I don't think Urban is saying that all of Hubbard can be explained away by the Cold War. Hubbard was frequently good at reading the public mood and pitching Scientology in that context and the Cold War was the backdrop for a good amount of Scientology history.
I expect he drew some inspiration from McCarthyism just as he did from 1984.
Hubbard used his own 'Propaganda Tech' on others, including his own followers, to such an extent that quoting his comments in lectures and writings can be confusing or misleading. During the 1950s and 1960s, the "public" "hated" communists, so Hubbard made a point of being vehemently and publicly anti-communist, and sought to identify his perceived enemies as communists or communist sympathizers.
However, Hubbard could vary his approach if it seemed advantageous to do so. He even briefly instructed that Scientology be identified as anti-Capitalist.
In a 6 October 1965 (broadly circulated) 'Executive Letter' Hubbard announced,
"McCarthyism has many faces. It is still abroad today."
And in another (non public) issue, 'Enquiry Rumor UK' of 9 February 1966, Hubbard (privately) explained, regarding a pending Enquiry in Britain:
"The news that some Lord is going to ask a question in the House as to 'why the Health Minister here does not conduct an Enquiry into Scientology like in Melbourne'...
"Planning would be if any more is heard of this:
"Get a detective on that Lord's past to unearth the tidbits. They're there.
"...We refuse to discuss or describe Scientology. As near as we come is, 'Well, Scientology isn't like psychiatry. In psychiatry they think adultery is a cure for ---' You get it. Curve every answer with answers that make lurid press to psychiatry's cost. Papers by policy want only Blood and Sex - so give them psychiatry's and they'll print it, Further, couple the words psychiatry with Capitalism - allege that psychiatry is the Capitalist's tool. A Conservative opened the attack in the UK and found the Press beating the drum for us."
When this approach did not prove effective, Hubbard quickly resumed his prior long standing tactic of calling his enemies "communists."
Then, by 1971, with the USA Vietnam war becoming increasing unpopular, and Scientology's membership, and potential membership, becoming younger, Hubbard switched to calling his enemies fascists and Nazis.
Some more from the 'Executive Letter' of 6 October 1965 (when Scientology was having a difficult time in Australia):
"In 1942, as a senior US Naval officer in Northern Australia by fluke of fate, I helped save them from the Japanese."
And from a 17 February 1969 'Information Letter' apparently written especially for Scientologists in Australia and New Zealand, and exploiting any possible lingering apprehension about east Asians, particularly the Japanese, Hubbard refers to the "Asiatic hordes" and uses the "Japs" as the "hated enemy":
"Remember I know Anzo. I once had a big share in saving its bacon from Japan. Note please that a small Jap force could have taken the lot and didn't. A handful of us, months before the coming of US troops, worked like mad to balk the Japs and change their minds. So I know exactly how real the threat is [from what Hubbard called the 'Asiatic hordes' to the north]..."
... the latest academic fad that Scientology was a "Cold War religion,"
