Teen physicist Ted Hall, who helped perfect the plutonium bomb, passed its secrets to the Soviet Union hoping to prevent the US from ever using it again. For 79 years that courageous act has worked.
'But consider the millions of people, mostly civilians of third-world nations who have been killed as a result of US military actions since the end of World War II,....'
The Soviet Union have also had their own military ventures that have killed millions as well. The United States is not the only modern country to perform unnecessary military ventures.
The numbers are smaller, but that is because Russia sincxe 1990 has been a much smaller nation with a much smaller military footprint and less abilituy to project power beyond it's near border countrries, not because it is less prone to violence. But in any case, it simply makes the case that neither country can use nuclear weapons, especially against the other, because doing so would be suicide. I'm citing all those millions killed in Korea, in Indochina, in Iraq, in Syria etc., as talllied up by both the Lancet medical journal in Britain and the Brown University Costs of War Project simply to point out that Us governments have shown no compunction about killing millions of innocnts to promote its global dominance agenda, and had it had un-fetterred freedom to use nukes in the '50s if it were able to "destroy the Soviet Union as an industrial society" as Pentagon strategists were descring the Dropshot plan, I'm sure they would have done it. Ted Hall's spying is what prevented that appalling atrocity.
I don't understand Jim's reasoning about SU/Russia being equally war hundry with US capitalism, but Dave should know better when he purports/suggests that SU and or Russia are also warmongers and as much "prone to violence" as US, which has between 350 and 650 wars to its belt, according to its own figures (350) and other sources (650).
"The numbers are smaller, but that is because Russia sincxe 1990 has been a much smaller nation with a much smaller military footprint and less abilituy to project power beyond it's near border countrries, not because it is less prone to violence. "
Dave, where has Russia invaded with intent to own/dominate others countries? How many nations? Ukraine certainly does not count since it only seeks to bring Crimea and Donbass into its territory for two reasons: the vast majority of citizens in those two areas so voted; and it has to project its own sovereignty. See UN charter article 51.
But., even if you want to count Ukraine as innocent, this is certainly not comparable to the US. Shame on your, "comrade"?
Apples and oranges Jim. We or at least I was talking about people killed as a result of US wars. You are talking about Stalin’sbsupport of revolution — quite a different matter. Furthermore you are wrong. Stalin was far from an advocate of world revolution and even less of global conquest. Indeed his Comintern (later (Comimform), did its best to undermine, crush,oust or even kill communist internationalists to advance Stalin’s rather isolationist Socialism in One Country theory. A good example of this was the Spanish Civil War where Stalinist treachery substantially helped to defeat the Republican cause. In any event Soviet/Russian wars and global.aggression was pretty minor compared to the violence perpetrated over the last three quarters of a century compared to the US record.
Ron, I am including the postwar history of the Soviet Union since 1945 in that statement, which is actually being generous since your US war figures are, I believe, for the entire history of the US since its establishment as a independent country. The country with its capital in Moscow invaded Poland in a pact with Hitler at the start of WWII, and only became an enemy of Nazi Germany when Hitler double-crossed Stalin and launched Operation Barbarosa. After the war ended and with Germany defeated, Russia sent its Red Army into Hungary to crush a rebellion against Soviet occupation, and in 1968 (the year I believe you quit the CP if I remember right, as did many US CP members), it invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the reform Communists' effort under Dubchek to create a socialist state that would be operated under democratic rules. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was brutal, to prop up the pro-Soviet government there that was under attack by tribal groups, was one of the most unpopular wars in modern Soviet history and was a key factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Granted that a significant part of the problem for the USSR in Afghanistan was the Brezinski/Clinton creation, funding and arming of the Mujahadeen (an effort to make Afghanistan into "Russia's Vietnam"), but that was after the Soviet army in that country was already trapped in a very broad islamic/tribal resistance. Afgthanistan had been long known as the "graveyard of empire" for would-be occupiers, as the US learned after 2003. The Soviet crackdown on the secession movement in Chechnya was brutal on civilians and though it was technically an internal conflict as Chechnya was part of the post-1990 Russia Federation, the borders of that post-Communist state were in some cases more aspirational than popular among the local population. But having said that, I made it clear to Jim in my reply to his aove comment that the number of deaths caused by Russia in external wars has been much smaller than those caused by the US. In fact. I could have been blunter, and said they cannot be compared to the epic slaughter of legitimate liberation fighters and especially civilians killed by the US military in its history of wars, incursions and government overthrows. At the same time, I have no illusions about Russia's and the Soviet Union's own history of empire. The big difference, which you have admirably pointed out in your great book "The Russian Peace Threat," is that Russia and even the more powerrful Soviet Union in its heyday, never sought a global military involving hundreds of foreign bases, a vast fleet of carrier-based armadas in every ocean, and with the one exception of the (clearly defensive and reactive) effort to put missiles in Cuba, to base nuclear-tipped missiles within minutes of US targets, as the US began doing all the way back to the early days of the Cold War, and is still trying to do, both by placing nukes in countries in eastern Europe and on Trident-missile submarines parked off the Russian coastline in the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic, and the Pacific Ocean. .
