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I'm not defending any particular action, I'm cautioning against context-less comparisons. But to answer your other questions, the stakes were very high for the

I'm not defending any particular action, I'm cautioning against context-less comparisons. But to answer your other questions, the stakes were very high for the whole world (global thermonuclear war, communism, etc) and the USSR was primarily responsible for escalating though no doubt the west was not uniformly virtuous. If your goal is to compare the West or the US in particular with its dictatorial rivals, it's probably not very enlightening to account only for Western errors. You need to account for the errors and contributions of both sides. Unfortunately, this seems like hidden knowledge because virtually this debate is nearly always framed in the "only enumerate Western errors" fashion.

pessimizer 5y ago
> the west was not uniformly virtuous. So not absolutely perfect angels at all times? Harsh criticism. The US started the thermonuclear arms race, and escalated it until it consumed a large part of the economy, based on literal calculated lies about the "missile gap." > If your goal is to compare the West or the US in particular with its dictatorial rivals The goal should be to point out its dictatorial tendencies, and its preference for predictable dictatorial regimes all over the world that it is willing to spend huge amounts of resources to install and preserve, bathing countries around the world in blood. China is not doing that, Russia is not doing that, Iran is not doing that, North Korea is not doing that.
- adventured 5y ago
  Russia is supporting murderous regimes all over Africa right now, which is why so many African nations abstained from the Ukraine vote at the UN recently. Russia has been propping up the brutal dictatorship in Syria for a very long time, and several others before it across the Middle East. It has also propped up both the Belarus dictatorship and the authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan, and those are merely very recent examples.

pessimizer 5y ago

> the west was not uniformly virtuous. So not absolutely perfect angels at all times? Harsh criticism. The US started the thermonuclear arms race, and escalated it until it consumed a large part of the economy, based on literal calculated lies about the "missile gap." > If your goal is to compare the West or the US in particular with its dictatorial rivals The goal should be to point out its dictatorial tendencies, and its preference for predictable dictatorial regimes all over the world that it is willing to spend huge amounts of resources to install and preserve, bathing countries around the world in blood. China is not doing that, Russia is not doing that, Iran is not doing that, North Korea is not doing that.

adventured 5y ago
Russia is supporting murderous regimes all over Africa right now, which is why so many African nations abstained from the Ukraine vote at the UN recently. Russia has been propping up the brutal dictatorship in Syria for a very long time, and several others before it across the Middle East. It has also propped up both the Belarus dictatorship and the authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan, and those are merely very recent examples.