Rosenbergs: Still Guilty After All These Years

[Michael Tee]

<<They were traitors and spies and deserved exactly what they got.>>

Be that as it may, do you believe that the end of the American nuclear monopoly made a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. more or less likely?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I would like to think that it would have made no difference, that our leaders would not have used nukes. They did not use them in Korea, after all. But we have had some pretty scary people, like the Dulles Brothers and Curtis LeMay awfully close to the reins of power. I donlt think that nuking the USSR would have ended Communism anywhere.

[Michael Tee]

With or without a nuclear monopoly, the U.S. might not have launched a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R.

My point was that on a sliding scale of probability or likelihood, the loss of a nuclear monopoly moves the likelihood of an American nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. a little closer to the "unlikely" end of the bar and a little further away from the "likely" end, however close to either end it may ultimately wind up.

[hnumpah]

My point was that on a sliding scale of probability or likelihood, the loss of a nuclear monopoly moves the likelihood of an American nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. a little closer to the "unlikely" end of the bar and a little further away from the "likely" end, however close to either end it may ultimately wind up.

I believe the point was that it was already at the 'unlikely' end to start with. I believe the US had no intention of using nukes against Russia, or of attacking Russia at all, else why not let Patton continue eastward at the end of WWII? One way to have kept this the goal would have been for Russia to not have been so eager to gobble up eastern Europe as a 'buffer' against some imagined attack. Russia would have had nukes eventually anyway; all the spying just saved them some time doing the theoretical work. By the time they fired their first test, we could have probably wiped them off the map if we had been so inclined, but we did not. Apparently we were not so inclined.

[Michael Tee]

<<I believe the point was that it was already at the 'unlikely' end to start with. >>

Wherever it was, the end of the U.S. nuclear monopoly made it a lot less likely.

<<I believe the US had no intention of using nukes against Russia, or of attacking Russia at all, else why not let Patton continue eastward at the end of WWII? >>

Either because they didn't have enough nukes, feared the Russians could absorb the punishment and still roll over Western Europe or because of the strength of pro-Russian feeling in the U.S.A. itself and in Western Europe.  Don't forget, it took years of Cold War propaganda, McCarthyism and Red Scare blacklisting to eliminate the desire for peace and friendship with the U.S.S.R. that had developed in the U.S. during the war.

<<One way to have kept this the goal would have been for Russia to not have been so eager to gobble up eastern Europe . . . >>

What does "gobble up" mean - - push the Nazis back to Berlin?  Was there some way this could have been done WITHOUT rolling over Eastern Europe?  What were they supposed to do with the anti-Nazi Resistance forces in those countries?  Abandon them to the local Nazi collaborators?  The Yalta Conference recognized these territories as within the U.S.S.R.'s sphere of influence.  Many of them had participated as Axis allies in the invasion of Russia and now the Russians had to extract reparations from them.  The Allies recognized this.  "Gobbling up" is just fascist Cold War propaganda bullshit.  They did what they were entitled to do, took what they were entitled to take.  It STILL didn't make up all the harm Hitler and his Eastern European allies had wreaked on Russia.

<< . . . as a 'buffer' against some imagined attack. >>

Yeah, "imagined attack."  From a country which since the Russian Civil War had been invaded from the West by Poles, Czechs, French, English, German (twice) Canadian, American, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Argentinian, Spanish, Australian and Italian armies  (I probably left out a few, can't remember ALL of them) and had lost tens of millions of people as a result.  That is some imagination.

<<Russia would have had nukes eventually anyway; all the spying just saved them some time doing the theoretical work. >>

Well ain't that hindsight 20/20 every time.  I'm sure the Russians really knew they'd be OK if they just waited.  Surely the Americans would wait for them to acquire their own nuclear weapons before launching a nuclear attack.  It's the only sporting way to proceed.

<<By the time they fired their first test, we could have probably wiped them off the map if we had been so inclined, but we did not. Apparently we were not so inclined.>>

Maybe one day we'll know the real reasons it didn't happen, the explanation WHY you were not so inclined.  Whatever they were, it's a cinch that benevolence and peacefulness were not among them.  It would have been criminally irresponsible on the part of the Russian leaders to have gambled their people's lives on the benevolent intentions of the American ruling class.

[Plane]

<<Sounds as if you are saying that the Soviets beleived their own propaganda.>>

What's really clear is that YOU believe implicitly in U.S. propaganda (peaceful, non-violent, non-aggressive)

Of coarse not , I am a cog in the war machine myself. I know quite well how often the military is called upon by our Government to solve problems. How long has it been since a president went through four years without using military strength abroad?

