Trying to work out a theory.

[Bustem' Down]

I had an idea, and have been trying to look into it. I'd like to hear ya'lls comments and if you have any internet links on the subject that would be great because I haven't been able to find much. Somebody's had to do reaserch on it.

It goes like this. During the Cold War, instead of direct confrontation, the U.S. and the USSR always took sides in other confilcts. For the sake of example, we'll use Afganistan. Russia invaded Afganistan in the 80's and in return, we supported Afganistan with weapons and what not. Things like this happened all over the Middle East, Isreal and Egypt etc. Since Russia became a democracy in the early 90's, we have seen an increase in anti-U.S. terrorism. It seems that without our two counties staring each other down, and using other countries conflicts to our own purposes, the balance in the Middle East has been disrupted. Also, if the Big Red Bear came back, would we see a return to a relative normalcy that we had a few decades ago? I fully realize that you can't really get rid of the problems over there, I just kind of got interested in the effects of a democratic Russia on the Middle East. It seems to fit together, but I don't have enough information and it seems an interesting enough topic to talk about. Someone has had to do some sort of reaserch on this.

 

[Bruzilla]

The problems in the Middle East and their drivers haven't changed since the end of the Cold War. The drivers are money and power. The Soviet Union pumped trillions of dollars into the government accounts and personal accounts of leaders. Now that their sugar daddy is gone, there is much more fighting for dollars and control over there. If you don't have money or power in the Middle East, your life sucks as there's no real middle class, so you either need to be top dog or pita bread baker.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan because they were after the Middle East, and their logistics tail was too long to take and hold the region from the Soviet Union. Hussein had a goal of taking over Mecca and making himself King of All Arabs. Now we're there, taking losses and spending much fortune, just so that we can give it all back to the thieves that ran the place before. I would like to see us stay there for 50 years or so, like we did in Europe and Japan.

 

[Spoiled]

Nationalism... Back then it was You are red or you arent... There were 2 super powers, and everyone aligned with one... Two major opposing theories, governments, super powers... Now it is one sided, people need conflict, people need ways to define themselves... Now they define theirselves as "not Western..." another cold war wouldnt work, there are too many networks, too many ways of travel and communication. Nationality is starting to mean less and less, its more about ideals and culture... there are like 7 cultures: Latino, Western, Chinese, Japanese, Muslim, African (not really a player at this point) and Hindu... Muslim being the largest and Western being the dominate in terms of technology and economy...

 

[vraiblonde]

Bustem, I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you musing about what would happen if Russia went back to their old ways of taking over other countries by force instead of being held in check by the US?

 

[Tonio]

I think the Cold War did prevent many squabbles from turning into full-scale wars, because no one wanted to see a US-USSR showdown.

Bustem, I've heard this theory regarding anti-US terrorism--the political motivations behind the terrorism may be greater than the US realizes. As the theory goes, as late as the '60s the Arab world had a pro-US tilt, for a variety of reasons. Unlike Britain and France we were never colonists in that part of the world. We played an evenhanded role during the 1956 Suez conflict. And Muslims didn't like the Soviets because Communism was an athiest ideology.

According to the theory, everything began to change when we sided with Israel during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. In Bin Laden's demented rants, he seems to make no practical distinction between the US and Britain. It's like he's saying, "Oh, you guys are just more of those imperialist Westerners, wanting to rule over Arabs like tyrants." That's BS, of course, but his claim carries a lot of weight with Arabs and enables Bin Laden to get more recruits for his evil cause. What do you think of the theory?

 

[Bruzilla]

I believe he's wondering if another Soviet Union came along and started doing proxie wars with the US, that terrorism would decline because we would be using Israel as a stalking horse against the "Soviet" satellite countries.

What's missing from his theory though is a look at motivations. His statement that "It seems that without our two counties staring each other down, and using other countries conflicts to our own purposes, the balance in the Middle East has been disrupted." shows a serious lack of understanding as to what was really happening back in the 1950s through the 1990s, and reflects a highly simplified view of events that became popular starting in the 1980s, i.e., that the Cold War conflicts were just a means for the US and Soviet Union to square off against one another rather than fighting each other directly.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't remember any Cold War expansionism on the part of the United States. When US oil companies invested billions of dollars building up the Saudi oil industry, and then lost it all when the Saudis nationalized it, I don't remember us going into Saudi Arabia. When exactly did we use conflicts in other countries to serve our own purpose? As I recall, it was the Soviets who attempted to use unrest in places like Cuba, Greece, Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Afghanistan to serve their purposes, and I recall the US having to intervene to prevent Soviet expansionism, but I don't recall the US taking the lead in trying to take over any real estate for our own purposes. If a homeowner guns down an armed burglar who's in the process of trying to rob their home, is the homeowner shooting for some benefit of his own? If the burglar had stayed home, decided to go straight, and gotten a job, would the homeowner have gone to the would-be burglar's house and shoot him? I think that a response is a lot different from an initiation.

