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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: America: soft, rich, pacifist (how they perceive us)
Message-ID: <158@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Apr-85 14:35:25 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.158
Posted: Wed Apr 10 14:35:25 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Apr-85 01:25:46 EST
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> >  Anyone who invades a nation deserves the name "aggressor".
> 
> 	Does this apply to the U.S., British, and Russian entry into
> Germany in 1945?  The U.S. invasion of Vichy France?  How about the
> Israeli mission into Uganda in 1976?  Not all invasions are aggressive.
> 
> matthews@harvard

Oops, I slipped there.  Invasion, to me, is permissable to halt an
invader, like the Axis countries in WWII.  If by "Israeli mission"
is meant Entebbe, I'm not sure I'd call that invasion, since invasion
involves, to my sense, attack on the government of a country.  In
Entebbe, Israel attacked an airport and some terrorists, but not the
government of Uganda.

I don't think the intervention of the US in the civil war was a good
thing, and I stand by my defense of the term "imperialist aggressors"
to describe the US in that operation.

As far as whether the Bolshevik Revolution was a good thing for the rest
of the world is concerned, I think that can only be answered by looking at
the alternatives given the failure of that revolution.  I think Nazism would
have arisen whether the Bolsheviks succeeded or not.  I'm also sure that the
USSR's role in WWII was the decisive one.  Could it have been decisive
had the Bolsheviks not succeeded (i.e. would forced industrialization
and tank development, etc. have taken place)?  I'm not sure, I doubt it.
But that's one important question.

Another important question is if democracy would have survived in the
lively forms it takes today in the Western democracies if the Bolshevik
example had not warned the West of the costs of abandoning its
ideological ideals?

A third question is if the Third World would be better off if they lacked
the opportunity to play economic systems off against each other for their
own advantage, as they can (in a limited sense) do now.  Would richer
nations listen to the pleas of poorer nations if the poorer nations
couldn't threaten a revolutionary alternative?

A fourth question is if China would have mass starvation and population
explosion today had it not had a peasant-driven Communist revolution.
That revolution depended on the prior success of the Bolsheviks, even
though it's common knowledge that the two regimes don't get along today.

A fifth question is if those of a more leftist persuasion such as myself
would not be in prison or otherwise restrained if the Bolsheviks had not
won?  I've seen the argument made that suppression of domestic unrest
could have become normal state policy throughout the West if all cases
of domestic unrest, like the Bolsheviks, had been successfully repulsed
by means of state repression.  The failure of state repression in the
USSR cautioned the West against its use when faced by similar movements
or individuals.  Norman Thomas was imprisoned for pacifism in WWI; he
would not have been in WWII.

I don't know the answers to these for sure, but I bet those like Jim
Matthews are much more certain.  It's a conflictual world, you know.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw