Some would point at the USSR occupations of the Warsaw Pact countries and say "See, this is why we need to defend ourselves from Soviet aggression". But the US

Some would point at the USSR occupations of the Warsaw Pact countries and say "See, this is why we need to defend ourselves from Soviet aggression". But the USSR didn't take action to create an immoral buffer to it's borders until they learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable And if you want to bring up the USSR invasion of Poland in 1939, take a look at what Poland did to Czechoslovakia in 1938 while Germany was occupying Sudetenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(1938%E2%80%931939) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(193... It can both be true that the USSR was a violent, genocidal, repressive regime that oppressed it's own people AND that the ideological spread of Communism throughout the world was orthogonal to Soviet authoritarian tendencies, and was thus the threat that was described to people in the West was more to capitalist institutions and the richest classes, not to your freedom of prosperity. tl;dr: You were never in danger of living in a North Korea-type Gulag.