> Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk
> At 11:49 26-5-01 -0400, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> > How is it "protecting yourself" to
> >conquer 6 countries and keep your soldiers there - against the
wishes
> >of the people in those countries?
>
> <sigh>
>
> Again, I was only referring to the presence of troops on the border
with
> the enemy. Wether the population agreed with it or not is not
relevant to
> that point.
> BTW, from a military POV, it was an excellent idea to occupy the
> surrounding countries: it provided a large buffer zone that
protected the
> SU from invasion. Just because it wasn't a nice thing to do doesn't
mean it
> wasn't brilliant.
> >By your standard, Nazi Germany was only protecting itself.
>
> Excuse me? What gave you that idea? Keeping forces at the borders of
your
> empire to protect yourself from invasion is something completely
different
> from attacking other countries. Remember that Germany *started* the
war? If
> it was only protecting itself, the war would have been started by a
country
> that attacked Germany.
>
> Jeroen
Germany was only keeping forces at the border of its empire when it
defended France in 1944. Admittedly, it conquered France first. But
the Soviet Union conquered Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
and East Germany. In the case of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, it
conquered them _twice_ - first after the Second World War, then doing
it all over again when the people revolted there in the 1950s and
1960s. The Soviets threw the Germans out from those countries, true.
But then they continued to rule those countries almost as brutally as
the Germans did. From where did they get the right to brutalize those
innocent nations?
Acquiring an empire is not the same thing as protecting yourself. You
have no right to defend an empire - the only right involved is the
right of your subject nations to be free. Nations that acquire
empires tend to _keep_ acquiring them until someone stops them. The
United States, by contrast, didn't acquire an empire. It had the
opportunity to do so, but it decided not to. So what exactly is the
problem with our actions here? Also - having the military capacity to
defend yourself against invasion does not give you the capacity to
launch an invasion of your own. I don't know who told you that, but
it's not true. You need significant superiority of forces to launch
an invasion - it's far easier to defend than attack. That's why
American forces in Western Europe were never a threat to the Soviet
Union - because there were always far fewer of them in theatre. They
might possibly have been able to defend Western Europe - even that's
open to question. Before 1984, I think they probably couldn't have
without using nuclear weapons. If they had tried to attack they would
have gotten Eastern Europe I doubt they would have gotten 10 miles.
So let's see.
1. You agree that the US was a democracy and the Soviet Union was not.
2. You agree that the US's allies in Western Europe were democracies,
and that they were true allies, not conquered subjects, and that they
freely chose to have American troops protecting them.
3. You agree, I think, that states of Eastern Europe were subject
provinces of the USSR that did not want Soviet troops there. You even
call the nations of Eastern Europe part of an "Empire."
4. _But_ you seem to think that putting troops in Eastern Europe to
protect that "Empire" was morally no different than helping the free
nations of Western Europe defend themselves.
Do I understand you correctly? I'm serious here - I'm trying to give
a fair reading of your position as I understand it.
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