What can be stated clearly is that since 1945, the driver of global conflict has consistently been not the Soviet Union or Russia, as portrayed by US government propaganda, parroted by American legislators and the US media, but rather the US itself. The whole of nuclear history since the creation of the atomic bomb has been of the US trying to achieve such a technological and numerical advantage in delivery systems and anti-missile capability that it could launch or threaten to launch a first -strike attack on the USSR/Russia and later on China without significant risk of retaliation. Soviet/Russian scientists, and later Chinese scientists have struggled to prevent that and thankfully have managed so far to to stay close enough to the US to make such holocaust impossible. Ted Hall's successful efforts to get information about the plutonium bomb to the Soviets when he did in 1944-45 was crucial to that effort to prevent ths slaughter not of millions, but of tens of millions or even a hundred million or more human beings in the USSR/Russia, and China, as well as Korea, Vietnam, and the eastern European Warsaw Pact nations.
That is not true. Stalin, and the USSR as a whole was dedicated to spread communism/ socialism by any means necessary. After the USSR solidified its hold over Eastern Europe they did extend influence over other countries as well. Did we have a role in this. Sure, The US messed up multiple times.
Hell, Vietnam was the best example. Honestly, we could have bribed them silly to be an ally. However, to act like the USSR was a neutral bystander is just silly.
The Soviet Union dominated the Eastern European nations. They also influenced the middle east, asia and South America. The Soviet Union has been as war hungry as the US as well,.
Influence ain’t the same as wars. You say the USSR under Stalin tried to “spread communism/ socialism by any means necessary” but that is an exageration. It did not send hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers to battle local people and fighters in countries around the world, didn’t massively bomb foreign countries as the us did in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (2 times) Afghanistan, etc.. it didn’t send carrier groups around the globe to impose No -fly zones and drop antipersonnel bombs and forebDU shells as in Serbia and Kosovo. Martin Luther King said it best in his Riverside Church Address in April 1968 ( the speech thabsigned his death warrant) when he called the US “ the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” It was true then and remains true we now.
'But consider the millions of people, mostly civilians of third-world nations who have been killed as a result of US military actions since the end of World War II,....'
The Soviet Union have also had their own military ventures that have killed millions as well. The United States is not the only modern country to perform unnecessary military ventures.
The numbers are smaller, but that is because Russia sincxe 1990 has been a much smaller nation with a much smaller military footprint and less abilituy to project power beyond it's near border countrries, not because it is less prone to violence. But in any case, it simply makes the case that neither country can use nuclear weapons, especially against the other, because doing so would be suicide. I'm citing all those millions killed in Korea, in Indochina, in Iraq, in Syria etc., as talllied up by both the Lancet medical journal in Britain and the Brown University Costs of War Project simply to point out that Us governments have shown no compunction about killing millions of innocnts to promote its global dominance agenda, and had it had un-fetterred freedom to use nukes in the '50s if it were able to "destroy the Soviet Union as an industrial society" as Pentagon strategists were descring the Dropshot plan, I'm sure they would have done it. Ted Hall's spying is what prevented that appalling atrocity.
Jim and Dave,
I don't understand Jim's reasoning about SU/Russia being equally war hundry with US capitalism, but Dave should know better when he purports/suggests that SU and or Russia are also warmongers and as much "prone to violence" as US, which has between 350 and 650 wars to its belt, according to its own figures (350) and other sources (650).
"The numbers are smaller, but that is because Russia sincxe 1990 has been a much smaller nation with a much smaller military footprint and less abilituy to project power beyond it's near border countrries, not because it is less prone to violence. "
Dave, where has Russia invaded with intent to own/dominate others countries? How many nations? Ukraine certainly does not count since it only seeks to bring Crimea and Donbass into its territory for two reasons: the vast majority of citizens in those two areas so voted; and it has to project its own sovereignty. See UN charter article 51.
But., even if you want to count Ukraine as innocent, this is certainly not comparable to the US. Shame on your, "comrade"?
Apples and oranges Jim. We or at least I was talking about people killed as a result of US wars. You are talking about Stalin’sbsupport of revolution — quite a different matter. Furthermore you are wrong. Stalin was far from an advocate of world revolution and even less of global conquest. Indeed his Comintern (later (Comimform), did its best to undermine, crush,oust or even kill communist internationalists to advance Stalin’s rather isolationist Socialism in One Country theory. A good example of this was the Spanish Civil War where Stalinist treachery substantially helped to defeat the Republican cause. In any event Soviet/Russian wars and global.aggression was pretty minor compared to the violence perpetrated over the last three quarters of a century compared to the US record.
