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USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power. In cold war it was obvious there were two side

by fsloth 5y ago

USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power. In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR. Now, as China is becoming an ever more stronger player, we again see that there are two sides arising. While party lacks expansive ambitions in the traditional sense of landborders (except for Taiwan), they would very much like everyone to kotow to the party. We are in a world where democracies are in decline and autocracies are in the rise. USA is still the biggest democracy. Leader of the free world? It's hyperbolic, but not _obviously totally wrong_. This is not to say we are in some sort of manichean conflict world were one side is good and one is evil, or that US is good and the autocrats are evil. US is obviously a state actor that acts in it's own benefit and in the benefit of it's elites and so on, and these actions sometimes are very bad for civilians.

callmeal 5y ago
>In cold war it was obvious there were two sides Um, no. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement
- fsloth 5y ago
  The article is pretty obvious about the fact that the "Non-Aligned" movement was in fact closely aligned with USSR "many of the Non-Aligned Movement's members were actually quite closely aligned with China or the Soviet Union"
cycomanic 5y ago
> USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power. > In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR. You could also ask a Guatemalan how they enjoyed living under the US installed military dictatorships (which came out of a US supported coup after democratic elections resulted in a win for the left). Things are by far not as clear cut. Both blocks supported atrocious regimes if it was in their economic interests and worked against "the other side". That we largely only hear about one side shows how well the propaganda was/is working.
- fsloth 5y ago
  Yes, that is absolutely right. Even Greece had it's anti-communist junta which massacred students. It's never clear cut, but on the _average_ I do think the pro-USSR side was less-free.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    I would agree that for the (majority parts of) populations of the main countries that is likely the case. I certainly am happy to have grown up in Western not Eastern Germany. That said things get murkier beyond that quite quickly. I'm not sure I would have preferred to grow up as a black teenager in e.g. Baltimore over being a teenager in Eastern Germany and I certainly would have preferred to grow up in Estonia in the USSR over Guatemala.
    - bart_spoon 5y ago
      And you would almost certainly prefer to be a black teenager in Baltimore or a Guatemalan over a Ukrainian under the USSR.
      - cycomanic 5y ago
        I think this would depend on time period. 1930s sure, later I'm not convinced (to be honest I don't know enough about the period after the 30s in Ukraine). For example during the Guatemalan "Civil War" between 150 000 and 200 000 people were killed and disappeared (~25% of that number). That is a lot of people for a population of 17 M.
- Qem 5y ago
  Not only Guatemala, but essentially all Latin America. I don't think a country can honestly claim to lead the "free world" while exporting brutal dictatorships to a entire continent.
  - lvass 5y ago
    My country went through this and we've been far more free than Cuba throughout the whole ordeal and thereafter. People love imagining this was never a possibility, but the threat of falling under communist chaos was very real, I simply cannot dislike those who helped preventing it no matter how hip and cool it's become.
avgcorrection 5y ago
> Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR. Ah yes, proximity. Now go ask the small Central American nations if they enjoyed living close to the USA during the 70s and 80s.
- tutuca 5y ago
  Not only the small central american nations. Look up the Operation Condor. We have our share of USA backed coupes all over south america too.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Or Operation Gladio in Italy for that matter.
scotty79 5y ago
> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. It's quite funny that after the cold war it came out that nukes of 'the more free side' was targetting Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvia cities.
- arethuza 5y ago
  A full US nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and its allies in the early 1960s was estimated by the Pentagon as probably killing ~100 million in Western Europe due to fall-out and 600 million in total - "100 holocausts" as Daniel Ellsberg described it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tauntz 5y ago
  They were targeting USSR military bases. And it was "known" already during the cold war, not a surprise after the cold war ended. At least in Estonia, every sane person assumed that when there's a nuclear conflict, then the rocket bases and airfields of the occupation forces here would be the first to be taken down by the west because they were the most west-facing USSR military bases.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    They were targetting cities that were occupied by hundred thousands of civilians. USA never had any qualms about targetting civilians. Foreigners don't have any rights.
    - tauntz 5y ago
      You are correct. Just like the US was targeting military installations in Moscow, etc that had millions of civilians and USSR was targeting US cities that had millions of civilians. I'm just saying that it was not actually something that people "found out" after the cold war and it wasn't specific to the Baltic nations nor the US or USSR. All nuclear capable superpowers had set potential targets which would have killed tens of millions of civilians. Singling out some of the countries occupied by the USSR (Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania) is minimizing the situation IMO :)
scotty79 5y ago
> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides ... These two sides narration was a very intentional American construct. View from the other side wasn't symmetrical. US as seen from the other side was just seen as a powerful country that likes to mess around with other countries business exploiting them for their own purposes. End of cold war changed nothing. US is still a powerful country that likes to mess around the world to exploit it better, and Russia is still insular country that doesn't want to allow any of that on their turf. The only thing that changed with the end of the cold war was that US could no longer credibly spin the narrative that Russia wants to take over the world and turn Texans into communists. Fortunately, after a bit of mucking around USA could brand terrorists as their global super dangerous enemy and business could continue as usual. Currently when terrorists turned out to be a very limited threat and USA proved to be very incompetent at fighting them long term, USA again began shopping for a narrative enemy. Obvious choice is China, but USA leaders with more than two brain cells are little hesitant about that, because you don't necessarily want to frame yourself as enemy of someone who could very likely seriously eff you up. We'll see how it all unfolds.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I agree until your second to last sentence. I think the hesitation isn’t because of military concerns, I think the USSR posed a serious military threat if the US ever decided to throw down, but rather economic issues. Unlike the USSR, America does a lot of trading with China, which makes framing them as some boogie man both practically and rhetorically tricky. It doesn’t help that business interests (and consumers) in the US would scream bloody murder if the tap of cheap consumer products was turned off. I also think that the end of the Cold War, the failure of the forever wars, and our bungled pandemic response has taken a lot of gloss off the old propaganda. The interruption of having the USSR fall has made a lot of Americans look around and saw “wait, why does life kinda suck here though?”, and it’s kind of hard to rebuild that propaganda machine once it’s stopped.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    Good point. Trade and financial relationships are another obstacle.

