"John D. Giorgis" schreef:
> At 04:56 PM 6/1/01 +0200 Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:
> >Devils advocate here:
> >
> >If I were the USSR and knew that I would loose in the event that the
> forces on
> >the other side would invade my side. And assuming that I don't trust the
> >governing bodies on the other side. How would I prevent them from crossing
> into
> >my teritory? I'd mass my forces at the borders shouting as loud as I can that
> >I'd invade the other side if I'd get half a chance. Thereby I'd bind the
> forces
> >of the opposition in a place convenient to me and I'd be relatively safe that
> >neither side would risk a full scale battle with uncertain outcome because of
> >the involvement of a huge amount of forces massed in one particular spot.
>
> Except for the fact that the USSR was spouting off about manifestos, unity
> of the proletariat, and the historical dialectic long before a Western
> threat to invade Russia could even have been conceived. Gautam can
> correct me if I am wrong, but I think that those policies of the USSR go
> back to the 1930's.
>
> Thus, its a nice hypothesis Sonja, but it just doesn't fit the evidence.
They already had been seriously invaded by the French and the Germans (Gautam
didn't the Germans have a peace treaty or something with the Russians when they
decided that invasion was the better way to go). I can imagine that might justify
their paranoya at the time? Just wondering here. But I'll let Gautam correct me on
that. Never really been that big a fan of history.
Sonja
