From the Left, I'm Mike Moffitt.

Couldn't resist, sorry.

One of my favorite sayings about Gorbachev is "He did in seven years what the CIA could not in seventy." For the Baltics, even Lenin said, "For the sake of peace with Trotsky, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are worth losing."

I suspect that there are two groups who have suffered more than any other as a consequence of the demise of the USSR: the Russian people and the United States. Yes, the entire country. We are virtually rudderless without the Soviet Union.

One need look no further than NASA to see how much vision we have lost because the Soviets are no longer showing us the way. They were first in space (we had to respond), they said "we're going to the moon" (we had to beat them). They said, "we're going to Mars" and one wonders whether we wouldn't be launching manned missions to Mars now if the USSR had been able to survive, most notably by being able to afford itself loans from the rest of the world as we have been able to do.

I was furious with the Carter Administration for boycotting the Olympics over Afghanistan. Clearly, the Soviets wanted a "buffer state" between them and the Islamic nation-states (recall that Iran had just fallen, it's not out of the question that the USSR feared similar uprisings in some of their southern republics). We backed the wrong horse and it bit us in the ass. (A personal disclaimer: I am extremely biased against Afghani's. While visiting the USSR, my father was mugged in Moscow by Afghan diplomats).

What would the world look like? It's difficult to say. If our policies towards the USSR had remained unchanged I don't think the world would be all that much different. If, otoh, our policies had changed significantly, I believe the world would have been a much quieter, much more peaceful place. And New York would still have two of its more gaudy monuments to capitalist excess standing.

But I don't think it would ever be possible for our Soviet policies to change. The greatest threat to "the American Way of Life (tm)" would be the success of a Socialist state (particularly one dedicated to the path to Communism). What drove our policy towards the Soviet Union (beginning with the Westerners killed on Soviet soil trying to overthrow the Bolsheviks) up to the demise of the USSR was our plutocrats terrified that the "Workers of the World" might, in fact, actually unite. That would be the end of their excess, the betterment of the "great unwashed" and an end to tyranny. Tyrants (read US Multi-national Corporations) would fight the notion of equality indefinitely.

What the US realized too late to save the Soviet Union was that the Bolsheviks were never really Communist. They shouldn't have feared Bolshevik Russia because there is damned little difference between America's corporate barons and Bolsheviks - except for their propaganda.

bcnu,
Mikem

Post #70,295 by mmoffitt 12/21/02 9:08:24 PM Reply	From the Left, I'm Mike Moffitt. Couldn't resist, sorry. One of my favorite sayings about Gorbachev is "He did in seven years what the CIA could not in seventy." For the Baltics, even Lenin said, "For the sake of peace with Trotsky, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are worth losing." I suspect that there are two groups who have suffered more than any other as a consequence of the demise of the USSR: the Russian people and the United States. Yes, the entire country. We are virtually rudderless without the Soviet Union. One need look no further than NASA to see how much vision we have lost because the Soviets are no longer showing us the way. They were first in space (we had to respond), they said "we're going to the moon" (we had to beat them). They said, "we're going to Mars" and one wonders whether we wouldn't be launching manned missions to Mars now if the USSR had been able to survive, most notably by being able to afford itself loans from the rest of the world as we have been able to do. I was furious with the Carter Administration for boycotting the Olympics over Afghanistan. Clearly, the Soviets wanted a "buffer state" between them and the Islamic nation-states (recall that Iran had just fallen, it's not out of the question that the USSR feared similar uprisings in some of their southern republics). We backed the wrong horse and it bit us in the ass. (A personal disclaimer: I am extremely biased against Afghani's. While visiting the USSR, my father was mugged in Moscow by Afghan diplomats). What would the world look like? It's difficult to say. If our policies towards the USSR had remained unchanged I don't think the world would be all that much different. If, otoh, our policies had changed significantly, I believe the world would have been a much quieter, much more peaceful place. And New York would still have two of its more gaudy monuments to capitalist excess standing. But I don't think it would ever be possible for our Soviet policies to change. The greatest threat to "the American Way of Life (tm)" would be the success of a Socialist state (particularly one dedicated to the path to Communism). What drove our policy towards the Soviet Union (beginning with the Westerners killed on Soviet soil trying to overthrow the Bolsheviks) up to the demise of the USSR was our plutocrats terrified that the "Workers of the World" might, in fact, actually unite. That would be the end of their excess, the betterment of the "great unwashed" and an end to tyranny. Tyrants (read US Multi-national Corporations) would fight the notion of equality indefinitely. What the US realized too late to save the Soviet Union was that the Bolsheviks were never really Communist. They shouldn't have feared Bolshevik Russia because there is damned little difference between America's corporate barons and Bolsheviks - except for their propaganda. bcnu, Mikem
Post #70,297 by rcareaga 12/21/02 9:17:07 PM Reply	Re: From the Left, I'm Mike Moffitt. mmoffitt posts: //I suspect that there are two groups who have suffered more than any other as a consequence of the demise of the USSR: the Russian people and the United States. Yes, the entire country. We are virtually rudderless without the Soviet Union.// I agree. Speaking as a child of the cold war (b. 1952) I believe that the moral superiority of the USA (such as it was) in the postwar years absolutely relied on the existence of the USSR as a countervailing force: without them there's no one whose sins are dense enough to make our side of the bipolar moral seesaw rise toward the sky. cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #70,301 by mmoffitt 12/21/02 9:27:17 PM Reply	You'd like Taosim. A chapter from the Tao Te Ching reads in part: "Under heaven, all can know beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know Good as Good only because there is Evil."

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