by fsloth 5y ago

callmeal 5y ago

>In cold war it was obvious there were two sides Um, no. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement

fsloth 5y ago
The article is pretty obvious about the fact that the "Non-Aligned" movement was in fact closely aligned with USSR "many of the Non-Aligned Movement's members were actually quite closely aligned with China or the Soviet Union"

cycomanic 5y ago

> USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power. > In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR. You could also ask a Guatemalan how they enjoyed living under the US installed military dictatorships (which came out of a US supported coup after democratic elections resulted in a win for the left). Things are by far not as clear cut. Both blocks supported atrocious regimes if it was in their economic interests and worked against "the other side". That we largely only hear about one side shows how well the propaganda was/is working.

fsloth 5y ago
Yes, that is absolutely right. Even Greece had it's anti-communist junta which massacred students. It's never clear cut, but on the _average_ I do think the pro-USSR side was less-free.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  I would agree that for the (majority parts of) populations of the main countries that is likely the case. I certainly am happy to have grown up in Western not Eastern Germany. That said things get murkier beyond that quite quickly. I'm not sure I would have preferred to grow up as a black teenager in e.g. Baltimore over being a teenager in Eastern Germany and I certainly would have preferred to grow up in Estonia in the USSR over Guatemala.
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    And you would almost certainly prefer to be a black teenager in Baltimore or a Guatemalan over a Ukrainian under the USSR.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      I think this would depend on time period. 1930s sure, later I'm not convinced (to be honest I don't know enough about the period after the 30s in Ukraine). For example during the Guatemalan "Civil War" between 150 000 and 200 000 people were killed and disappeared (~25% of that number). That is a lot of people for a population of 17 M.
Qem 5y ago
Not only Guatemala, but essentially all Latin America. I don't think a country can honestly claim to lead the "free world" while exporting brutal dictatorships to a entire continent.
- lvass 5y ago
  My country went through this and we've been far more free than Cuba throughout the whole ordeal and thereafter. People love imagining this was never a possibility, but the threat of falling under communist chaos was very real, I simply cannot dislike those who helped preventing it no matter how hip and cool it's become.

