London_Calling, here’s a question for you:
Would you rather South Africa liberalize and let blacks into an existing democratic parliamentary structure, or would you rather the whole show be given to a slimeball like Mugabe who respects not the rights of whites or blacks?
I admire Nelson Mandela greatly, but remember that he started as a terrorist. His ex-wife remained one, well past 1989. It’s easy to see why American politicians would be concerned.
And let’s not forget who started economic sanctions against South Africa - Ronald Reagan.
But here are some perfect examples of the type of misguided equivalence I’m talking about. I run down a litany of invasions, repressions, wholesale subjugation of countries, and murder by the millions, and the counter is, “Yeah, but look at South Africa!”.
I guess the theory is that if the United States isn’t absolutely perfect, it must be the moral equivalent of the most murderous regime to ever exist on the planet.
Yes, the U.S. supported some rather thuggish regimes. It was a WAR. Just as the U.S. supported Stalin himself in WWII, and the U.S supports countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan today. Wars create strange bedfellows.
None of this changes the fact that the U.S. was firmly on the side of good in the Cold War, and the U.S.S.R was on the side of evil. There is no question about that. Anyone who thinks they are even remotely close in terms of morality is either uneducated or willfully blind.
All you have to do is look at how many people risked their lives to escape from the USSR and it’s “Warsaw Pact” allies. Ever seen the footage of people being shot in E. Germany running thru barbed wire to the west before the wall was put up? How about jsut before the Berlin Wall fell. Did you see the trainloads (thousands!) of people desperately taking advantage of a torturous route to freedom-- thru Czechoslovakia, into Hungary, and then Austria. I’ll never forget the interviews with those people-- how they left their homes w/ about 2 hrs notice and ran at the first real chance they had to get the HELL out of E. Germany. And, E. Germany was the shining jewel of the Eastern Block countries.
I’d like anyone attempting to equate the US with the USSR to talk to some of those people. Or just to go back thru the news archives and see what it was like. Never was anything more black an white.
I’m curious about the cold war in Africa, mainly the effects of Che Guevera and others on the Central African countries? The help (or lack of, I don’t know) that the USSR and the USA provided to each side?
I think you will find Cuban, Chinese, US, and Soviet involvement in Africa. One problem is the fact that many of the principles are alive. The information trickles out over time.
I found this. I would call it a fairly balanced take on the Cold War in Africa. The ideological difference between capitalism and communism must have seemed pretty insignificant during a bloody proxy war. To a German, however, capitalism had obvious advantages.
Stalin has a beer…cheats on wife
(a cookie awaits)
Thanks for the responses and thank you Sam Stone for the excellent timeline and Beagle for the link. Yeah i heard about the shoe thumping thing,Kruschev was a few beers short of a six-pack. Everytime i see that pic of him raving about the U2 incident,he looks so loony.
Personally i would blame USSR. Yeah, maybe Stalin needed a buffer between him and the rest of Europe so he gobbled up all of Eastern Europe.Maybe i’ll grant him that. But u must admit that USSR turned the heat up many times…Berlin blockade,Cuban missile crisis, invading Afghanistan.I tend to see the Americans as being on the defensive and acting accordingly.
I, too am interested in what Chumpsky has to say. I’ve read many threads where he has been the lone ranger-Mr Controversial and proud of it. I often dont agree with him, but he’s pretty entertaining.
By the way, couldnt get into straightdope the last two days…was it my poor conenction or that worm that’s been screwing up traffic…you cant believe how frustrating it was thank god for Fark.com
I don’t think we ever claimed any particular morality. We just wanted to live our way, and we weren’t pleased to see how Stalin betrayed us.
As opposed to the murderou, bloody regimes the Soviets supported? Of course, we could have done better. But often, we supported them because we felt we had no other choice. It is easy to blame the strong for not protectign the weak. But being strong creates its own vulnerabilities, and we were engaged in a death-match with the Reds.
Like I said, we never claimed any particular morality. We simply tried to live our own lives. And I think you mistake poverty for nobility.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by smiling bandit *
[. But often, we supported them because we felt we had no other choice.
Mobutu? Diem? Pinochet? You had no other choice? and what about ensuring the Angola conflict raged on for ages by funding UNITA? U had no other choice? Thats quite lame.
