On the fourth anniversary of his imprisonment in Cuba, former U.S. government contractor Alan Gross said he fears his country has “abandoned” him and appealed to President Obama to personally intervene in his case. In a letter to the president, sent via the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, Gross describes his isolation from the world, adding that his daughter and mother have been stricken by cancer, his wife has had to sell the family home in Maryland, and “my business and career have been destroyed.”

For the past six months, I've been reporting on a documentary, "Where Were You: The Day JFK Died," marking the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. Simultaneously I've been keeping a close watch on the coverage of the political gridlock, food fight, meltdown—pick your phrase—in Washington between President Obama and his political adversaries.

Nearly 67 years ago, the American diplomat George F. Kennan laid out the strategic framework that would define the towering rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. We came to know it as the Cold War — as real and in some ways as dangerous as a hot war, an overshadowing, winner-take-all ideological conflict juxtaposing communism and democratic capitalism, played out through diplomacy and small-scale conflicts in lieu of the unimaginable alternative: total nuclear conflagration.

Conflicts are defined, in large part, by how they are fought and their technologies. The First World War we associate with gas and tanks and the earliest use of airpower; the Second World War with strategic bombing and the first use of nuclear weapons. Those technologies help define us as human beings, shape our experience and politics, mould our present fears. So what of the way our conflicts are being fought today?

First of all, after the end of the Cold war, public opinion research demonstrates that in both countries the perception of the other side as an enemy decreased; in the United States it remains pretty stable, and the majority of Americans do not perceive Russia as a Cold-war-style adversary.

But much has changed since the “soft power” strategy of covertly educating North Koreans began in earnest two decades ago. North Koreans are no longer completely in the dark. We can’t quantify the amount of information that has leaked into the country, because we can’t conduct public opinion surveys in North Korea.