> Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk
> At 14:25 26-5-01 -0400, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> There once was something called "The British Empire". Although the
British
> probably did some things back then they shouldn't be proud of, they
weren't
> as brutal as the Soviet Union. You claim that because something was
called
> an empire, it didn't have the right to defend itself. By that
definition,
> the British Empire didn't have a right to defend itself either.
Something that _is_ an empire doesn't have the right to defend itself.
Some things are empires and some aren't. What the United States had
during the Cold War - not an empire. What the Soviet Union had - an
empire. Why? Because of the fundamental difference that you keep
(amazingly) dismissing as morally unimportant - that the people within
the United States's "sphere of influence" _wanted_ to be there. The
British certainly had no right to use force to maintain their empire.
When they butchered thousands of Indians during and after the Indian
Mutiny - that's one of the low points of British history. Now, when
they won Imphal-Kohima to stop the Japanese, that was a little
different, because the Japanese had no right to India either. Only
Indians do.
> I only used the word "empire" because it was the first word that
came to
> mind when I wrote that post. If I had written "The Soviet Union's
sphere of
> influence" instead, would you have said "you have no right to defend
your
> sphere of influence"? By saying something like that, you'd be saying
that
> no country has the right to defend itself.
Nope. Every country has a right to defend itself. Let me put it this
way, Jeroen - a thief has no right to defend the property he has
stolen. Does that make sense? If you have no _right_ to something,
you have no right to use violence to defend it - and that's accepting
your contention that the Warsaw Pact was defensive in nature,
something I find bizarre at best. But okay.
> >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.
>
> OTOH, NATO equipment was technologically far superior to Warsaw Pact
> equipment. If you want to win, your fist has to bigger than your
enemy's,
> but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to physically outnumber
your enemy.
>
> The Warsaw Pact had more tanks, airplanes etcetera, but they were
> technologically inferior. The WP's reasoning behind all this was
that many
> would be destroyed in battle, so it would be cheaper to build a
large
> numbers of them, and not make them technologically on par with NATO
equipment.
True, but it was possible to estimate the differences in quality. The
qualitative differences were large, but they weren't that large. The
Soviets had _many multiples_ of the number of people at the ready in
Eastern Europe at all times. To argue that there was a threat of
invasion after the Soviet acquisition of the nuclear bomb is like
saying, in European terms, that a decent high school team could beat
Manchester United. They play on the same field - and the high school
team has the theoretical capacity to try to score against Manchester.
But they're not going to succeed. Now the reason it's not an exact
parallel is because the defensive advantage in military affairs is a
lot stronger than it is in soccer.
> >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."
>
> As pointed out above, I only called it an "empire" because it was
the first
> word that came to mind. I could also have said that the nations of
Eastern
> Europe were "within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence". I do
not,
> however, consider those countries "subject provinces". Although the
> Soviet's will was law there, officially they were seperate
countries, not
> provinces.
So the Soviet Union ran those countries, but their _official_ status
matters in their moral position? I don't understand that. If I have
a gun to your head and tell you "Say what I tell you to say or I shoot
you" - does what you then say have moral or legal standing?
> >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.
>
> Yes, you understand me correctly. I do believe that the Soviet Union
had
> just as much right to defend it's sphere of influence (Eastern
Europe) as
> the West (US and Europe) had to defend *their* sphere of influence.
>
> Jeroen
So am I correct in saying that you place no moral weight on the
_character_ of that sphere of influence, or how it was acquired?
I then return to the Nazi example. Vichy France was officially an
independent state up until late 1943, I believe. Maybe even after
that. At least, they claimed to be, and that claim had just as much
credibility as that of Poland before 1989. So when Nazi troops
garrisoned France in order to "protect" it from Allied invasion -
that, as far as I can tell, was _okay_ by your standards. Vichy
France was in Germany's "sphere of influence" and Nazi Germany
presumably had just as much right to protect its "sphere of influence"
as the USSR did during the Cold War.
********************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. *
******************************************************************
