Glider
Captain
That would point to a problem in the original business analysis and load test planning. To the PM coming in to try and sort it out, it falls into comment 1) 'It shouldn't do that'
Nuclear War: Cold War
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That would point to a problem in the original business analysis and load test planning. To the PM coming in to try and sort it out, it falls into comment 1) 'It shouldn't do that'
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,971
- Jun 25, 2013
I think one of the things that many people forget is that bolshevik or not, the rulers of the USSR did not create their entire foreign policy out of whole cloth; significant parts of it were inherited or adopted from Russia. This could include subjugation of Poland (a goal Prussia had long held, and passed on to Germany), interventionism into foreign lands (a prime tenet of the so-called "Holy" Alliance, which led to Russian troops intervening in Western and Central Europe).
Personally, I think that the invasions of Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, and Finland would have happened whether or not the bolsheviks had won the Russian Civil War. Those particular invasions were revanchism, perhaps cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric. While there may not have been a Cold War had the bolsheviks been defeated in the Russian Civil War, I think there would have been a WW2 in Europe which strongly resembled the WW2 that actually occurred. German revanchism would have been just as strong, the desire for revenge on revenge against the Entente just as strong, the antisemitism just as strong, and the desire for expansion eastward just as strong.
Personally, I think that the invasions of Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, and Finland would have happened whether or not the bolsheviks had won the Russian Civil War. Those particular invasions were revanchism, perhaps cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric. While there may not have been a Cold War had the bolsheviks been defeated in the Russian Civil War, I think there would have been a WW2 in Europe which strongly resembled the WW2 that actually occurred. German revanchism would have been just as strong, the desire for revenge on revenge against the Entente just as strong, the antisemitism just as strong, and the desire for expansion eastward just as strong.
"Those particular invasions were revanchism, perhaps cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric "
This is one of the main points of contention. Revanchism cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric - or revolutionary drive towards the world revolution which looked like a revanchism and used some imperial instruments.
As for Germany, we can wonder whether the Nazis can succeed if Moscow does not instruct Communists to fight against the Social Democrats and the Republic.
This is one of the main points of contention. Revanchism cloaked in revolutionary rhetoric - or revolutionary drive towards the world revolution which looked like a revanchism and used some imperial instruments.
As for Germany, we can wonder whether the Nazis can succeed if Moscow does not instruct Communists to fight against the Social Democrats and the Republic.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,971
- Jun 25, 2013
It really makes very little difference to the people who would be conquered in either case.
Bolshevism -- and bolsheviks had pretty much taken over all the groups which had started as philosophically marxist -- was never some kind of pro-democracy organization. Having read some of Lenin's writings in my political science classes in college, the one thing that stuck in my mind about Lenin is his quest for power.
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- #45
What's revanchism? I've never heard the term before?
There's often a preoccupation for power in those who become dictators. You generally see some of the same traits that appear over and over again.
- Narcissism: They're egocentric, and have a massive sense of entitlement. They often have an overinflated sense of their own abilities, and if they really are that able, any display of humility is a feint.
- Machiavellian: They're largely amoral and treacherous. They're highly devious and have a cynical view of humanity, generally subscribing to a dog-eat-dog worldview. Unsurprisingly, they mistake the discipline and self-restraint from the largely unrestrained pursuit of absolute power as being some form of self-delusion. Their cynical view of humanity often includes a subtle paranoia, whereby they assume others will harm them in the same way they would if it was convenient, so they try to control others by entangling them in debt, scandal, or in compromising situations to establish leverage (it's all about power), and they're generally sadistic.
For people who would be conquered if the USSR manages to expand beyond the borders of the "socialist camp" of 1970s-1980s, who knows...
But there was a huge difference between the ways the old Empire and USSR behaved in the conquered territories, before 1917 and after 1917, respectively.
He was very straightforward in that quest, wasn't he. Ruthlessness unbelievable even for many of his comrades. From the letter to Trotsky (1919):
"If the advance begins, is it possible to mobilize about 20 thousand workers plus 10 thousand bourgeois, to place machine guns behind them, to shot down several hundred and to achieve the maximum pressure on Yudenich...."