The UN started the Middle East mess with the creation of Israel, and the Arab League created the conflict when they decided to refuse emigration from what's now referred to as Palestinian lands. They wanted to keep the heat on the Jews, and the only way they could do that was to turn those areas into boiling pots of hatred. That had nothing to do with the Soviet Union or the United States. Of course, if you wanted arms back in the 1950's, you had two choices: "The West" and the USSR. Britain was against the provision of arms to Israel, and the US went along with that. The USSR on the other hand, had expansionism in mind and was only to happy to either give, trade, or provide at a bargain, just about any weapon any Arab government wanted. As a result, the US was once again dragged into having to take sides.

Back to the point, now that the Middle East is modernized, and no longer just a bunch of camel herders wanting guns, I don't see the return of a Soviet Union having the same impact that it did in the 1950s.

 

[Tonio]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't remember any Cold War expansionism on the part of the United States...As I recall, it was the Soviets who attempted to use unrest in places like Cuba, Greece, Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Afghanistan to serve their purposes, and I recall the US having to intervene to prevent Soviet expansionism, but I don't recall the US taking the lead in trying to take over any real estate for our own purposes.

True. But the US did take some flak when the CIA toppled elected socialist (not necessarily Communist) leaders in places like Nicaragua and Chile, and for supporting the brutal dictators that took their places. That certainly wasn't nearly as bad as what the Soviets did, of course. But I think it still made the US look bad to the world, like we were saying one thing about democracy and doing another. I think it's possible that those socialists would have become genuine threats to the US. But wasn't there an above-board way of managing the threat?

 

[Bruzilla]

There's no difference between "Socialist" and "Communists" during the early phases of the Cold War. Anyone who was a declared Socialist got their money, advice, support, etc., from the Soviet Union. I think that the big apple/orange difference in the South American situations that you mentioned are did the United States ever attempt to invade/occupy either of these countries? Did we ever attempt to install a puppet government? Granted, we may have supported thugs who came into power and ruined their countries to one extent or another, but we didn't install governments that would rubber stamp everything that the US did in the region. That's a pretty big difference.

 

[Tonio]

I think that the big apple/orange difference in the South American situations that you mentioned are did the United States ever attempt to invade/occupy either of these countries? Did we ever attempt to install a puppet government? Granted, we may have supported thugs who came into power and ruined their countries to one extent or another, but we didn't install governments that would rubber stamp everything that the US did in the region.

True, but it still made us look bad and, I believe, convinced some countries not to side with the US as strongly as they would have otherwise. I believe there was a public relations component to the Cold War that we sometimes neglected. We were certainly the "good guys," and engineering a coup seemed like something the "bad guys" would do. But maybe that's too much of a Old-West-movie approach to politics.

 

[Spoiled]

For the record the soviets supplied Israel with weapons first, well their satellite nations did... That is one of the reasons they won their first war, the West supplied the Arab states with weapons. The west stuck to the policy of "no weapons for you" where the soviets gladly gave Israel stuff. The reason the soviets had to 'attack' many Arab states is because they were western influence since they were colonized by the west. And we did supply weapons money and weapons to them too. The Arab's problem isn’t just Israel, it’s the things they see us doing and what we don’t do. We drink, we have premarital sex, and we have divorce. We don’t worship God, we force people to work, and we serve the almighty dollar as opposed to God. That is fairly simplified but I think you can understand it, we are influencing their way of life, they get mad and they show it. We only see the result when it’s rioting or terrorism, to help you understand it I will use this example. If there was to be a bill passed saying no more guns are to be owned or kept by citizens of the United States 2A would form a militia and march on Washington because his way of life was just destroyed [/end minor satire]....

 

[vraiblonde]

True, but it still made us look bad and, I believe, convinced some countries not to side with the US as strongly as they would have otherwise. I believe there was a public relations component to the Cold War that we sometimes neglected. We were certainly the "good guys," and engineering a coup seemed like something the "bad guys" would do. But maybe that's too much of a Old-West-movie approach to politics.

Or maybe they would hate us no matter what we did. Even if the US personally shoots a nuke at Israel and wipes it off the face of the earth, Muslims will still hate us. Why? Because we're Christians, capitalists and a free society and they don't like that stuff.

World politics is about power. Some got it, some want it. The French are pissed because they backed a losing horse by selling arms to Saddam Hussein and got caught with their pants down. The Arabs are pissed because they know they have inferior social structures and the US, by merely existing, shines a beacon on their flaws.

JFK wages a CIA war on Castro with all kinds of James Bond silliness and the Democrats revere him. Ronald Reagan imposes travel restrictions to Cuba and is promptly villified by those same Democrats.

So there's no rhyme or reason to it and some people will hate you no matter what you do.

 

[Bustem' Down]

Thanks all, interesting stuff. Still trying to find stuff on the internet about it that isn't wacko gibberish.