens to veterans. Are the soldiers party members or proles? If the wars are real, there must be a lot of veterans around, but even in his visits to the prole quarters Winston never mentions encountering any. On the other hand Goldstein’s book is offered as the closest thing to objective reality (although it turns out to be a Party plant), and Goldstein says the wars are real, albeit not intended to be won any time soon.

[alphaboi867]

@muldoonthief

What about the pre-movie newsreels of bombing civilians in Eastasia, and the parade of Eastasian POWs? The newsreels could have been faked, but IIRC Winston saw the POWs being executed in the flesh.

How would he be able to tell the difference between Eastasian POWs and random Oceanian prisonors?

@Quimby

I always assumed that Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania were all in agreement that perpetual war helped them control their populations and the wars themselves were staged BS.

Ditto.

[Syme]

@alphaboi867

How would he be able to tell the difference between Eastasian POWs and random Oceanian prisonors?

according to the book O’Brien lent Winston Smith the wars weren’t staged. They were mostly skirmishes at the periphery of their zones. There was a no-man land where they fought and it changed hands often.

I suppose it was kind of the situation during the years of the cold-war where proxy wars in South East Asia and Latin America substituted for direct engagement of the cold war combatants

[Syme]

@Condescending_Robot

China was just ending its civil war when 1984 was being written; it was still exceedingly backwards and dependent on the USSR when he died. China as a world power was still thirty to forty years away. The states don’t correspond to any real-world states, but to the idea of large totalitarian empires.

I wrote ‘some resemblance’.

If you look at the crisis in Syria, both Russia and China are opposing the USA in any way they can.