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While the Cuban missile crisis is not really a good example of Soviet expansionism... there ARE a few out there. I seem to recall tanks were a Soviet standard method of "helping out" the small countries that surrounded her. And the blockade of Berlin certainly wouldn't have helped the security of Russia had it succeeded.
Their covert operations in central America also don't make much sense given a non-expansionist USSR.
That being said I agree that the Soviets didn't pose the threat the West assumed she did... a lot of their actions were really REACTIONS to things that we were doing. (of course the same assertion could be made in the opposite direction)
We can all play the armchair quarterback and come up with all sorts of assessments, but in the end there's no debating that the Balance of the Superpowers kept them both in check for quite a while. There's no way to know what the USSR would have become and done if the West hadn't resisted her actions. In the Stalin era Russia was essentially a dictatorship, and putting too much power into too few hands is exceedingly dangerous. This is why I wince every time our President asks for more authority, something he's been doing far too often lately.
[ 04-18-2002, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]
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