Cold War

check your facts

the war was already in progress when the gulf of tonkin happened. it did bring us ground troops into the war but the us was already involved. that's why the us DDs were in the area. as to who was running the country south vietnam had a whole series of governments during the war. they were in charge of their own country even though the war was being run mostly by the us. sorry but you cannot prove a puppet south vietmanese government. there was just too many things that they had control and input on including such things as free fire zones, where the us forces could base and operate, and final approval over some military operations by us forces. doesn' sound like a puppet set up to me.

 

On the other hand if a South Vietnamese leader fell out of favour with the Americans they had the CIA get rid of him.

 

any proof

do you have any proof of that statement? that charge was a common one from the anti war crowd back then but as far as i know it was never proved or even supported by evidence. still ducking naming a war started by the west i see.

 

I already mentioned the Iran-Iraq war, because American involvement in it was pretty important, but you didn't accept it. Conflicts like Vietnam and Korea are a lot more complicated and we will never know whether it was an autonomous initiative or something that the Red/Imperialist Evil ordered them to start. What is clear enough about Korea however is that the USSR was never openly involved in it at all.

I am not trying to make the US seem as evil as Stalinist Russia, but it is clear from the opening posts in this thread that there is a clear bias in some members towards the US, blaming everything on the Communists. This does not entirely reflect what really happened, and though I respect the fact that you've grown up being taught that Communists are evil, I would like to just make it clear that this is not the whole picture.

 

wrong

i accepted the us involvment and did note that both the us and the ussr supported sides in the war, what i did not accept was that the war was a cold war fight as such. it was not started by either side of the cold war but was a local fight that did drag outsiders into it as it went on.
there should be a clear bias against the ussr since it was the aggressor during the cold war. this should be clear to anybody simply by looking at who started all the small wars that were fought by ussr proxies. your inability to name even one of these war started by the west should show clearly who was at fault. the whole commie experment has been a sad failure that killed more people that any other governemnt in history. no way can you make it into an innocent anything. it was a clear effort to enslave the whole world and nothing less. you and other appoligests cannot hide the oceans of blood that are the fault of the ussr and its friends. you may not like the usa but you should not let your bias to allow the true history of the ussr to ever be forgotten or forgiven. there are still liberals that have not come to grips with the whole bloody history of the red era. for some reason they still hold out hope that somehow somewhere marx's ideas can be made to work. i would like to think that you are not one of that misguided bunch. i enjoy our little jousts here.

 

I'm no apologetic of the bloody Communist regimes of Asia in the past century, so you need not worry. I would never deny that Mao and Stalin are the bloodiest dictators in the history of the human race, outranking even Hitler in the amount of blood on their hands. However, Communism was not an "effort to enslave the world" - not to communists themselves. The way they saw it, Western Imperialism was an effort to enslave the world, and had they won the Cold War someone would be claiming this as obvious while another member was struggling to make him see that there were two sides to the conflict, neither of which is completely responsible. Communists lived in the hope that other people would join their revolutionary cause because they believed it was the inevitable course of history, like Marx taught; their agression was seen as merely a reaction to the conscious efforts of the West to destroy communism when it first appeared.

I cannot name the wars started by the West because I am no expert in post-World War II history. However if you would be so kind as to point out the instances of true Soviet expansionism (other than the conceded point of Eastern Europe) that would be very enlightening.

 

a listing

first if you want to consider only wars started by troops of russia or china the captive states of eastern europe are about it. if you accept those wars started by commie governments right from the first shot and most likely planned in moscow or peking then the list is longer. korea , vietman, maylasa, el salvador, greece, half of africa, and others that i can't think of right off hand. futher evidence might be found in the fact that in contries that were divided at the end of WWII. germany, vietnam, korea- each case russia was bound by treaty and promise to allow the reuniting of all three as soon as possible with free elections. you will note that in all three cases that never happened.
the idea that russia and the revoultion were threatened by the dark forces and this threat was the reason for everything that was done is nothing more than proganda that has become percived as fact. a fine example of the big lie. in truth i belive that there were two reasons for russia's attempt to rule the world. the first was the rulers knew that as long as there were free people in the world their plans would never be safe. with free countries for contrasting examples the red dream was in constant danger. the second was simple meglomania and thirst for power. the dark forces myth serven two uses. one as an excuse and the second as a way to convince their people to submit to what was a lousy life.
sorry but you cannot make a case that paints the whole red era as anything other than the biggest power grab in history.

