re: Russia and America, First Use, then and now:
In the Cold War, we had a de facto No First Use policy. Even when we were defeated in Vietnam and Cuba, even when 1 million Chinese soldiers were shredding MacArthur's troops in N. Korea, we didn't use nuclear weapons. MacArthur got fired, because he advocated First Use. Since both NATO and the Warsaw Pact were defensive, status-quo alliances, "No First Use unless vital interests are threatened" equaled "No Use". The theoretical use of nuclear weapons, if 30,000 Soviet tanks invaded W. Germany, was always a purely theoretical concern. Neither side ever seriously considered attempting to overrun the opposition.
The U.S. has now abandoned the Cold War's deterrence, in favor of new doctrines: preventive war, "useable" small specialized nuclear weapons, tactical (as opposed to strategic or deterrent) use. This is the most basic change in our nuclear doctrine, ever. It was done without public debate, by a President without a mandate.
<The US and West German forces in West Germany were quite overmatched.>
Throughout the Cold War, there was a consistent pattern of seriously exaggerating the Red Menace. The Missile Gap that wasn't. The Soviet spies in the State Department, who weren't. The dominoes that didn't fall, after Saigon did. The Soviets always had a large quantity advantage, and always had a large quality disadvantage. When American and Soviet weapons were matched up, in Israeli-Arab wars, the Israelis always overcame large numerical disadvantages.
<The nuclear disarmament movement in the West was simply a Communist front organization and its wishful-thinking dupes.>
I was involved in that movement, and you are 100% wrong. In the West, the numbers of Communists in the Peace and disarmament movement, was maybe 1-2%. At most. Most of the Communists were anti-Soviet Trotskyites and Maoists and other exotic (and tiny) splinter groups. Communists kept quiet about their Communism, because, even within the hard-core committed disarmament movement, there was near-zero sympathy for Communism. At meetings, the slightest hint of sympathy for Soviet Communism would be met with ridicule and laughter. The same thing applies to today's antiwar movement, if anyone says anything nice about Saddam or Bin Laden. We quote Jefferson and ML King, not Stalin and Mao. We are Pacifist Patriots.
<Removing them (land mines) would amount to sacrificing South Korea.>
Do you flinch at noises in the dark? In every closet, do you assume monsters hidden behind the coats, about to jump out and eat your children? Why do you invent Bogeyman, and then exaggerate them to the point of absurdity? S. Korea has twice the population, and 20 times the wealth, of N. Korea. And their citizens are probably more loyal. It is the North, not the South, which is threatened by Regime Change, by the Hegemon that has just knocked off two regimes, and now has N. Korea at the top of their Hit List. If N. Korea were ever to attack S. Korea, the damage would be done with nuclear weapons, or massed artillery. Land mines won't do much to stop those kind of attacks. Take a Xanax and quit being scared of ghosts. |
