Obama: Egypt Is Not Our Ally, But Not Our Enemy

[Jaime]

I will be the first to admit Hasan that I'm not a economics expert or a knowledgeable on history. But I think saying it couldn't meet lowball expectations is off. The cuban missile crisis scared the croutons out of people well into Reagan's era. Breshnev certainly was a threat to Western Europe.

That being said, we could have all been fooled.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Ed Normile' timestamp='1347753786' post='2482813']
From what I gather in the multifarious posts in this thread that a fair majority of people here believe that a nation can garner respect through weakness ? The bully in the school is basically no different than the bully who runs a country or a terrorist organization, they sense a weakness and they will attack. Of course Reagen had much to do with the downfall of the USSR, and it was Ronald Reagen, the person touted as a wreckless shoot first ask questions later cowboy that was the cause for release of the hostages taken under the weak President Carter and held for 444 days under his watch as the Iranians had no fear of him or his Presidency. The hostages were released the day Ronald Reagen was inaugurated, think that was a coincedence, or Reagens promise to level Iran if the hostages were not released. The bullies usually back down when stood up to, but the weak who try to appease or bargain get trampled.

ed
[/quote]
who said anything about weakness? Obama hasn't been weak, that's an illusion constructed by talking heads that want to bash Obama's image. Obama is one of the most militant presidents in history. this is NOT a bully sensing weakness and attacking, this is angry blowback against the "strength" we've been exhibiting by bombing the croutons out of the middle east. it is no coincidence that they stormed the US embassies in places like Yemen and Libya where we have been bombing.

as if this should need to be said: that's not a justification for what they did, just an explanation of their motivation. their motivation is NOT a perceived weakness, not at all. such an interpretation is not grounded in reality. I don't know about you, but if someone was traipsing around my country and all my neighbor's countries and bombing them regularly, I don't think I'd perceive them as "weak"...

[Winchester]

[quote name='Ed Normile' timestamp='1347753786' post='2482813']
multifarious
[/quote]
[img]http://alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/png/misc-i-regret-nothing.png[/img]

[brianthephysicist]

I haven't read this topic at all, but it warms my heart anytime I see Aloysius posting

[4588686]

[quote name='brianthephysicist' timestamp='1347775917' post='2482933']
I haven't read this topic at all, but it warms my heart anytime I see Aloysius posting
[/quote]


smell of elderberries up

[4588686]

[quote name='jaime' timestamp='1347765348' post='2482897']
I will be the first to admit Hasan that I'm not a economics expert or a knowledgeable on history. But I think saying it couldn't meet lowball expectations is off. The cuban missile crisis scared the croutons out of people well into Reagan's era. Breshnev certainly was a threat to Western Europe.

That being said, we could have all been fooled.
[/quote]

The contention wasn't that the Soviet Union wasn't a serious military power. They were. One thing the Soviet Union was reasonably good at was imitating western industrial economies and using those economies to produce a massive standing army and a lot of nuclear weapons. I mean the Red Army did win a massive land war against the German Army. No small feat. But the Western world in general, and the United States in particularly, did chronically overestimate Soviet military capabilities. I think the general trend in the scholarship is that we never really appreciated just how devastating the eastern Front was for Germany. About my comment. The best I can do as far as citing that claim is to cite the professor who said it. Dr. Robertson at UNC. He's an expert on the modern russian state and the former Soviet Union and was a Soviet Studies major at Oxford. I realize that doesn't do much (maybe I misheard him, that is possible, his class was at 8:00am) but it wasn't just out of nowhere (assuring I hear it correctly).

I can cite this. I haven't read through it. It's pretty dense. But the first part does talk a bit about the how's and why of the overestimation of Soviet strength.

[url="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/watching-the-bear-essays-on-cias-analysis-of-the-soviet-union/article05.html"]https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/watching-the-bear-essays-on-cias-analysis-of-the-soviet-union/article05.html[/url]

[4588686]

[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif][size=3][background=rgb(30, 70, 121)] George Kennan, the Cold War architect of the containment doctrine, has openly admitted since the mid-1970s that the West overestimated the Soviet threat to Western Europe in the late 1940s. Robert McNamara, speaking before a Georgetown University audience on March 20, 1989, acknowledged that the United States overestimated Soviet nuclear potential and intentions during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.[/background][/size][/font][/color]

[url="http://www.cpjustice.org/stories/storyReader$1073"]http://www.cpjustice.org/stories/storyReader$1073[/url]



A lot of people have conspiracy theories about this. That the military-industrial complex was just hyping the Soviet threat for the money. I think there is an element of truth to this but, overwhelmingly, it seems like it was just a good faith error. And as the CIA report notes, there was an institutional bias towards overestimation since the costs of being over-prepared were more palatable than the costs of being under-prepared.