danc@tekecs.UUCP (Daniel Cobb) (09/09/83)
Jim Balter has a manner of expressing his opinion that really doesn't belong on this net. The emotional response he is becoming famous for completely obscures the orginal argument and discourages others from responding to his comment. For example, read the following: So what the f*ck would you have done? Bombed the Soviets into the stone age to make them less barbaric? Or spent 10 times as much of our GNP on building bombs? If we had a billion more nuclear weapons than we do now, would the Soviets be any less barbaric? You cannot "dominate (contain)" the Soviet Union in a nuclear world because you cannot use nuclear weapons to advantage. I did not propose that we bomb the Soviets, or that we spends 10 times as much for the building of bombs, or that we amass a "billion" more nuclear weapons in order to make the Soviets less barbaric, or that we endeavor to contain them by starting a nuclear war. Jim begins to calm down somewhat and a less emotional opinion finally surfaces: Personally, I think the only long-term way to survive with the Soviets is to *assimilate* them. Instead of barring travel between the two countries, as the current administration is doing, we should be opening it up as much as possible. Provide the American people with as much information about Russian culture as possible (we won't turn Commie any more than school children are turned gay), flood the Soviet mailboxes with pen-pal letters, send more 11-year olds to Moscow, pretend we're friends, as we did with China. Start more joint scientific, exploratory, deep sea, etc. ventures; let them buy their pipeline parts from us; get them beholden to us. What you are proposing now is generally defined as detente. The idea sounds great, but we have tried "detente" before with the Soviets. Their version of detente means that they engage in treaty negotiations that we later find out they had no intentions of fulfilling. They simply negotiated the treaty so that we would be limited by it. The list of SALT treaty violations by the Soviets is endless, and when we approach them with specific violations, they respond as they have the to Korean jet atrocity: with outright lies and rhetoric. Their version of detente allows them unimpeded adventurism throughout the world while we sit dreaming about the benefits of peaceful coexistence. During the years of "detente", Ethiopia, Angola, South Yemen, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Nicaragua to name but a few, were all lost to Marxist/ Communist governments. Indeed, Afganistan was invaded by the Russians themselves. At the moment, all of the countries given threaten the stability of neighboring countries that are friendly to the West. The number of people that have died at the hands of pro-west dictators is totally overshadowed by the millions of people that have been killed by the Soviets or governments the Soviets have installed or support. Indeed, although I wish as much as anyone that we could pursue REAL detente with the Soviets, whenever we have tried, the world has paid for it in blood. While we were engaged in cultural exchanges, they or their surrogates were rampaging about Africa, Central America, and the Middle East and Southeast Asia toppling governments where possible and executing the former leaders. FACTS DON'T LIE. Peaceful co-existence with the Soviets is an impossibility. I wish the same could be said for nuclear war. ------- Cc: Subject: -------