Who's fault is it?

[U-533]

OK ...Heres your chance.


CCIP

Quote:
Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth
Lovely. Most of the IR professors I have had the enjoyment of having to listen to would also tell you with a straight face, that the United States and the Soviet Union were equally at fault for the Cold War.



I'd love to hear a convincing argument against that stance (equal fault). I couldn't take any with a straight face so far myself.

In another thread perhaps.

==========================================

My 2 cents ...

Its all of our faults...for puttin' up with it.

Both the so called "Cold War"
And the so called "War on Terrorism"
:sunny: :sunny: :sunny:

[CCIP]

The war on Terror is obviously...

the fault of those who declared it :p

The wider conflict of opposing views is difficult to gauge; the motives of those who committed terror are obviously their fault and, as such, they certainly deserve what they're getting. They committed an illegal act and this is punishment. I sympathise those who are not to blame and are caught up in the reprisal however.


The Cold War - I believe in equal responsibility; it may be a matter of whose ideology is better (and I question that to an extent), but the underlying problem I have with assigning the blame on either side - the ideology. I don't accept ideological arguments for 'betterness'; further, I believe the Soviet threat had been severely overestimated at the early stage of the cold war and the American stance led to a significant escalation where it would not have occurred. I believe the argument for Soviets seeking violent opposition with the West and/or global domination is flawed and baseless; they had always shown themselves as far more pragmatic and, while they would have taken advantage of Western weakness, they would not have broken the post-WWII status quo which favoured them (of course, they won and they expanded their sphere of influence - which wasn't nice to say the least) as a relatively weaker side who suffered the heaviest damage by WWII and would probably not recover were it not for their strategic gains in their sphere of influence.

So I think it was inevitable that strategic opposition would take place; I would say that the West was right to be suspicious of the Soviets and not see them as friends, but they were wrong to gauge their position as aggressive and inavertedly accellerate the Cold War which I think was avoidable.

(recalling dean_achenson's state on NATO, I can actually see why he might have argued that; personally, I don't think we'll ever agree on it but I believe the West's initiation of a plainly anti-Soviet buildup was the trigger for the Cold War. I don't think the Cold War would have happened at all in the form it did without it - just as the growing web of alliances in the early century helped accellerate tensions and lead to WWI, which certainly would not have happened in the same severity without it. In the case of the Soviets, who were objectively the weaker side, they inevitably responded disproportionately to the threat - who wouldn't?)

[joea]

CCIP, couldn't agree more. :up:

[geetrue]

Its all of our faults...for puttin' up with it.

Both the so called "Cold War"
And the so called "War on Terrorism"
:sunny: :sunny: :sunny:

My nay is nay and my yea is yea, so I just did a cut and paste on the cold war theory, but hey, I was there ... know what I mean.



I finally figured out the "Cold War" we didn't understand each other ... WWII and Korea and Vietnam all contributed to not understanding each other.

After Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall, we started understanding each other ... Germany got their brothers and sisters back, Mr. Reagan got some respect for America back and moving ahead 27 years we now pay Russia to destroy nuclear warheads and are willing to help them with old nuclear submarine disposal's ...

Progress of understanding each other ended the "Cold War"

[loynokid]

Its all of our faults...for puttin' up with it.

Both the so called "Cold War"
And the so called "War on Terrorism"
:sunny: :sunny: :sunny:

My nay is nay and my yea is yea, so I just did a cut and paste on the cold war theory, but hey, I was there ... know what I mean.



I finally figured out the "Cold War" we didn't understand each other ... WWII and Korea and Vietnam all contributed to not understanding each other.

After Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall, we started understanding each other ... Germany got their brothers and sisters back, Mr. Reagan got some respect for America back and moving ahead 27 years we now pay Russia to destroy nuclear warheads and are willing to help them with old nuclear submarine disposal's ...

Progress of understanding each other ended the "Cold War"



Nothing really more to add... Agree 100 percent :up: :up: :up:

[CCIP]

Yes, but I should note one other thing: I don't consider the end of the cold war to be positive. Although I agree that 'progress in understanding' was made strategically and I'm even willing to acknowledge that Mr. Gorbachev was a very good diplomat and, unlike so many Soviet leaders (and citizens) knew which way the wind was blowing internationally - he was a bad strategist and let things slide out of hand; likewise, the West, assuming that the 'right way' was found in Russia and it would promptly come to the 'good side' of democracy and market liberalism once the Soviet Union collapsed, celebrated too early and failed to see a humanitarian catastrophy and political mess that actually happened. I think the West was too busy winning the Cold War to notice how badly the Soviets lost it and what consequences it would lead to. I don't think people on this side of the fence really appreciate what a disaster (rather than triumph) the dismantling of the Soviet Union was, both internally and internationally (nb - not the fact of the dismantling itself per se but the manner, timing and spirit in which it occurred).

[loynokid]

Yes, but I should note one other thing: I don't consider the end of the cold war to be positive. Although I agree that 'progress in understanding' was made strategically and I'm even willing to acknowledge that Mr. Gorbachev was a very good diplomat and, unlike so many Soviet leaders (and citizens) knew which way the wind was blowing internationally - he was a bad strategist and let things slide out of hand; likewise, the West, assuming that the 'right way' was found in Russia and it would promptly come to the 'good side' of democracy and market liberalism once the Soviet Union collapsed, celebrated too early and failed to see a humanitarian catastrophy and political mess that actually happened. I think the West was too busy winning the Cold War to notice how badly the Soviets lost it and what consequences it would lead to. I don't think people on this side of the fence really appreciate what a disaster (rather than triumph) the dismantling of the Soviet Union was, both internally and internationally (nb - not the fact of the dismantling itself per se but the manner, timing and spirit in which it occurred).


I'm going to have to research this topic a little more to respond to this... :lol: It is a different perspective though

[CCIP]

It's a different perspective because I lived through it :yep:

[loynokid]

It's a different perspective because I lived through it :yep:


That's one thing I can't say for myself... I am kind of glad that i didn't live through it though, it didn't sound like the funnest thing... :hmm:

[geetrue]

I can't describe the feeling of being sound asleep and hearing the 1mc blare out, "Now man battle stations missile" 2X's

By the time your up putting on your poopy suit and shoes ... the captain is saying, "We have just recieved a message from the President of the United States to launch missiles"

The captain didn't always say, "This is a drill"

So by the time I got to sonar (which was always rigged for red and seperate from the control room) we didn't really know.

If I was on watch when it went down, someone would always say, "Is this another BS drill?" or "Why don't they do this when I'm on watch" or "Hey, that was a good movie"

We didn't really know ... we were drilled pretty regularly too by the Joint Chief's of Staff and by Norad in Colorado and our log's had to correspond with their logs when we came back in.

Gentlemen it was the cold war ... the other side was doing the same thing. We were ready to nuke them, we were volunteer's, we were paid professionals and we really didn't care about politic's out at sea ...

The cold war was simple ... be ready to end it all if they fire first ... I'm out of the loop now, but something tells me a whole lot of people took our place. :yep: