"that the USSR might have been a force for stability in the ME and republics does not mean they were ALWAYS a stabilizing force. "
The problem I see there is that I can come up with numerous examples from history where the USSR was a serious DEstabilizing influence. But none where they were a stabilizing influence. For example, just considering the ME for the moment and looking at a few big conflicts:
- the USSR poured arms into Saddam's arsenal makig possible his unnecessary wars which killed millions of people
- the USSR provided arms and military advisors/personel (Russian pilots are known to have been shot down by Israel) to Syria and Egypt so they could go to war and threaten war against Israel (the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza might never have occurred if not for Soviet encouragement of Syria and Egypt)
- the USSR provided arms, military advisors, and Cuban troops to both sides in the horn of Africa - first to Somalia, then to Ethiopia when the USSR switched sides
- the USSR invaded Afghanistan which brought about the destabilization of that country
Where are the historical examples of the USSR EVER being a force for stability in the ME or anywhere else? I've been posting historical examples which support my opinion and which refute with your ideas of the USSR. What does your premise that the USSR was a force for stability rest upon other than wishful thinking?
Next moving to the "republics" or the now-independent former SSR's - you've claimed in an earlier post that both the republics and Afghanistan are a "mess". The problem with that view is that they've always been "messes" including during the USSR era. Afghanistan in particular is less a mess now than anytime since long before the Soviet invasion. There's a good reason the mainstream media is ignoring the country - there simply is not a major amount of bad news to report. As for the republics, I can recall a shooting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia but that seems to have ended. There have been some Islamist attempts to stir up trouble in the Stans but that is true also of everywhere Muslims live and the Islamists certainly haven't won any big victories in the Stans. The biggest conflict within the former USSR is within Russia itself, not the republics. So as to the mess, where is the objective evidence any of these places are worse in any respect now than they were during the USSR occupation era?
"..lies about my position" Basically your premise is that the USSR was a force for geopolitical stability, that the fall of the Soviet empire was bad for the US, and that we ought to be upset with Reagan and Bush 41 for the fall of the Soviet empire.
I've given a bunch of historical examples which indicate your premise is wrong. And the examples I've given are only a small portion of what's available in the historical record. Furthermore, the historical record has an absence of similar examples where the USSR worked for stability. If I'm wrong you can post some historical examples - I would only ask that they be real historical examples, not what-ifs, what-might-have-beens, IOW alternate history tales.
The most serious historical example I gave was the placement of Soviet nuclear missiles 90 miles from our southern border, which would have given the USSR the capability to wipe out our entire national leadership and much of our population in one strike with very little advance warning. This was an extremely aggressive act on the Soviet Union's part. It took us to the brink of nuclear war which is about as DEstabilizing as you can get without actually fighting a nuclear war.
There are many many other examples I could give showing the USSR to be a force for INstability. The entire cold war was baically an aggressive imperial expansion effort on the Soviet Union's part. They invaded almost every country their land army could reach and sponsored "wars of national liberation" all over the world. These proxy wars received arms from the Soviet Union, military advisors and technicians and frequently Cuban mercenery troops. The US basically confined its efforts to defensive actions, trying to prop up rickety countries likely to fall here and there. It's instructive that following the fall of the Soviet empire, the US was able to reduce the size of its armed forces and its military budget, a clear sign that the world had become safer.
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