Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 15:23:17 +0800 (PST) From: <hfspc002-AT-huey.csun.edu> Subject: Re: Marxism and academia Stephen Grossman writes: "Stalin and those who followed him created the largest, fastest growing empire in history, one which, by 1980, was capable of winning WW3 with merely 20 million dead Soviet citizens. My guess is that Marxist leaders want to use this military supremacy to strengthen (with its threat) the ongoing active measures and disinformation which is opening Western polities to revolutionary politics." While I agreed with some of the post, I think this statement is the reading of history that the Reagan administration and the Pentagon would have had us believe in the 80s. The Soviet Union was never able to "win" World War 3, in Europe or anywhere else. They couldn't even beat down the class and ethnic struggle in Afghanistan. While this argument helped justify the Carter and Reagan military buildups of the 70s and 80s, the soviets never had strategic superiority in nuclear or conventional weaponry. The entire purpose of the myth of Soviet superiority was used to justify the US acquisition of a first-strike nuclear capability which could be used to intimidate the Soviet Union and allow the US to flex its military and economic muscle worldwide in the "national" interest (i.e. the interest of the military and corporate elites). I think that Soviet military power and the cold war in general is the only thing that prevented nuclear war since 1945 (note that the Johnson and Nixon administrations both considered using nuclear weapons but decided not to for fear of Soviet retaliation). And I think that the Bush administration's ability to bully and blackmail world leaders into accepting the slaughter in the Persian Gulf indicates the extent to which the end of the cold war has encouraged US aggression abroad. (At no other time in history would the Soviets have accepted 500,000 US troops only 700 miles from their border! yet in the Gulf War the Bush admin. not only got acquiescence but active support from them). Ben Attias ------------------
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