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I grew up in Hungary during the Cold War, and I can tell you that this is complete hogwash. The Soviet Union and the U.S. did engage each other in a series of

I grew up in Hungary during the Cold War, and I can tell you that this is complete hogwash. The Soviet Union and the U.S. did engage each other in a series of proxy wars. This is not all that surprising: the economic systems of their respective empires were incompatible with that of the other, and in ways that thr existence of one inherently made the other unstable. In particular, the existence of a rich, relatively-free-market Western Europe, especially West Germany, was absolutely a threat to the Eastern Block: it showed how lousy and untenable the Soviet economic policy was. There was steady movement of people from East to West (prompting the Soviets to build the Iron Curtain lest East Germany find itself with population zero, and to prevent their scientist from publishing in international conferences lest they all defect) and a stream of superior products going from West to East, which made this common knowledge among the population. This made Western Europe a grave, existential threat to the leadership of the Eastern Block. Even if the U.S. had not tried to curtail Soviet expansion elsewhere, this would have made NATO a threat in the sense that it prevented them from solving this problem by ravaging Western Europe using their military might. Such a resolution of the issue would have hurt the U.S., since the Eastern economic system was incomoatible with theirs, and the Atlantic trade was seen as essential for American prosperity. Needless to say, it made sense for them to double down on NATO. The educated population of the Eastern block understood, and we fully expected the Warsaw Pact to be the one to strike first. Was the threat assessment of the communist leadership correct? I'd say it was spot on: as society became more open, and as the East started having to rely on CoCom-list products that they couldn't manufacture themselves, itbecame common knowledge that the Eastern economix models have failed, the theatrics became untenable, and eventually the leaders of the Eastern block were deposed, just as they predicted.

