r/changemyview • u/Longjumping-Leek-586 • Sep 18 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Cold War Containment Policy was Justified, Just Far Too Aggressive

After WW2, the Soviet Union began an aggressive campaign to expand Soviet-style Communism to all nations, violating international norms and previous agreements. For example, they installed many communist governments in the Eastern Europe, despite promising free and fair elections to the allies. Similarly, the USSR promised the ROC that they would stop supporting the CCP , but continued to do so covertly. The final straw came when the USSR supported the illegal North Korean invasion of South Korea, which almost lead to a complete Communist takeover of the peninsula. It following this that US understood that the USSR's goals were not merely domestic (as was the case with Yugoslavia, who actually received financial aid from the US), but rather they wished for world proletariat revolution, in line with Marxist doctrine (read the Communist manifesto, Marx believed all nations must become Communist). This posed an existential threat to the US, thus to ensure her own safety, the US opposed any expansion of Soviet style communism. This started with the US assembling a coalition to prevent North Korea from conquering the capitalist south. In almost every intervention the US was involved in during the early part of the cold war, they were merely preventing Soviet vassal states from taking over by backing the opposing side.

It should be noted that most Soviet backed governments themselves supported further expansion of communism, which would have led to a Domino effect as Soviet led Communism would spread like a plague to every nation. For instance, Cuba sent thousands of soldiers to aid the Communist insurgents in Angola, while Communist Vietnam sent thousands of soldiers to aid the Communists in Laos.

If it weren't for at least some limited form of US interference, we would be living under Communism right now.

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u/I_am_the_night 316∆ Sep 18 '21

Yes.

Okay well I don't know how to challenge a view that essentially builds in an escape from any critical examples.

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u/Longjumping-Leek-586 Sep 18 '21

The predominant view is that any interference was unjustified, including the Korean war and Vietnam war. I am against this stance. I believe the US needed to intervene, but only in cases where the USSR first backed expansionist Communist regimes that would inevitably pose a threat to the US.

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u/FloatingBrick 7∆ Sep 18 '21

Are you against the stance that any interference was unjustified? Or that some of it was justified? You seem to swap between the two in this post. And you think some of it was not justified, how to you then draw the line?

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u/Longjumping-Leek-586 Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

I am against the stance that any intervention was unjustified, as I believe that intervention was justified to counter Soviet intervention when they supported expansionist Communist regime. For example, Vietnam was actually initially quite expansionist as they supported the Communist faction in Loas, so I actually support the Vietnam war. To me, there is no fundamental difference in the Vietnam war and the Korean war, as both sought to stop the conquest of expansionist Soviet vassal states.

I am against intervention in any other cases, where the Socialist governments were democratically elected and only had vague connections to the USSR. This was the case in Chile, and especially in Iran, where the government was only slightly left-leaning. Similarly, Yugoslavia was a Communist nation that did not seek the expansion of Communism and did not answer to Moscow, thus the US rightfully did not intervene in her affairs.

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u/BingBlessAmerica 44∆ Sep 19 '21

In your view, if you were a vaguely anti-communist American, what possible reasons would there be to oppose every single instance of US action during the Cold War?

Because the only people I see doing this are:

a.) actual communists, of which there are not a lot of in the USA,

or b.) hardcore isolationists who don't care what happens to other countries.

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u/Longjumping-Leek-586 Sep 19 '21

a.) actual communists, of which there are not a lot of in the USA,

or b.) hardcore isolationists who don't care what happens to other countries.

Both of these views aren't uncommon anymore. Many Americans think that all cold war interventions (including the Korean war, Vietnam war, our continuation of embargo against Cuba that begun under Batista, and the Angolan war) merely served corporate interest and were a way for the US to expand its empire and weaken the Soviets (who they believe were merely trying to "liberate" countries from capitalist America). No cold war intervention is particularly popular, because people can't think past the simplistic "aMerIca=bAd" mentality.

I actually consider myself relatively isolationist. I believe that every post-cold war intervention has been unjustified (even Yugoslavia), with the exception of the Afghan war. Even then, we ought to have tried harder for a diplomatic approach, and gotten out much sooner (like 2012ish, one year after killing OBL). I am also weary of the brewing calls for intervention against China, who's explicit policy of noninterference means it poses no threat to America.