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From: matthews@harvard.ARPA (Jim Matthews)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: America: soft, rich, pacifist (how they perceive us)
Message-ID: <4@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 3-Apr-85 14:45:54 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.4
Posted: Wed Apr  3 14:45:54 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Apr-85 04:26:20 EST
References: <314@ssc-bee.UUCP> <567@whuxl.UUCP>
Organization: Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
Lines: 44

> What is your proof for the assertion that the Soviets perceive us as "soft"?
> Under Ronald RayGuns and his sabre-rattling regime the ordinary Soviet citizen
> (as well as many ordinary American citizens) have been scared stiff.

	Maybe the Soviet people are afraid of us -- that's certainly the
impression Pravda tries to cultivate.  But they have nothing to do with 
Soviet strategic doctrine, so it's a moot point.

> Besides losing 20 million in WW II, the Soviets probably remember that *we*
> sent an armed force to their country, whereas they have never done the same
> to us.
	The Anglo-American intervention in the civil war is greatly 
overrated -- never did an American soldier even see a Bolshevik, much less
shoot one.  The only significant foreign intervention in that conflict was
by the Germans (pro-Bolshevik) and the Czechs (anti-Bolshevik).  Even they
were insignificant compared to the Russian armies fighting the Bolshevik
regime.  Remember, it was a civil war -- Russians fighting Russians.  The
British helped the South in our civil war more than we helped the Whites,
but I don't see many Americans holding a grudge about that.

> According to the official Communist line we are "Imperialist agressors"
> who wish to conquer the world to control markets for our capitalist
> industries.  I.e. they see us as "imperialists" and expansionist in the
> same way we see them as expansionist.
>
>	tim sevener  whuxl!orb

	The "official Communist line," if not just a lie, is certainly
very flexible.  The view of capitalist countries being unalterably opposed
to socialism was discounted even by Lenin in "Imperialism," and that idea
lost all validity in later years.  In 1918, if the "official Communist line"
was correct, Germany would have turned Russia into a colony, and the
British and Americans would have helped out.  Nothing of the sort happened --
the capitalists were more interested in competing with each other than in
fighting socialism.  In 1941, the "official Communist line" you described
would have had England and America watch the Nazi destruction of Russia with
glee, knowing that we would reap the spoils of their mutual suffering.  Instead
we were generous in helping a power that only two years before had helped
Hitler carve up Eastern Europe.  In short, they *do not* "see us as
expansionist in the same way we see them as expansionist"!!  That is just a
totally mis-informed simplification. 

Jim Matthews
matthews@harvard