vidarh 7y ago
> I grew up in Hungary during the Cold War, and I can tell you that this is complete hogwash. Growing up in Hungary does not give you some magic insight into the views of the Soviet leadership; it's simply irrelevant to the question. We know from the actual people involved that the Soviet leadership believed a US first strike was not just possible, but likely, and that they had no intentions of being the ones to start a war but were intent to finish it. Just like we know Reagan and many other Western leaders genuinely feared a Soviet first strike and had no intentions of being the ones to start a war but were intent to finish it. Just like we know that people like Reagan were shocked when they realized that the other side was thinking exactly the same way as they were, because both sides - unsurprisingly - were the heroes in their own stories rather than the cartoon villains they both saw the other side as. This is well documented. It took two years of rapprochement between Reagan and Gorbachev before they started trusting that the other side was not just looking for an upper hand to allow them to attack. Even then Reagan held back on going as far in arms reduction as Gorbachev (who motivated more strongly by the economic devastation trying to keep up militarily with the US caused) was prepared to. It took that much because both sides thought they were doing what was necessary to defend themselves, rather than prepare to attack. > The Soviet Union and the U.S. did engage each other in a series of proxy wars. This is not all that surprising: the economic systems of their respective empires were incompatible with that of the other, and in ways that thr existence of one inherently made the other unstable. It's not surprising, and not relevant to the question of whether or not either side was prepared to fight an open war over Europe. The proxy wars were about establishing buffers and alliances out of fear of the other side attacking; exactly out of a fear of open war with the other side. Unfortunately for everyone, both sides saw the other side engaging in this and saw it as evidence of expansionism rather than of fear. > The educated population of the Eastern block understood, and we fully expected the Warsaw Pact to be the one to strike first. And yet that expectation shows that the population equally failed to understand the Soviet leaderships motivations. Up until the early years of Stalin, the idea of Soviet expansionism might have held some validity; even perhaps a decade or so after "Socialism in One Country" became policy in 1925 there might have been reason to fear that it was a temporary change to regroup. But not beyond that. Even Soviet involvement in Eastern Europe was about creating a buffer to account for Soviet fear of the West. You're accounting for it by seeing yourself as part of an expansionist empire. But you were not. You were outsiders; convenient pawns creating a buffer for a terrified leadership with a bunker mentality that saw the Soviet Union itself as what mattered.
- saithound 7y ago
  > Growing up in Hungary does not give you some magic insight into the views of the Soviet leadership; it's simply irrelevant to the question. No, not really. My claims are not based on my "credentials" as someone who grew up in the Eastern Block, just as yours aren't based on growing up in Norway during the cold war. > We know from the actual people involved that the Soviet leadership believed a US first strike was not just possible, but likely, and that they had no intentions of being the ones to start a war but were intent to finish it. This is indeed well-studied. We know from the documents and testimonies released by actual people involved with the Warsaw Pact armies (e.g. Gen. Szucs [3], who was head of Hungarian military intelligence between 1957 and 1989), as well as from documents leaked from Voroshilov Academy, what the actual Soviet battle plans were and what they assumed. There's extensive Hungarian literature on Soviet war plans during the sixties, seventies and beyond (in the off-chance that whoever sees this can read Hungarian, some good starting points on the subject are article [1] and book [2]). Apart from this direct evidence, we have plenty of indirect evidence of Soviet intentions. Just an example: the known Soviet war plans never consider Austria's neutrality (Vienna being a major target of Hungarian forces), but all of them assume that NATO forces would not be present there when the war breaks out. This does not make sense unless they assume a WP first strike: Soviet intelligence plans are known to have considered NATO forces violating Austria's territory to be the most reliable predictor of an imminent NATO first strike. > It's not surprising, and not relevant to the question of whether or not either side was prepared to fight an open war over Europe. The proxy wars were part of the general political situation: there is no reason to dismiss them as irrelevant to the question of war in Europe. Again, the destabilizing effects of an affluent market-liberal Western Europe on the Soviet Union are well-understood, and outlined in my previous comment. Subjugating WE was a natural geopolitical goal for the Soviet Union, and one we have overwhelming evidence they actively pursued. > even perhaps a decade or so after "Socialism in One Country" became policy in 1925 there might have been reason to fear that it was a temporary change to regroup Interesting. You conveniently forget about that part when Stalin conspired with the Nazis to get rid of the buffer zone between their respective empires and greatly expand their respective territories. > convenient pawns creating a buffer for a terrified leadership with a bunker mentality that saw the Soviet Union itself as what mattered. Portraying the Soviet Union as a victim of Imperialist aggression, playing the "help, we're being surrounded" card, etc. has always been a staple of the Soviet (and now modern Russian) propaganda playbook (as outlined in [4], an actual textbook in used in the legal successor to the Soviet Union's Voroshilov Academy) intended to prevent the world's public opinion from uniting against them. The SU maintained an extensive spy network all across Europe and the U.S. (remember that time when they stole the secrets of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and then did it again with the thermonuclear weapons program?); they knew U.S. society and understood American geopolitcal goals really well. One would have to be extremely gullible to think that the Cold War was a misunderstanding on their part. It's not just contrary to evidence, but would not be realistic at all even if we had good evidence for it (which we don't): sorta how you wouldn't conclude that the Sun exploded just because one detector said so [5]. --- As an aside, let me note that "heroes in their own stories seeing the other as cartoon villains" is an incredibly poor model of states and governments; states tend not to make that kind of mistake [6] (I encourage you to try to come up with a clear-cut example of such heroes-and-villains thinking from before the 20th century; as emotional impact dulls, and people can analyze situations with detachment, they realize that there are no such examples). --- [1] M. Horvath: OTKA-49465 Final Report. http://real.mtak.hu/1979/1/49465_ZJ1.pdf http://real.mtak.hu/1979/1/49465_ZJ1.pdf, 2009 [2] V. Kovacs: Hungary in the shadow of Nuclear War. ISBN 9789633276587, Zrinyi Kiado Budapest, 2016. [3] F. Szucs: A nemzetközi helyzet általános jellemzése, a NATO fegyveres erok fejlesztésének helyzete és tendenciái. Honvédelem, vol. 6, 1982. [4] A. Dugin: Foundations of Geopolitics. 1997. [5] https://xkcd.com/1132/ https://xkcd.com/1132/ [6] J. C. Scott: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. ISBN 978-0-30007016-3, Yale University Press, 1998

vidarh 7y ago

> I grew up in Hungary during the Cold War, and I can tell you that this is complete hogwash. Growing up in Hungary does not give you some magic insight into the views of the Soviet leadership; it's simply irrelevant to the question. We know from the actual people involved that the Soviet leadership believed a US first strike was not just possible, but likely, and that they had no intentions of being the ones to start a war but were intent to finish it. Just like we know Reagan and many other Western leaders genuinely feared a Soviet first strike and had no intentions of being the ones to start a war but were intent to finish it. Just like we know that people like Reagan were shocked when they realized that the other side was thinking exactly the same way as they were, because both sides - unsurprisingly - were the heroes in their own stories rather than the cartoon villains they both saw the other side as. This is well documented. It took two years of rapprochement between Reagan and Gorbachev before they started trusting that the other side was not just looking for an upper hand to allow them to attack. Even then Reagan held back on going as far in arms reduction as Gorbachev (who motivated more strongly by the economic devastation trying to keep up militarily with the US caused) was prepared to. It took that much because both sides thought they were doing what was necessary to defend themselves, rather than prepare to attack. > The Soviet Union and the U.S. did engage each other in a series of proxy wars. This is not all that surprising: the economic systems of their respective empires were incompatible with that of the other, and in ways that thr existence of one inherently made the other unstable. It's not surprising, and not relevant to the question of whether or not either side was prepared to fight an open war over Europe. The proxy wars were about establishing buffers and alliances out of fear of the other side attacking; exactly out of a fear of open war with the other side. Unfortunately for everyone, both sides saw the other side engaging in this and saw it as evidence of expansionism rather than of fear. > The educated population of the Eastern block understood, and we fully expected the Warsaw Pact to be the one to strike first. And yet that expectation shows that the population equally failed to understand the Soviet leaderships motivations. Up until the early years of Stalin, the idea of Soviet expansionism might have held some validity; even perhaps a decade or so after "Socialism in One Country" became policy in 1925 there might have been reason to fear that it was a temporary change to regroup. But not beyond that. Even Soviet involvement in Eastern Europe was about creating a buffer to account for Soviet fear of the West. You're accounting for it by seeing yourself as part of an expansionist empire. But you were not. You were outsiders; convenient pawns creating a buffer for a terrified leadership with a bunker mentality that saw the Soviet Union itself as what mattered.