Yes. The Soviet Military knew what its threats, its advantages and disadvantages were. At sea, the Western navies had assets that it could not match technologically nor qualitatively, for example aircraft carriers - the USSR's answer to these was the cruise missile, launched by submarines and aircraft as a stand-off weapon. From the Tu-4, the Tu-16, Tu-95, Tu-22M and the Big Tu-160, all cruise missile carriers designed to counter the US carrier threat. During Soviet times, the defensive strategy was layered, with its larger warships with their cruise missile capabilities - the Kievs and heavy cruisers equipped with these fearsome weapons, and cruise missile carrying submarines at the frontline and behind them the smaller less capable submarines behind, guarding harbour facilities etc. Obviously, the USSR's submarine force outnumbered the West's by a considerable margin.
The entire Cold War was a threat and counter threat game of developing weapon systems to defeat the opposition's advances. The USSR's numerically superior submarines were countered by not only by advanced anti-submarine ships and aircraft in abundance, but also by small stealthy diesel boats that were/are lethal. The USA's so-called 'bomber gap' with the USSR, leaving to the USSR developing ICBMs to counter the USA's numerically superior long range nuclear bomber fleet, and so on and so forth...
This is true, but not at any cost otherwise the USSR would have enacted this policy. The driver behind this was fear, however, not naked aggression...
I disagree with both these statements, simply because, as I mentioned, the USSR was driven by fear of failure, fear of what it considered hostile Western attitudes, fear of foreign intervention, fear of its leaders' lies being exposed etc. The desire to appear strong was (is in current Russia - Putin has stated on numerous occasions that Russia is surrounded by potentially hostile countries) driven by this exact same feeling. In Stalin's time, as you know, a desire to paint a positive picture of him and the USSR lent itself to heinous crimes against humanity, and the driver was that Stalin was paranoid beyond belief. Following this, the fear of falling behind technologically and ideologically drove aspects of every day life. Soviet citizens were being told theirs was a better life than in the West, but the reality was not the case. Why? The leaders didn't want their citizens to find out the truth behind the façade.
Analysing politically what dictated the USSR's actions has been written about by many authors and I have to admit that I haven't read many, but its ultimate driver was fear. When Perostroika was introduced, the reality behind it was the threat of economic collapse. Brezhnev's (and the two walking zombies between him and Gorby) approach was to draw the curtains and not look outside, but Gorbachev, being the astute economist that he was saw that the USSR could not compete militarily with the West, and that economically the survival of the USSR was at stake if the current status quo remained. He saw sense in a softening of the USSR's stance as being for the long term benefit of its survival, but obviously, fear of its collapse toward the end of the 80s drove him to act in typical Soviet fashion against dissident states in attempting to keep the Soviet Union together, but even he saw the end - riots and public dissent in East Germany told him the end was near for the DDR, which in turn brought about the symbolic fall of the wall, which brought about the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, with public uprising in different countries driving this shift. Fear is the key to understanding the motivation of this regime.
Agree to disagree. Your descriptions of the USSR are sometimes right on the spot and sometimes are missing crucial elements, as ideology.
Leaders of Soviet Russia were driven by fear often when the situation was not stable, the economy ruined and there were expectations of new military interventions. But the USSR since its early years was driven by the policies formed according to those ultimate goals set by the Party programs and fear was for the weak. USSR wanted to be strong and it considered itself strong since middle-late 1930s.
As a young Komsomol member and Navy lieutenant, I felt no fear.
Neither my senior relatives, friends, teachers (in all forms), commanders, etc.
The West was decadent and weak, the Capitalism was in yet another crisis, again and again, the was a Socialist Camp and the "national liberation movements" around us, so what to fear?
In none of my studies of the Soviet past, I can find the proof that the leadership was frightened, except in very few periods. For example, in 1941-1942, during the late Korean War (not Stalin himself but his close circle who probably helped the dictator to die), the Caribbean crisis to some extent (again, there was a division in the situation awareness between the leader and others).
Of course. Not any cost but only at that cost which was acceptable, as in the bloody but successful offensives of 1943-1945. Or in the proxy wars where the cost was economical mostly. But who said that USSR did NOT enact that policy? It was enacted step by step, year by year, everywhere where there was an opportunity. There were successes and failures and draw results, but the policy was enacted until the last years of the USSR.
Brezhev was a character of many anecdotes, true. And he was a talented apparatchik and Party manager much more capable than his predecessor. He and his foreign minister Gromyko managed to divide the West and to enjoy the fruits of the so-called detente. "National LIberation"(read - organized terroristic) movement began to flourish during the Brezhnev's rule. He started to "draw" those curtains in his last 5-6 years, but it did not mean that the Party was headless. There were other smart and capable leaders. Andropov, despite the illness since 1980, was one of them and not a walking zombie even in his last weeks.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,971
- Jun 25, 2013
I don't think Lenin or a Lenin-like leader could come out of anyplace except a autocratic state.