Personally, I believe what happened is that the Soviets correctly assessed U.S. intentions based on past history, dating back to American participation in the armed foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War on the anti-Soviet side and including the fundamental weakness of the pro-Soviet forces in U.S. political life, considered all relevant factors and in one or more policy papers either came to the conclusion that the U.S. was preparing for an ultmate war of aggression or that, the intentions being unclear, in either case prudence would dictate that the sooner the U.S. was deprived of its nuclear monopoly, the safer the people of the U.S.S.R. would be.

They must have had a nuclear weapons committee to consider all aspects of nuclear war from both an offensive and a defensive POV and that committee made the only logical decision possible.  Either the Comintern, functioning under the radar since its 1944 official termination, or some other organ if the Comintern was really defunct, passed an order down to the CPs of every country with nuclear capability, including Canada, to cooperate with in-country Soviet agents on an extreme urgency basis to do everything possible to break the U.S nuclear monopoly.

Why would they need such a committee? If there was such a body it would not have issued any opinion that Stalin did not already have. Perhaps they were worried that t5he USA would attack , but not from any evidence , more likely projection of their own attitudes on Americans

How can it possibly be wrong if the Central Committee of the CPUSSR decides to save the live of hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens and how can it be wrong for the Rosenbergs to decide to do whatever they can to assist in that project?  The world should have thanked them for it (and most of the world did) but the U.S. executes them?  THAT is shameful.

In what way did the possession of the bomb prevent a single Soviet Death?
No, more like the radioactive industrial sites shortened hundreds of thousands of lives and the waste dumps ruined huge swaths of wild lands the Soviets were not as neat and tidy with their nukes as we.

I am not quite old enough to remember the "missile gap " furor , but I have read of it . After the Soviets demonstrated their prowess in atomic weapons and then missiles the USA embarked on an enormous catch up campaign. Years later we learned that the Soviet capability was quite a bit exaggerated especially in missiles , but the competition and expense of the arms race was a severe strain on the fragile Soviet economy , eventually dragging them down to dissolution .

And during the dissolution , while the Parliament was burning , while the members of the Warsaw Pact joyfully dumped their membership ,the USA invaded them just as much as we ever would have.

[Plane]

<<They were traitors and spies and deserved exactly what they got.>>

Be that as it may, do you believe that the end of the American nuclear monopoly made a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. more or less likely?

More ,much much more.

For the majority of my life every major military instalition in the Soviet Union was constantly being aimed at by SAC with aircraft and missles ready to deliver destruction wholesale on a moments notice.

How did asking for this situation improve the safety of any Soviet Citizen?

[hnumpah]

<<I believe the point was that it was already at the 'unlikely' end to start with. >>

Wherever it was, the end of the U.S. nuclear monopoly made it a lot less likely.

When you're at one end of a scale, it's a bit difficult to be a lot more at that end of the scale, don't you think?

<<I believe the US had no intention of using nukes against Russia, or of attacking Russia at all, else why not let Patton continue eastward at the end of WWII? >>

Either because they didn't have enough nukes, feared the Russians could absorb the punishment and still roll over Western Europe or because of the strength of pro-Russian feeling in the U.S.A. itself and in Western Europe.  Don't forget, it took years of Cold War propaganda, McCarthyism and Red Scare blacklisting to eliminate the desire for peace and friendship with the U.S.S.R. that had developed in the U.S. during the war.

For whatever reason, they didn't.

<<One way to have kept this the goal would have been for Russia to not have been so eager to gobble up eastern Europe . . . >>

What does "gobble up" mean - - push the Nazis back to Berlin?  Was there some way this could have been done WITHOUT rolling over Eastern Europe?  What were they supposed to do with the anti-Nazi Resistance forces in those countries?  Abandon them to the local Nazi collaborators?  The Yalta Conference recognized these territories as within the U.S.S.R.'s sphere of influence.  Many of them had participated as Axis allies in the invasion of Russia and now the Russians had to extract reparations from them.  The Allies recognized this.  "Gobbling up" is just fascist Cold War propaganda bullshit.  They did what they were entitled to do, took what they were entitled to take.  It STILL didn't make up all the harm Hitler and his Eastern European allies had wreaked on Russia.

So by that logic, it is okay for Israel to keep the lands they've occupied in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria; for the US, as victors, to annex Iraq; or for that matter, for Iraq to have kept Kuwait by right of conquest?