saithound 7y ago
> Growing up in Hungary does not give you some magic insight into the views of the Soviet leadership; it's simply irrelevant to the question. No, not really. My claims are not based on my "credentials" as someone who grew up in the Eastern Block, just as yours aren't based on growing up in Norway during the cold war. > We know from the actual people involved that the Soviet leadership believed a US first strike was not just possible, but likely, and that they had no intentions of being the ones to start a war but were intent to finish it. This is indeed well-studied. We know from the documents and testimonies released by actual people involved with the Warsaw Pact armies (e.g. Gen. Szucs [3], who was head of Hungarian military intelligence between 1957 and 1989), as well as from documents leaked from Voroshilov Academy, what the actual Soviet battle plans were and what they assumed. There's extensive Hungarian literature on Soviet war plans during the sixties, seventies and beyond (in the off-chance that whoever sees this can read Hungarian, some good starting points on the subject are article [1] and book [2]). Apart from this direct evidence, we have plenty of indirect evidence of Soviet intentions. Just an example: the known Soviet war plans never consider Austria's neutrality (Vienna being a major target of Hungarian forces), but all of them assume that NATO forces would not be present there when the war breaks out. This does not make sense unless they assume a WP first strike: Soviet intelligence plans are known to have considered NATO forces violating Austria's territory to be the most reliable predictor of an imminent NATO first strike. > It's not surprising, and not relevant to the question of whether or not either side was prepared to fight an open war over Europe. The proxy wars were part of the general political situation: there is no reason to dismiss them as irrelevant to the question of war in Europe. Again, the destabilizing effects of an affluent market-liberal Western Europe on the Soviet Union are well-understood, and outlined in my previous comment. Subjugating WE was a natural geopolitical goal for the Soviet Union, and one we have overwhelming evidence they actively pursued. > even perhaps a decade or so after "Socialism in One Country" became policy in 1925 there might have been reason to fear that it was a temporary change to regroup Interesting. You conveniently forget about that part when Stalin conspired with the Nazis to get rid of the buffer zone between their respective empires and greatly expand their respective territories. > convenient pawns creating a buffer for a terrified leadership with a bunker mentality that saw the Soviet Union itself as what mattered. Portraying the Soviet Union as a victim of Imperialist aggression, playing the "help, we're being surrounded" card, etc. has always been a staple of the Soviet (and now modern Russian) propaganda playbook (as outlined in [4], an actual textbook in used in the legal successor to the Soviet Union's Voroshilov Academy) intended to prevent the world's public opinion from uniting against them. The SU maintained an extensive spy network all across Europe and the U.S. (remember that time when they stole the secrets of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and then did it again with the thermonuclear weapons program?); they knew U.S. society and understood American geopolitcal goals really well. One would have to be extremely gullible to think that the Cold War was a misunderstanding on their part. It's not just contrary to evidence, but would not be realistic at all even if we had good evidence for it (which we don't): sorta how you wouldn't conclude that the Sun exploded just because one detector said so [5]. --- As an aside, let me note that "heroes in their own stories seeing the other as cartoon villains" is an incredibly poor model of states and governments; states tend not to make that kind of mistake [6] (I encourage you to try to come up with a clear-cut example of such heroes-and-villains thinking from before the 20th century; as emotional impact dulls, and people can analyze situations with detachment, they realize that there are no such examples). --- [1] M. Horvath: OTKA-49465 Final Report. http://real.mtak.hu/1979/1/49465_ZJ1.pdf http://real.mtak.hu/1979/1/49465_ZJ1.pdf, 2009 [2] V. Kovacs: Hungary in the shadow of Nuclear War. ISBN 9789633276587, Zrinyi Kiado Budapest, 2016. [3] F. Szucs: A nemzetközi helyzet általános jellemzése, a NATO fegyveres erok fejlesztésének helyzete és tendenciái. Honvédelem, vol. 6, 1982. [4] A. Dugin: Foundations of Geopolitics. 1997. [5] https://xkcd.com/1132/ https://xkcd.com/1132/ [6] J. C. Scott: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. ISBN 978-0-30007016-3, Yale University Press, 1998