avgcorrection 5y ago

> Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR. Ah yes, proximity. Now go ask the small Central American nations if they enjoyed living close to the USA during the 70s and 80s.

tutuca 5y ago
Not only the small central american nations. Look up the Operation Condor. We have our share of USA backed coupes all over south america too.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Or Operation Gladio in Italy for that matter.

scotty79 5y ago

> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. It's quite funny that after the cold war it came out that nukes of 'the more free side' was targetting Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvia cities.

arethuza 5y ago
A full US nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and its allies in the early 1960s was estimated by the Pentagon as probably killing ~100 million in Western Europe due to fall-out and 600 million in total - "100 holocausts" as Daniel Ellsberg described it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tauntz 5y ago
They were targeting USSR military bases. And it was "known" already during the cold war, not a surprise after the cold war ended. At least in Estonia, every sane person assumed that when there's a nuclear conflict, then the rocket bases and airfields of the occupation forces here would be the first to be taken down by the west because they were the most west-facing USSR military bases.
- scotty79 5y ago
  They were targetting cities that were occupied by hundred thousands of civilians. USA never had any qualms about targetting civilians. Foreigners don't have any rights.
  - tauntz 5y ago
    You are correct. Just like the US was targeting military installations in Moscow, etc that had millions of civilians and USSR was targeting US cities that had millions of civilians. I'm just saying that it was not actually something that people "found out" after the cold war and it wasn't specific to the Baltic nations nor the US or USSR. All nuclear capable superpowers had set potential targets which would have killed tens of millions of civilians. Singling out some of the countries occupied by the USSR (Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania) is minimizing the situation IMO :)

scotty79 5y ago

> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides ... These two sides narration was a very intentional American construct. View from the other side wasn't symmetrical. US as seen from the other side was just seen as a powerful country that likes to mess around with other countries business exploiting them for their own purposes. End of cold war changed nothing. US is still a powerful country that likes to mess around the world to exploit it better, and Russia is still insular country that doesn't want to allow any of that on their turf. The only thing that changed with the end of the cold war was that US could no longer credibly spin the narrative that Russia wants to take over the world and turn Texans into communists. Fortunately, after a bit of mucking around USA could brand terrorists as their global super dangerous enemy and business could continue as usual. Currently when terrorists turned out to be a very limited threat and USA proved to be very incompetent at fighting them long term, USA again began shopping for a narrative enemy. Obvious choice is China, but USA leaders with more than two brain cells are little hesitant about that, because you don't necessarily want to frame yourself as enemy of someone who could very likely seriously eff you up. We'll see how it all unfolds.

ashtonkem 5y ago
I agree until your second to last sentence. I think the hesitation isn’t because of military concerns, I think the USSR posed a serious military threat if the US ever decided to throw down, but rather economic issues. Unlike the USSR, America does a lot of trading with China, which makes framing them as some boogie man both practically and rhetorically tricky. It doesn’t help that business interests (and consumers) in the US would scream bloody murder if the tap of cheap consumer products was turned off. I also think that the end of the Cold War, the failure of the forever wars, and our bungled pandemic response has taken a lot of gloss off the old propaganda. The interruption of having the USSR fall has made a lot of Americans look around and saw “wait, why does life kinda suck here though?”, and it’s kind of hard to rebuild that propaganda machine once it’s stopped.
- scotty79 5y ago
  Good point. Trade and financial relationships are another obstacle.