Do you think the United States ran its Cold War policy correctly, to minimize damage and to increase advantages? If you had general control of US policy after 1945, how would you have run the Cold War differently?
The primary US mistake in the Cold War is similar to much of what’s happening right now in the Middle East… people were going to want political and human rights after the colonial powers departed, but the US thought its best interests were served through the support of a disturbing number of dictators.
Perhaps the world wouldn’t have been spared Pinochet and the Shah, but at least the US wouldn’t have been partially responsible. (ETA: ironically I notice neither of my examples were colonies in the WWII era, but I was also thinking of Zaire and Vietnam.)
Well, the world didn’t blow up so… yes.
A certain amount of discord was probably inevitable in U.S. - Soviet relations after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the United States could have acted unilaterally in order to reduce the discord.
During the Second World War the Soviet Union lost 30 million dead and the destruction of one third of its industrial and farm plant. It should have been obvious to leaders of Great Britain and the United States that the USSR was in no shape to begin a campaign of world conquest.
Communist subversion was never a legitimate concern for the United States. It only worked in third world countries where right wing dictatorships protected parasitic oligarchies from impoverished populaces. Even then it usually failed.
The American Communist Party was never much more than a Marxist discussion club. There was never the remotest chance that it would establish a Communist dictatorship in the United States. Those who feared the CPUSA should have worried about a more probable danger, like being hit by a meteor.
A more enlightened American response to Communism would have avoided the Cuban Missile Crisis, the War in Vietnam, the Iranian Revolution, and the cost of a huge military establishment.
See: Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, (and almost) Korea, Japan,
The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was designed to create a buffer zone against another invasion from the West. A number of prominent Westerners, including Gen. Patton, and even Bertrand Russell advocated such an invasion.
The Korean War was justified. The eventual outcome was beneficial. Nevertheless, it was the result of Kim Il Sung’s megalomania. It was not ordered by Stalin.
I agree with what NDD wrote. The United States made a mistake in turning the Cold War into a struggle against communism. It was a struggle against the Soviet Union. We should have kept a distinction between our opposition with a specific country with our opposition to an ideology.
But those states that did adopt communism (see Cuba) turned into puppets for the Soviet Union causing things like the Cuban Missile Crises. You couldn’t “struggle” against the Soviets by allowing them little puppet states all over the globe.
As an ally of the Soviet Union Cuba had the right under international law to accept the missiles. Those missiles endangered the United States no more than U.S. missiles in Turkey endangered the Soviets. The missiles would have soon become obsolete anyway when the Soviets developed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
Ok, good, now I don’t have to start this thread myself.
The problem started in the 70’s with detente. The general theory of massive defense spending which the Soviets could not keep up with worked very well. But we failed to realize that.
First, we wasted massive sums in Vietnam. This was a proxy war with the Soviets that cost them far less than it did us. We didn’t even realize that China was a non-player in this conflict, and just as worried about the USSR as we were.
Then, Nixon and Kissinger decided to pursue appeasement of the Soviets through trade, and as a result we were attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In 1980 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and attempted to host the Olympics based on an economy that we were now supporting through trade, which often meant giving them money to buy our goods. When Jimmy Carter called for a boycott of the Olympics and trade in response, he collapsed the Soviet economy. Only we didn’t know it because our intelligence services were busy looking for… well something I assume, but not the signs that our strategy had worked. By the winter of 1981, the USSR could not produce enough food to survive. Luckily Reagan stepped in an propped them up with the sale of US wheat (with our money again), a great way to pick up votes in the midwest. Continuing trade propped them up until the final fall in 1989.
I think we could have won the CW years earlier if we had unleashed the US economy to increase our standard of living instead of dragging it down with continued defense spending that no longer had a purpose. The Soviet system was doomed to failure based on a level of expenditures we had acheived by the 60’s. They could not maintain their own military and a feasible domestic economy based on their system.
Right. And that was exactly the reason that I responded to Little Nemo and stated that we had a very real interest in protecting against the spread of communism and not simply focusing on the Soviets. Sure it was bad to have our favorite despot in charge of a country (Batista in Cuba) but at least our tyrant didn’t allow bad stuff to happen to US but the communist tyrant did.
Except WE were the ones to put Batista in their in the first place – IIRC, before that, Cuba had a democratic government. (Unless I’m thinking of something else)
You want to be communist, fine. Your country’s situation requires it to be somebody’s puppet state, OK we have the money . . . oh and Levis, McDonald’s, rock and roll, Playboy, etc, etc etc. What are the Soviets offering y’all again?
CMC fnord!
You got it backwards: Castro wanted the missiles to protect Cuba from another US invasion. By adopting a broad anti-communist stance instead of a narrower anti-USSR stance, we encouraged him to become a Soviet puppet.
But independence means they’re gonna mostly likely be opposed to our interests and want to do their own thing to improve their country, which is why we needed to install our dictators in the first place. Are you saying the U.S. planners were wrong? Seems to me they’re right, up and including the present day. Evil, but right.
But we often gave them little choice; we tended to overthrow or kill moderately leftist leaders that didn’t become Communist puppets, and replace them with our puppets.
What we “offered” them was dictatorship, exploitation, rape, murder and torture. With a hefty dose of self congratulatory rhetoric about how we were “saving” them thrown in. Very much like the Soviets; there was little to choose between us in terms of foreign policy.
But how much of that is a response to our assumption that every communist state is an enemy of the United States? If we had been willing to accept unaligned communist states, there probably would have been more of them.
Treat communism as an internal matter which we do not support but won’t interfere with. Only oppose countries that form alliances with the Soviet Union.
Look at Vietnam as an example. If we had been willing to accept an election and the formation of a communist government, Hanoi would have been prefectly happy to keep the Chinese and Soviets out of the country. Heck, they might have even signed an alliance with us to do it.
Ya really think I don’t know all this?
CMC fnord!
I’ll avoid going into our 80’s policy for Southern Africa. Where maintaining our access to “strategic minerals” trumped every and all pretense that we actually believed there was anythinggood about democracy. To quote Pat Buchanan “One man, one vote, one time”. :mad:
Hm. Team Evil and Team USA are the same? I’m not a “my country right or wrong” kinda guy - more of a “if wrong, to be made right.”
George Kennan was the architect of the Cold War policy of “containment”, which worked, killed far less people than WW3 through WW6 would have, and was far less expensive. Eggs were broken, omelets made. George F. Kennan - Wikipedia