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The founding documents of Communism clearly state the system cannot last nor succeed unless the entire world is brought under the same system. It advocates doing so by force. That said I don't believe Putin nor Stalin paid anything more than lip service to communist ideals, as mentioned above it is a means to an end for them. But you have to wonder if they don't perceive us as the threat since Capitalism is in and of itself a threat to any other economic system. Certainly it has proven itself a threat to the USSR and its follow on the SU.
Given that we are certainly a perceived threat to their status quo you have to conclude that they would want to defend against such a perceived threat. And as any good Russian knows the best defense is a great offense.
Sorry Robert, but where in Das Kapital does it say anything like that? Id suggest you actually read Marx and Engels before making statements like that, because, with respect, what you are saying is just untrue. It might be in soviet manifesto, or Lenins Interpretation of the Communist Manifesto, but the "founding works" of communism say no such thing as you are claiming.
After two decades of economic study and preparatory work (especially regarding the theory of "surplus value") the founding works behind the communist movement first volume appeared in 1867: The production process of capital. After Marx's death in 1883, Friedrich engels introduced, from manuscripts and the first volume; Volume II: The circulation process of capital in 1885; and Volume III: The overall process of capitalist production in 1894. These three volumes are collectively known as Das Kapital.
".... I'm attacking the perception of the USSR being a military threat to countries in Western Europe."
.... and defending Soviet Communism's behavior of expansion which was as brutal and totalitarian as Hitler's. In 1939 - 40, the Communist cells in France and Britain were fed the line from the COMINTERN that the "enemies" of the Revolution were the bankers of Berlin and London. The object was to weaken and disrupt these countries ... and that is hostile behavior as surely as cyber war against Estonia or the USA is today
Agreed, however it was unrealistic and he knew it. While he chose to believe that a "State" was a construct, the reality was and remains that states are the arbiters of class and as such any conflict between classes necessitate the destruction of the state. That too is an oft discussed subject between he and Engels. It honestly matters very little what he thought so much as how those thoughts were realized and put into action. We could debate, and indeed academics still do, about what he thought or meant. The real world however is still dealing with how his thoughts and ideas have been placed into action. Those that took up his ideology, debatably as a means to an end rather than any real belief, have taken the ideology of a stateless classless society and instead made one of the most rigidly defined class based societies and a very totalitarian state.Seems to be lost in this debate that marx did not consider armed conflict with nations, rather armed conflict between the classes. marx saw the nation state as a tool of elite, and in the class war that he saw the nation state was an obsolete concept. it was not war between nations that he forecast, it was war between the classes