WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
The word menace means a threat.
Power in of itself doesn't make a country "threatening". If that is the case then every nation on earth should feel "threatened" by the U.S. and any actions that they take as a result is justifiable correct? After all being powerful constitutes "menace" according to you.
WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
Clearly you believe they were the most powerful army in Europe at least at the end of the war. At the very least they were the second.
"Most powerful" is a relative term. All of the other countries of Europe had been ravaged by the war remember? The Soviets were nothing more than the last man standing in this instance. They all were decimated. Soviets included. With this being the case there was no way that they were going to engage anyone in war
WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
That means they were a threat. They also showed no qualms about occupying their neighbors hence they are a threat to expand military occupations if leaders saw fit.
Yes they did occupy, influence, and threaten their neighbors. This just means that they were a threat.... to their neighbors.
WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
While you can say that Stalin did not believe in a worldwide revolution that is debatable. And at the core of communist belief is a worldwide revolution.
Supporting political movements is a whole different than fomenting world wide war. I hope you can understand the difference
WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
So this means there is a powerful army, under a non-democratically elected government where predicting the next leader is a complete spin of the wheel. And they are governed by a doctrine calling for worldwide domination by their style of government. It seems to me based on those factors, and their support for expanding communist regimes around the world that the Soviet army was a menace and not something just made up by conservatives,.
Always remember you aren't partisan. None of what you posted establishes that they were particularly threatening. The U.S. was much more concerned with worldwide hegemony than the Soviets happened to be. Have you ever considered them to be particularly "menacing"? We both know the answer don't we.
The Soviets were concerned mostly with dominating and controlling Eastern Bloc countries. They provided military and economic support to left leaning socialist types for the purpose of turning them communist but they weren't going around starting wars if it were outside of the Eastern bloc.
Afghanistan debunked the myth of the "Soviet Menace" quite effectively. If you want to say Cuban Missile Crisis then yeah that constituted a threat. However the Cuban Missile Crisis inly serves to further validate my point.
Which is that the Soviet position was always one of defense. That's why they established the iron curtain in the first place. They'd been invaded 3 or 4 times in their recent history and hoped to prevent it from occurring again. The establishment of Soviet Satellites was done with this in mind.
That doesn't excuse them for treating the people of Eastern Europe like crap because they did. They deserved to be overthrown if for no other reason than that. As far as "worldwide revolution" goes it wouldn't take long to demonstrate how U.S. designs on the world were much more pervasive.
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The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.