Quote:
Originally Posted by ecriture d'adulte
Right. And this isn't the same thing as saying the US/west is 100% benevolent and their interventions/rebuilds always work out great. But you CAN pretty much make the inverse claim that Soviet interventions always turned out terribly (East Germany, Soviet Bloch, North Korea). The US at least had some run away success stories (West Germany, Japan, South Korea).
This is a tricky debate, and to be honest the setting of this thread is not likely the best of it. It is true that Germany and Japan can be counted as success stories, but that success owes a lot to economic policy, foreign policy and private enterprise. And if we're honest, the media climate of the 40s and 50s probably plays a part too; we're still a good way off the Vietnam war and the media turning to more direct coverage of warfare.
But the sheer amount of proxy warfare from the 50s through the cold war is staggering, I'd be tempted to use the word "insane". It is as such a level that calling it a "cold war" might one day be thought of as an extreme mislabel (plus the amount of direct engagements is actually fairly high, but the parties would usually put themselves in a position of deniability). And if you start to study it, the rhyme and pattern makes little sense. Allies in one proxy war are enemies in the next, you can in some cases find the US and Soviets in somewhat of a political alliance against what we these days often think of as US allies, it is just... strange. I'm not sure if it is a tale with a lot of heroes in it, perhaps more that it was on such an enormous scale between such extremely powerful actors that a lot of nations and people worldwide had little choice and had to pick a side.
There are still a lot of leftovers from that period that has to be resolved before we count any success stories, especially when it comes to nuclear proliferation, but also in build-up of military power. We can actually use a "small scale" (but still grim) example of this effect when it comes to the subject of this thread: A lot of the losses incurred by ISAF and operations in Afghanistan is down to IEDs built from unexploded Soviet ordnance from artillery shelling and carpet bombing in the 80s.
I've heard Soviet in Afghanistan be described as "Soviet's Vietnam", and this amateur historian finds that description very apt (even though there are some big differences as well). It starts with strategic miscalculations, blunders into all the elements of war except the actual part of a way to victory and ends up with enormous casualties inflicted on civilians .