Re: the Cold War

> So, if the US didn't fight the cold war, let it's military expenditures fall
> to the present level of Europe, didn't develop the B52 or ICBMs, stand aside
> where it fought in Korea, let missiles remain in Cuba and be expanded,
> didn't fight to stop the multiple Marxist COIN operations throughout the
> world that failed (e.g Greece), nothing much different would have
> happened...the US's position in 1995 would be no worse than it was as
> history actually unfolded.

You're taking some peoples comments about the past and extrapolating an
awful lot from the.

Extrapolation is a logical crime and ought never be used for anything
more serious than the occassional decision that might head off an ice
cream truck that's getting away on a hot day.

Recognizing that something was one way once is no claim that anything
else would have been anything in particular.

A person who thinks the Soviet arsenal was deliberately over-stated is
making no claims about policy to combat Chinese support for North Korea.

Said person might very well think assisting South Korea was the right
thing to do but also recognize that being more careful not to threaten
China and encourage it's invovlement would have been better (if the
North Korean despot had not been confused with Chinese Communism  .

As a person who thinks the U.S assault on Vietnam would have worked out
a lot better if the U.S had earlier sided with the Vietnamese when
France tried to re-establish it's colonial control and told the French
to fuck off and if the u.S had then sided with ther then allies against
rhe Japanese Vietnam would have been a strong ally and bulwark against
any Chinese adventurism going forward.

Not that anyone who pays much attention to Chinese history thinks there
was much chance of any adventurism to worry about.

Missiles in Cuba? Well, they weren't exaggerrated so a person talking
about the exaggerrated isn't talking about them. Q.E.D.

To summarise my point - a person recognizing that the military and
political threat of the U.S.S.R was over stated is not making an
argument about individual policies, and to infer they are is to
apparently assumme a person only believes things aligning with ideology
rather than reality.

> Containment was a waste of effort, we just had to wait because
communists wouldn't
> bother to take advantage of a power vacuum.

For further example, a person could recognize the overstated threat and
still think containemnt was good policy, but perhaps one might think it
needn't have been so expensive or have ceded so much authority to a
military industrial complex. It could have, for instance, instead of
relying on increasing U.S strength and authority and the economic
influence of it's military unneccessarily have involved greater
political and economic commitment by European allies.

In such a scenario the U.S would likely now be richer and the European
welfare states poorer. So if a person did argue that they'd be making
what a simple ideological categorisation would say is a right wing
argument rather than the presumed left wing  one. But that might be a
mistaken categorisation because a different flavour of right prefers
that the U.S made the commitment and increased it's power and authority
commiting international institutions to policies favouring the U.S.

I advise not making assumptions about intentions from explication of
reality (excepting detection of fraud). Measuring is not policy.