>>>>Remember the domino theory? Well, that was the reason behind our actions in Vietnam.
>>>>
>>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_Theory
>>>
>>>Nice... the entire scheme was based on "we assume they would do exactly as we would if we were in their position, and since we don't like them, we'll wage as many wars as we like to make sure the guys we like win over the guys we don't like. We are control freaks, and so must they be too".
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>>Yeah, what kind of paranoid fool must Kennan have been to think Stalin was a control freak <s>
>>
>>( for the non-historians - George Kennan was the author of containment strategy and is considered one of founding theorists of the Cold War ... oh, and Stalin was the Great Helmsman ( or was that Mao? ) of the Workers' Paradise and the never doubted hero of American "Progressives" for 25 years - well, except for the Trotskyites ... )
>
>Only two faults with this line of thought:
>
>1) The Guy Of Steel died in 1953. The cold war was kept warm for almost forty years afterwards.

I don't think the Hungarians felt their problems were over when Stalin was 4 years dead nor the Czechs in '68. The GDR always had the benefit of German efficiency - with Stalinists like Ulbricht and Honnecker more Stalinist than Stalin. The Wall that went up in 61 wasn't to prevent an invasion of capitalists. Of course Stalin sold out the Greek, French, Italian and other Communist parties. He sold out the *Russian* communist party in the early 30s. Remember, Trotsky wasn't killed by the OSS and the Russian Army lost about as many officers to Stalin's purges before the war as it did to combat with the Germans.

We did not imagine monsters like Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Beria, Malenkov. And as to using the Cold War to retain power, remember the party that began our Cold War involvement and the containment policy was turned out office in 52 and then that party - strong Cold Warriors - were turned out in 60 - and they were turned out in 68. Not exactly the iron fist.

Did the defense industry beat the drums to keep the defense budget high - sure - but with Soviet superiority in land forces and their proximity to Western Europe who did one think could stop them if they decided to roll - France?

But of course they didn't intend to swallow up the rest of Europe any more than they intended to swallow up Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria ... Afghanistan ...

I think it is very safe to say that if the US defense posture had been different in the 50s even countries that were not US allies but rather just sought some degree of autonomy might have been in danger. You might have found Russian would have been required in school, rather than an elective <s> ( though they had no illusions that Tito would be a pushover and the Russians may have rightly decided tangling with Yugoslavia would have been worse than Chechnya or Afghanistan )

I really think any serious assessment of the Cold War knocks down notions of moral equivalency or the idea that the Russian threat was just a story we told to scare children and voters. I agree that paranoia begets paranoia and it escalates, but the years between 1945 and 1955 - when Americans would have really prefered to stay home and watch television - were pretty traumatic.

It became fashionable in the 60s to see the "Red Scare" of the 50s as illusory. Serious scholarship - including the release of Soviet documents - has made it pretty clear that Stalin's allies in the US included more than "useful idiots".

And remember, Stalin's legacy persisted for a long time - until the vory y zakone pretty much took over the country under Brezhnev


>
>2) he was a control freak at home and within his realm (i.e. including the satellite countries), but not even his inner circle ever counted on Western communist parties doing anything much. He did sign the Yalta, right? He sold the Greek partisans after the war, just like he sold German communists before it.
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>>The idea that the Cold War was a mutual hallucination is both revisionist and wrong.
>
>Oh, no, it was a real case... two cases of nomenklatura selling protection to their own people, using the other as pretext. Perfect for staying in power forever.