<< . . . as a 'buffer' against some imagined attack. >>

Yeah, "imagined attack."  From a country which since the Russian Civil War had been invaded from the West by Poles, Czechs, French, English, German (twice) Canadian, American, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Argentinian, Spanish, Australian and Italian armies  (I probably left out a few, can't remember ALL of them) and had lost tens of millions of people as a result.  That is some imagination.

Canada, America and Australia invaded Russia? Argentina? England? Do tell.

You bore me to tears with your Communist bullshit and America is always wrong crap. Now provide examples.

[Michael Tee]

<<Why would they need such a committee? >>

Why would a country which had suffered dozens of millions of casualties from invasions, including an earlier invasion by the U.S.A. and its allies, want a committee to study the offensive and defensive aspects of the nuclear weapons which they had watched the Americans actually put to use?

In a word, self-preservation.

<<If there was such a body it would not have issued any opinion that Stalin did not already have. >>

I don't get it.  Did Stalin have some kind of opinion store where all the possible opinions that a committee might reach were all typed up in advance and indexed, so whatever opinion the committee finally arrived at, Stalin could look in his Opinion Store and yell, "Got it!  I already got that one!"?

<<Perhaps they were worried that t5he USA would attack , but not from any evidence , more likely projection of their own attitudes on Americans>>

That's very responsible thinking.  Why investigate potential threats of any kind when they can automatically be passed off as mere projections of one's own attitudes?  And if the Americans HAD launched a surprise nuclear attack, what would Stalin have had to say?  "Sorry, I wondered if we'd be attacked like that but I figured it was just a projection of my own attitudes?"

[Plane]

<<Why would they need such a committee? >>

Why would a country which had suffered dozens of millions of casualties from invasions, including an earlier invasion by the U.S.A. and its allies, want a committee to study the offensive and defensive aspects of the nuclear weapons which they had watched the Americans actually put to use?

In a word, self-preservation.

Why would a country which had suffered dozens of millions of casualties from invasions,pick fights with all the remaining strong nations?

[Michael Tee]

<<When you're at one end of a scale, it's a bit difficult to be a lot more at that end of the scale, don't you think?>>

It seems there are two schools of thought on whether they were actually at the far end of the scale or not.

<<For whatever reason, they didn't [nuke the U.S.S.R. before they got their own nukes]>>

Yep, nothing wrong with your hindsight, it's still 20/20/

<<So by that logic, it is okay for Israel to keep the lands they've occupied in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria; for the US, as victors, to annex Iraq; or for that matter, for Iraq to have kept Kuwait by right of conquest?>>

No, actually by that logic it's OK for the victim of the aggression to occupy and take reparations from the aggressor states' territories, it's NOT OK for the aggressor to reap the fruits of its aggression.  Kuwait is kind of a special state, its entire statehood was created by foreign colonial powers as part of their scheme to permanently dominate the region for their own aggrandizement and moreover the Kuwaitis had been slant-drilling into the Iraqi reserves, a practice they had refused to discontinue despite numerous complaints.  I don't consider Kuwait a real country - - its just a British creation and the Iraqis have as much right to it as anyone else.

<<Canada, America and Australia invaded Russia? Argentina? England? Do tell.

<<You bore me to tears with your Communist bullshit and America is always wrong crap. Now provide examples.>>

Fuck you.  I'm not your high-school history teacher and that's no way to ask anyone for information that you're too fucking ignorant to know yourself.  Go and Google "Russian Civil War" and "Second World War/Eastern Front" if you're not too bored by it.

[Michael Tee]

<<Why would a country which had suffered dozens of millions of casualties from invasions,pick fights with all the remaining strong nations?>>

Exactly.  They didn't.  It was the other way round but you've been so thoroughly brainwashed that you think Russia was picking the fight.

[Plane]

No, actually by that logic it's OK for the victim of the aggression to occupy and take reparations from the aggressor states' territories, it's NOT OK for the aggressor to reap the fruits of its aggression. 

So  when is Finland going to get its eastern countys back?

[Michael Tee]

<<So  when is Finland going to get its eastern countys back?>>

'bout the same time Mexico gets back California.

[hnumpah]

Fuck you.  I'm not your high-school history teacher and that's no way to ask anyone for information that you're too fucking ignorant to know yourself.  Go and Google "Russian Civil War" and "Second World War/Eastern Front" if you're not too bored by it.

I didn't think you'd have any answers. As usual.

And fuck you too, by the way.