 

Well, Eastern Europe was not actually a war of expansion. They 'administered' the 'liberated' territories until the end of the war, and then held elections. In all but one country, these were so heavily rigged as to be unfunny. In Czechoslovakia, they were not rigged, and the local Communists won. They were then summoned to Moscow and off went the dream of Czechoslovakia for the Czechs.

If anything, you could see the turning of Eastern Europe into a buffer zone as no worse than the Western Empire Building (and remember that most European states still had the majrity of their Empires at this point) - and even as nicer (less bloodshed, etc).

As to the many 'local' wars, well, in all honesty Mosow or Peking/Beijing probably did give encouragement. Yes, they did want to bend the world to their political system. But so (from their viewpoint) did the West. After all, from the moment of the Glorious Revolution the West has been fighting Communism, sometimes sending soldiers (like the Russian Civil War), sometimes using words, sometimes purging political undesirables from their system in a series of show trials (well, ok, only one country over one short period).

But I would like to state that frankly, despite all I have written, I agree with the basic point that lynn1212 makes, and I remain very glad that I was born in the West, where I am free to write this kind of thing!

 

Re: a listing

In Vietnam for one the US didn't promote or organize these elections either, all too afraid that the Communists would win. Communism had a great deal of appeal to many former colonies because of its rejection of Imperialism; to the nationalistic movements of (post-)colonial nations Communism was a statement of independence. You will note that the Declaration of Independece of Vietnam quotes liberally from the American Declaration of Independence, though, which suggests much less Soviet influence and much more internal initiative.

No, it is inherent in Communist theory that the Capitalist world will oppose and seek to destroy the Socialist or Communist world, and the West seemed to be pretty actively pursuing this goal in the 1920s.

Communism was probably the "biggest power grab in history" (right up there with the division of Africa in the 1880s) but it never denied that it would be, because it saw itself as the inevitable outcome of history for the entire world. Every Capitalist country was interpreted as backward and ripe for revolution. I am not justifying this, I am only hoping that it will make you understand why Communism felt threatened and acted violently towards this threat.

 

Personally, I'm just glad that the Cold War ended and that we're all still alive and in one piece, thank God! The ifs, whys, and wherefores can be argued until the cows come home, but to what purpose? It's over and done with. Why argue about it now?

 

The same can be said of any other war or event in history, with the exception that we didn't live in those days. I still think they need to be debated though, if only to understand them thorougly and be able to prevent history from repeating itself (albeit in a different guise).

I'm glad I survived the Cold War, too - though I was one and a half years old when the wall came down...

 

be careful with understanding

you have to be careful when trying to understand motives. its fine to try to understand why someone does something but you should not get so mixed up in understanding that you forget the threat. in the end it makes no difference if the reason the ussr wanted to control the world was because they though that the free world was a natural foe and thus a danger. if someone is coming after you with a knife do you bother to try to understand his mindset or do you take defensive action? the nazis though that they had the right and need to expand so they attacked those in their way. same game different players.
in short i really don't give a flying rat's a** why the commies did what they did because it was meaningless in the end. they tried, we resisted, they lost. works for me.

 

Re: be careful with understanding

And there you have the Cold War in a nutshell.