One thing I’ve been curious about lately is, with the opening of Soviet archives, is there any clear evidence that the USSR intended to launch an unprovoked military attack designed to communize the West? If the US had slacked off on defense and containment would the Red Hordes have been unleashed? Soviet apologists say that they felt they were surrounded by enemies, had been invaded many times, etc, etc. Hawks read expansionist motives into Soviet actions and Communist ideology. But given what we now know, what were they really up to?
You don’t need to read secret archives to see that the Soviets were expansionist. All you have to do is read your history.
That ‘buffer zone’ nonsense has always annoyed the crap out of me. First of all, there is nothing about being next the Soviet Union that should give them the right to invade you and subjugate your people. Excusing Soviet repression and invasions by saying, “They just want a buffer zone” is just a way of not having to face up to the fundamental evils of the Soviets.
And since the Soviets didn’t have the capability of launching massive invasions over water, the only way they could invade anyone was by starting with their neighbors. So in this sense, the ‘buffer zone’ argument is unfalsifiable. By definition, once they invade one country and absorb it in their empire, the next adjacent country becomes the new ‘buffer’.
But the ‘buffer zone’ theory doesn’t explain Soviet intervention in Central and South America, or their moving missiles into Cuba, or their interference in Africa and the Middle East.
Remember, they had a huge military / industrial / political system (sort of) like we did. Some generals and politicians were more aggressive than others. Ultimately, it was not worth the risk of even %10 of the ICBM, SLBM, Nuclear gravity bombs, etc. getting through. Thus, the justification for ridiculously huge nuclear stockpiles.
As a philosophy, Communism seeks to take over all the capitalist systems. As we have been told by some of the board’s Marxists, in order to properly implement Communism you have to go big, preferably worldwide.
Not only that, Stalinist was clearly an imperialist (although Lenin was not, interestingly). It was Stalin that forcibly kept the Central Asian states in the Union, even though Lenin apparently wanted them to be able to choose for themselves. Lenin caved in to Stalin’s constant pressure.
While I don’t think you would see massive Soviet invasions into Western Europe, there’s no reason to believe that they wouldn’t fund insurgencies if they believed there was a group willing to go about it.
I was stating a fact. If you wish to argue with men long dead or retired from public service, I suggest you go talk to them. You have not, in fact, provided any evidence against my presentation.
I don’t want to hear old-school interpretations of Soviet planning from without, I want to hear from the horse’s (bears?) mouth whether the USSR had any realistic plans to invade the U.S. Maybe their plans changed over time from the 50’s to the 80’s?
It’s understood that their policy was to support communist movements where there were communist movements to support (sure they were fucking evil and expansionist, my point is not to question that). But even if we were to imagine the whole of Asia, Africa, and Latin America falling to communism, that still leaves a gap in the thinking as to how to approach the U.S. and Western Europe, where the potential for grass-roots support and 5th columns was much less. So did the Soviets plan an all-out “Red Dawn” attack on the U.S. only to be thwarted by our military strength, or did they defer the question and adopt a wait-and-see approach whil building up their own military in case a war happened to break out?
No one’s said anything about the U.S. being invaded. But eventually, Europe and Africa.
Smiling bandit…
Saying you had no other choice but to support brutal dictators is not a fact…thats the problem i have with your post.
minega- I think what the idea with that (supporting bloody dictators) is that if we didn’t, the Soviet Union would have, and the if we were pulling strings, we could try to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. If the Soviet Union were in charge, they might be able to give the new “Glorious Leader” a How-To guide in mass slaughter and invading your neighbors.
In the end, all nations work for their own good. While it is nice that the US pumps more money into foreign aid than any other nation on earth, we do it to make ourselves look good, and to create markets for the goods we sell. Canada, the UK, Russia, Kuwait, Israel, Australia… none of these nations are going to do anything with the express purpose of hurthing themselves to help others.
The actions of the US in the cold war were motivated by the desire to preserve their own power and influence in the world against the growing influence of an opposing power. Granted, the Soviet regime was expansionist, brutal and oppressive, and there is no moral equivalence between the two powers, but please, to think that the US was on a good guy mission to save the world is disingenuous and leads to historical perspectives a la **Sam Stone’s ** timeline.
Feel free to dispute it.