Spoken like a true 3rd generation social democrat!
You don't think a democracy can produce a dictator? Oh, ye of little faith! What about the Weimar Republic? And current regimes in Turkey, Brazil, Philippines, Venezuela, etc?
Citizens in a democracy under stress seem to be all too willing to embrace a charismatic, strongman leader. The more autocratic he his, the fewer hard decisions their poor, stressed out brains have to cope with. Witness the current Pied Piper of Foggy Bottom.
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- #51
I know it sounds strange, but I generally assume most leaderships are devoid of ideology except to aggregate power and maintain it. I figure they simply use displays of ideology to get people to do what they want.
Accidents happen...
I assume the Vietnam war was used as a means to divide the United States up, and other conflicts affected other nations?
Dimlee, a pleasure to learn your perspective as always. Definitely agree to disagree though. Ideology is borne of the fear of the unknown and the nunknown itself (as is faith based constructs etc) and dissent against what exists in place. Regarding the USSR, yes, you are of course right throughout your argument, but I still believe that fear was a most successful driver. Yes, there is no doubt that those in power did not 'feel' fear, but the policy was driven by it. Perhaps insecurity is a better term of description. As a young Komsomolsk your point of view is obviously welcome and informative, but tempered by what you were expected to believe at the time. I would imagine there would have been little opportunity for you to question why you were told to believe and study what you did.
I think you're a bit harsh here. I think the process of acquiring power to achieve their honestly held ideological goals, and then hold on to power to protect those achievements from ideological heresy tends to change leaders from true believers to cynics. The perks that come with that power can also exert a seductive effect.
And can be encouraged to happen.
I think encouraging and supporting Uncle Ho started out as a cheap way to siphon off some of the USA's overwhelming military power, and was later recognized as a way to drive disruptive divisiveness into American society.
The pleasure is all mine. This is a good discussion despite some disagreements.
Yes, I think so. Vietnam war was probably the most impressive example, but not the only one. Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schumann) has written and spoken in many details about the underlying strategy and the methodology. I can't recommend his lectures highly enough.
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- #56
I think for the kind of people you're thinking about, they start out with ideological goals and, in their desire to achieve them, they have to be what they're not (and they start to become the mask), and resort to devious means (which start to become routine).
That applies to people who people who become corrupted: Some people are naturally corrupt, however. That's the people that concern me most.
Adds up. That said, the media played a role (whether unintentionally or not).
I should start reading
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- #57
Hey, I just got that book! I was looking into nuclear close-calls (I'm honestly amazed we didn't blow ourselves to smithereens), and I stumbled upon to this book during the whole process.
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- #58
soulezoo
Senior Airman
Intentional. The "most trusted man in America" Walter Cronkite, admitted as much in his autobiography.
Am currently reading about the development of the French nuclear deterrent and its airborne component, the Force de Frappe, or Force de Dissuasion. This is the first example of a French aircraft to air drop a nuclear weapon; on 19 July 1966 this Mirage IVA dropped an AN-21 60Kt parachute retarded bomb over the Fangataufa atoll in the French territory of Tahiti. The aircraft is on display in the Musee de l'Air, Le Bourget, Paris.
Musee de l'Air 39
This is an AN-22 weapon. The AN-21 dropped by the Mirage was a development of the AN-11, which the AN-22 superseded as France's stockpiled air dropped nuclear weapon. The Mirage IVA was capable of delivering these weapons at supersonic speeds.
Musee de l'Air 40
Detonating nuclear weapons in the Pacific has made France a pariah in the international community, as long after the USA, Russia and China abandoned atmospheric tests, the French continued to do so at Mururoa, which has resulted in the tagline 'Nuclear Free Pacific' gaining traction world wide and actively supported by Pacific nation governments.
This is an AN-22 weapon. The AN-21 dropped by the Mirage was a development of the AN-11, which the AN-22 superseded as France's stockpiled air dropped nuclear weapon. The Mirage IVA was capable of delivering these weapons at supersonic speeds.
Detonating nuclear weapons in the Pacific has made France a pariah in the international community, as long after the USA, Russia and China abandoned atmospheric tests, the French continued to do so at Mururoa, which has resulted in the tagline 'Nuclear Free Pacific' gaining traction world wide and actively supported by Pacific nation governments.
