Honestly hilarious imo
"What a spiteful little bitch you are Putin." - Ritaredditonce +2900
"I'm starting to think this Putin guy might be a bit of a twat." - RudigherJones +413
😂
EDIT - Also I'd like to thank y'all for the amazing thread we've got going here. Real mix of comedy and quality discourse on the material situation
Unironically Stalin was too meek and trusting in the post-war, but hindsight.
Its funny the longer you're exposed to the reality of what happened during the 20th century, you realize the degree to which most cultures around the world simply could not understand the degree of cold, calculated, sociopathic supremacy the US would fall in line with, time after time. The US, and really the west in general, is and has been under a spell of supremacy culture based violence that's shaped the world for thousands of years. The US was the end result of all of this, "manifest destiny" and the great purge and ransack of the entire newly "discovered" continent was a shock of a scale humanity had not yet seen, and has not seen since. Hitler could only dream of emulating the project of north america. All the western "opponents" of the past hundred years have all made the fatal mistake of overestimating our humanity. The western project is not one of humanism, and never was.
Probably totally tangent from your point, but 🤷♀️
America had nukes
I'm talking about the immediate years after, not the 50s. Throwing the Greek communists under the bus, for example.
America used nukes in 1945 to end WW2 and that was the most dangerous time for the Soviets because they did not have any.
America did not have a "stockpile" so to speak, until 1950. And even by then, other non-nuclear powers could afford to toe around the line around it, like China in the Korean war. And I'm not even talking about something as "brash" as that either. The Red Army was practically a stone's throw away from the Greek Civil War and had other means of keeping the West out (ie the fact that communist parties were empowered in newly liberated France and Italy). That alone could have extended WARPAC's reach and possibly averted Yugoslavia's split from the Warsaw Pact, even if there were other sources of tension.
The reason they didn't go through with it was largely because the RKKA reached its near-breaking point and leadership wanted to get reconstruction back on track. Even the slightest provocation is something they were wary of. Which is understandable.