It is a shame that we do not have many Eastern European members - some of them have very definate views on history that are remarkably different to Western views. I have come across one guy who was adamant that Britain & France spent their time between 1918 and 1939 deliberately steering Hitler into the position of having to attack the soviet Union, starting with the terms of the Versailles Treaty.
While some (as in my example) are a little odd, some of the views really do make you think hard about how we percieve history.

 

Re: be careful with understanding

Would you like us to go trolling on other fora for such folks? I know on Axis History, there are some from Poland, Russia, Romania, and possibly the Ukraine.

 

Re: be careful with understanding

Yeah, I'd definitely call that an odd opinion (France and Britain steering Germany to attack the USSR? Sheesh!). Perhaps Tom's right, and you should try to get other people to come into this forum and give us their views.

 

the cold war , was a set of postures taken by the then two military
superpower .essentialla bad case of paranoia , the U.S.saw themselves
as the champions of a new no-bull
era of prosperity and freedom , the soviet seeked political guaranties as
to their safety , the russian believed than roosevelt was a good man and
up to a point friendly toward them , staline hated churchill as an imperialist
back stabber who deliberatelly let russia be bled white while doing the
minimum .Churchill got the ear of Truman who was a small town politico
who was flattered by churchill deference and advice one of wich was to
squeeze the russian hard ,lend lease ship full of food for starving russia
got turned in mid trip , the whole conference took a very icy turn .
the russian worst fears came trues when NATO was founded .to as was
put at the time to keep the german down the russian out and the yanks in
The U.S. as defender of freedom showed a remarkable abbility to pick
the worst gansters as allies from south america to africa and asia ,
however , the U.S. invented the great suburbian culture , equalitarian
prosperous , democratic and progressive
the USSR did good under krutchev ,supporting prettymuch all the colonial
independence mouvement , with the active complicity of publicly paid
intelectuals , and an outstanding space program they were competing for
the soul of the world masses with some geniure messianic appeal who got
them more than supporters ,apostles.

the critical time I believe was the tcheck invasion , such realpolitic was
shocking ,many said than it was a lost opportunity for communist
to reform itself, I believe than brejnev was right and the system could not
be touched without crumbling from within , as gorbatchev saw .

the U.S. did not triumph witout cost
a huge military complex against wich eisenhower as president warned the
country became an end in itself . various interest have in fact carried on
the cold war , it is a general belief in russia than nato expantion witin 100
miles of leningrad is a provocation ,

time will tell

 

NATO is not about to attack Russia, they have no reason to do so. Russian paranoia is still alive and well, it would seem. :roll:

 

NATO is about to attack russia , NATO is all about attacking russia ,
that's why it existe ,not to protect europe from the eskimos .
the going on in central asia , caucasus , balkans and baltic have been
very consistent in edging russia out , pushing it at the edge of relevance
as a power ,certainly as an europeen power , plus a good dose of
provocations by the like of lugar and mccain in particular , with the odd
tidbit of " good dog , good dog " pat on the head ,
the election of merkens in germany is a very bad news for the russians
for an intelligent point of view try buchanan site , he is an old right wing
who doesn't wallow into evangelism .

gee I hate organised religion !! :bang:

 

Uh, NATO is a mutual defense pact - it was all about making sure that the Soviet Union could not conquer Europe piecemeal. Nowhere in the treaty does it allow for outright offensive action.

 

a defensive pact can preempt , under some pretexts , in time of tensions
an attack could be sold to the yokel at home with a bit of newsfroth
some flag waving and a "just trust me "spin .
the expansion of NATO is a military fact , it require military adjustments
russian are not crazy and know the dept of prejudices against them '
they also know in their soul than the west has always attacked them ,
from the teutonics to poland , sweden , france , germany , germany again
including two world conquerors and the two world wars .
if this is paranoia , it is well fouded in facts , everybody hate russia
it is not inconcievable than a russian politician would be elected on a
return to the safe historical borders , my guess is than the balts
somewhat overestimate their leverage and are in fact very vulnerable to
a demonstration of nationalist assertion by russia .