Michael Cule inspires a lecturing course flashback in me:
> Yes, the Soviet Union was all that is alleged. But was it a *
> danger* to the United States?
Well, at least *initially* the fear was that the Sovs were going to
"take over" Western Europe & Japan, and thus the US would be isolated
(the ol' Kennan approach). It's a reaction to (perceived) American
passivity to the Axis in the '30s.
Considering both the economic state of Europe in the post-war '40s and the way the poltical scene was shaping up (especially in France and Italy) the US gov't was worried the region would "go communist" the way that the Czechoslovaks did: "elections" producing a coaltion left/agrarian gov't which rapidly became Sovietized. So it was assumed, wrongly, that this meant the Rooskies would be parked just across the Channel if France had a communist gov't.
Note, of course, that this fear proved rather beneficial to both WE & Japan, since the US credits for rebuilding (and Korean War equippage money in the second case) probably wouldn't have been voted without Fear of Godless Red Bolshevism.
Now, granted, I'm not quite sure why Fidel is presently the Greatest Threat to American Security, but... ;)
> Did the 'domino theory' have any validity at all?
Well, if you're approaching it with the idea that commies were sneaky
and awful, and if you talk with 'em for more than 5 minutes they *turn
you into one* with their Communist Propaganda skill from _Paranoia._
Horrors! (Say, there's another Sov-Lunar parallel... "No! Don't use your
Debate skill against them!"). Keep in mind, too, that there's a thread
of "no appeasement" in the line of thinking, too, so it's partially a
product of the 1930's.
> Wasn't the fact that the Soviets were outclassed from the
> beginning?
Yah, but nobody knew that -- since they demob'ed the US military so
quickly, there was some real fear that the Sovs (who kept up the # of
divisions) could roll right in by the turn of 1950 (which they couldn't,
because many of the divisions were shells. And were busy smacking around
unhappy Eastern Europeans in any case.)
Plus, of course, this is all *hindsight* now -- the past 10 years has seen some real revelation on China, Korea and Greece, where apparently Stalin was less a motivating factor than suspected, and local communists (Mao, Mao and EAM/ELAS & Tito) were pushing the conflict. The Sovs were generally much more passive than the US had realized, but the relationships were "closed," while the US-NATO relationship was more open to outside observers. If we were living in 1949, our perceptions might be different.
Note, too, that the people who *lived* where the Soviet Union was have a pretty different view about how much a "menace" the USSR was. They've turned the Monument of the Red Army Liberators here into a skate park of late.
> And were maintained as The Enemy by elements in the American
> Government to ensure their own budgets and careers.
Of course not! Don't you know the Real Enemy to the any agency or armed
service in America is the other agencies and services? :)
> (The CIA constantly overestimated Soviet capabilities and
> reported Soviet statistics, bloated by bureaucratic misreporting,
> as fact.)
Actually, having actually *worked* with the CIA records from the '50s &
'60s that are finally being declassified (and about time, too), this
Widely Known Fact doesn't hold up that well -- already by the mid/early
'50s the CIA is saying that the Sovs *aren't* about to roll into W
Europe at any moment. There tended to be lag-time between something
"new" happening (like the MiG-25 being produced) and the
CIA/NSA/DIA/etc. getting a good handle on it (like the MiG-25 being
hand-riveted over much of its frame). Sorry, the spooks aren't the whippin'-boys.
The *problem* is that if, as an example, the CIA went to Bush in '90 and said, "The League of Communists is in trouble, and all hell is gonna break loose in Yugoslavia within 18 months," and the president didn't like how that fit into policy, nothing got done. Which was, in fact, true for that crisis. Someone at the CIA got pissed and leaked it to the press in '90, because they didn't want the blame for having "misreported" it.
Which brings up some MGF for gaming, too -- someone mentioned the enjoyment of Lunar players being "troubleshooters." The Lunars at the moment seem to have their Cup Runneth Over in terms of spooks, rat****ers, analysts and secret police. Typically in the US & SU each sub-unit in the agencies tends to have its own bugbear that they excessively focus on. So Lunars PCs may well be running around being told to look for things that *don't exist!* because of fears of their superiors, and being told that things they *do* see don't exist, because their superiors have no real interest in that. Or as in Latin America, the US would in some cases be so paranoid about a reformist leader being a commie they'd push him into becoming one by screwing with him -- so then you've got one group of agents trying to "pre-emptively" weaken say, an Orlanthi clan that is a potential danger, while others are trying to win clan acceptance of Lunar rule. Very fun, very schtizophrenic. Some good game opportunity stuff there, which can also be played at both ends.
> for instance) . But to those of us who don't have to believe in US
> Manifest Destiny there are clearly elements of irrationality in
> American defence postures.
'Tis only fair, though, since for the first 125 years after American
independence, Americans regularly distrusted British foreign policy as
not just irrational but clearly to be naughty, hellaciously
Imperialistic and generally an attempt to dupe up Us Poor Americans into
Fighting in Their Wars ("Lusitania? Munitions? Deck Guns? What, you'd
trust those Germans on this before fellow Anglo-Saxons?"). We've still
got another 75 years on account. ;)
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #599
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