  The Cold War stalemate was long taken by Baudrillard as establishing a frozen history in which no significant change could take place. Already in his mid-1970s reflections, he presented the Vietnam war as an “alibi” to incorporate China, Russia, and eventually Vietnam into a more rationalized and modernized world economic and political order (Baudrillard 1983a: 66f), and in his book on the Gulf war he repeats this claim (1995: 85), thus failing to see the actual political stakes and reasons for the Vietnam war, as well as the significance of the struggles between capitalist and communist  blocs.[12]