Ron, I am including the postwar history of the Soviet Union since 1945 in that statement, which is actually being generous since your US war figures are, I believe, for the entire history of the US since its establishment as a independent country. The country with its capital in Moscow invaded Poland in a pact with Hitler at the start of WWII, and only became an enemy of Nazi Germany when Hitler double-crossed Stalin and launched Operation Barbarosa. After the war ended and with Germany defeated, Russia sent its Red Army into Hungary to crush a rebellion against Soviet occupation, and in 1968 (the year I believe you quit the CP if I remember right, as did many US CP members), it invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the reform Communists' effort under Dubchek to create a socialist state that would be operated under democratic rules. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was brutal, to prop up the pro-Soviet government there that was under attack by tribal groups, was one of the most unpopular wars in modern Soviet history and was a key factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Granted that a significant part of the problem for the USSR in Afghanistan was the Brezinski/Clinton creation, funding and arming of the Mujahadeen (an effort to make Afghanistan into "Russia's Vietnam"), but that was after the Soviet army in that country was already trapped in a very broad islamic/tribal resistance. Afgthanistan had been long known as the "graveyard of empire" for would-be occupiers, as the US learned after 2003. The Soviet crackdown on the secession movement in Chechnya was brutal on civilians and though it was technically an internal conflict as Chechnya was part of the post-1990 Russia Federation, the borders of that post-Communist state were in some cases more aspirational than popular among the local population. But having said that, I made it clear to Jim in my reply to his aove comment that the number of deaths caused by Russia in external wars has been much smaller than those caused by the US. In fact. I could have been blunter, and said they cannot be compared to the epic slaughter of legitimate liberation fighters and especially civilians killed by the US military in its history of wars, incursions and government overthrows. At the same time, I have no illusions about Russia's and the Soviet Union's own history of empire. The big difference, which you have admirably pointed out in your great book "The Russian Peace Threat," is that Russia and even the more powerrful Soviet Union in its heyday, never sought a global military involving hundreds of foreign bases, a vast fleet of carrier-based armadas in every ocean, and with the one exception of the (clearly defensive and reactive) effort to put missiles in Cuba, to base nuclear-tipped missiles within minutes of US targets, as the US began doing all the way back to the early days of the Cold War, and is still trying to do, both by placing nukes in countries in eastern Europe and on Trident-missile submarines parked off the Russian coastline in the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic, and the Pacific Ocean. .
What can be stated clearly is that since 1945, the driver of global conflict has consistently been not the Soviet Union or Russia, as portrayed by US government propaganda, parroted by American legislators and the US media, but rather the US itself. The whole of nuclear history since the creation of the atomic bomb has been of the US trying to achieve such a technological and numerical advantage in delivery systems and anti-missile capability that it could launch or threaten to launch a first -strike attack on the USSR/Russia and later on China without significant risk of retaliation. Soviet/Russian scientists, and later Chinese scientists have struggled to prevent that and thankfully have managed so far to to stay close enough to the US to make such holocaust impossible. Ted Hall's successful efforts to get information about the plutonium bomb to the Soviets when he did in 1944-45 was crucial to that effort to prevent ths slaughter not of millions, but of tens of millions or even a hundred million or more human beings in the USSR/Russia, and China, as well as Korea, Vietnam, and the eastern European Warsaw Pact nations.
That is not true. Stalin, and the USSR as a whole was dedicated to spread communism/ socialism by any means necessary. After the USSR solidified its hold over Eastern Europe they did extend influence over other countries as well. Did we have a role in this. Sure, The US messed up multiple times.
Hell, Vietnam was the best example. Honestly, we could have bribed them silly to be an ally. However, to act like the USSR was a neutral bystander is just silly.
The Soviet Union dominated the Eastern European nations. They also influenced the middle east, asia and South America. The Soviet Union has been as war hungry as the US as well,.
Influence ain’t the same as wars. You say the USSR under Stalin tried to “spread communism/ socialism by any means necessary” but that is an exageration. It did not send hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers to battle local people and fighters in countries around the world, didn’t massively bomb foreign countries as the us did in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (2 times) Afghanistan, etc.. it didn’t send carrier groups around the globe to impose No -fly zones and drop antipersonnel bombs and forebDU shells as in Serbia and Kosovo. Martin Luther King said it best in his Riverside Church Address in April 1968 ( the speech thabsigned his death warrant) when he called the US “ the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” It was true then and remains true we now.