 Though it continued to publish a great deal of conventional radical-left political economic and geopolitical material, it was at this point that its orientation began to diverge from other Australian left publications such as "Overland", and the "Australian Left Review".This practical-theoretical approach led those associated with "Arena" into a number of key debates and causes of the 1980s.The renewal of a 'hot' Cold War by the Reagan administration and of the nuclear arms race – 'exterminism' in E. P. Thompson's phrase – was analysed as an over-determined consequence of an instrumentalised, maximally abstracted way of life.