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> USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power.

> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR.

You could also ask a Guatemalan how they enjoyed living under the US installed military dictatorships (which came out of a US supported coup after democratic elections resulted in a win for the left). Things are by far not as clear cut. Both blocks supported atrocious regimes if it was in their economic interests and worked against "the other side". That we largely only hear about one side shows how well the propaganda was/is working.

Yes, that is absolutely right. Even Greece had it's anti-communist junta which massacred students. It's never clear cut, but on the _average_ I do think the pro-USSR side was less-free.

I would agree that for the (majority parts of) populations of the main countries that is likely the case. I certainly am happy to have grown up in Western not Eastern Germany. That said things get murkier beyond that quite quickly. I'm not sure I would have preferred to grow up as a black teenager in e.g. Baltimore over being a teenager in Eastern Germany and I certainly would have preferred to grow up in Estonia in the USSR over Guatemala.

And you would almost certainly prefer to be a black teenager in Baltimore or a Guatemalan over a Ukrainian under the USSR.

I think this would depend on time period. 1930s sure, later I'm not convinced (to be honest I don't know enough about the period after the 30s in Ukraine). For example during the Guatemalan "Civil War" between 150 000 and 200 000 people were killed and disappeared (~25% of that number). That is a lot of people for a population of 17 M.

Not only Guatemala, but essentially all Latin America. I don't think a country can honestly claim to lead the "free world" while exporting brutal dictatorships to a entire continent.

My country went through this and we've been far more free than Cuba throughout the whole ordeal and thereafter. People love imagining this was never a possibility, but the threat of falling under communist chaos was very real, I simply cannot dislike those who helped preventing it no matter how hip and cool it's become.

the middle east agrees

> Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR.

Ah yes, proximity. Now go ask the small Central American nations if they enjoyed living close to the USA during the 70s and 80s.

Not only the small central american nations. Look up the Operation Condor. We have our share of USA backed coupes all over south america too.

Or Operation Gladio in Italy for that matter.

> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other.

It's quite funny that after the cold war it came out that nukes of 'the more free side' was targetting Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvia cities.

They were targeting USSR military bases. And it was "known" already during the cold war, not a surprise after the cold war ended. At least in Estonia, every sane person assumed that when there's a nuclear conflict, then the rocket bases and airfields of the occupation forces here would be the first to be taken down by the west because they were the most west-facing USSR military bases.

They were targetting cities that were occupied by hundred thousands of civilians.

USA never had any qualms about targetting civilians. Foreigners don't have any rights.

You are correct. Just like the US was targeting military installations in Moscow, etc that had millions of civilians and USSR was targeting US cities that had millions of civilians.

I'm just saying that it was not actually something that people "found out" after the cold war and it wasn't specific to the Baltic nations nor the US or USSR. All nuclear capable superpowers had set potential targets which would have killed tens of millions of civilians. Singling out some of the countries occupied by the USSR (Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania) is minimizing the situation IMO :)

Not just Moscow. Also Warsaw. And Cracow. And so many other cities in countries that believed US is an ally in their struggle, who'll be aiming to liberate them from USSR. Not turn their most beutiful cities into cinders.

https://futureoflife.org/background/us-nuclear-targets/

. Usa did play a big role in liberating eastern Europe from communism and at the same time in Poland we're all aware of brutal reality that a war between west and Russia will leave Poland in ashes.

A full US nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and its allies in the early 1960s was estimated by the Pentagon as probably killing ~100 million in Western Europe due to fall-out and 600 million in total - "100 holocausts" as Daniel Ellsberg described it.

> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides ...

These two sides narration was a very intentional American construct. View from the other side wasn't symmetrical. US as seen from the other side was just seen as a powerful country that likes to mess around with other countries business exploiting them for their own purposes.

End of cold war changed nothing. US is still a powerful country that likes to mess around the world to exploit it better, and Russia is still insular country that doesn't want to allow any of that on their turf.

The only thing that changed with the end of the cold war was that US could no longer credibly spin the narrative that Russia wants to take over the world and turn Texans into communists.

Fortunately, after a bit of mucking around USA could brand terrorists as their global super dangerous enemy and business could continue as usual.

Currently when terrorists turned out to be a very limited threat and USA proved to be very incompetent at fighting them long term, USA again began shopping for a narrative enemy. Obvious choice is China, but USA leaders with more than two brain cells are little hesitant about that, because you don't necessarily want to frame yourself as enemy of someone who could very likely seriously eff you up.

We'll see how it all unfolds.

I agree until your second to last sentence. I think the hesitation isn’t because of military concerns, I think the USSR posed a serious military threat if the US ever decided to throw down, but rather economic issues. Unlike the USSR, America does a lot of trading with China, which makes framing them as some boogie man both practically and rhetorically tricky. It doesn’t help that business interests (and consumers) in the US would scream bloody murder if the tap of cheap consumer products was turned off.

I also think that the end of the Cold War, the failure of the forever wars, and our bungled pandemic response has taken a lot of gloss off the old propaganda. The interruption of having the USSR fall has made a lot of Americans look around and saw “wait, why does life kinda suck here though?”, and it’s kind of hard to rebuild that propaganda machine once it’s stopped.

Good point. Trade and financial relationships are another obstacle.

It's not entirely a US based fiction. In some areas the question was between choosing a western US led order or the USSR based one. Not everywhere, of course.

US is of course a selfish actor. But it's not black and white, and while US has never been "the good guy" they are still a stabilizing force that for most parts promotes rule based order. Yes, they assault sovereign states and all that, I'm not disagreeing US has pathologies to bear.

But in some regions it's influence benefits the local population (even though the goal is not directly to help anyone but to promote a specific selfish policy).

On the Eurasian theater Russia is not a neglible actor. Given it is being lead by a mafia more or less, in regional matters Russia is still a looming threat (ahem, Ukraine, ahem).

As a citizen of country which shares a very long land border with Russia (Finland), and given the realpolitik fact small nations are at the mercy of larger powers, I much prefer a situation where US can politically and financially influence events in my local vicinity to a one where Russia would be the larger presence.

If I was for example Vietnamese I might hold quite different views. Or if I lived in an area that was a theater of conflict for drone strikes and my family suddenly died as collateral damage.

>In cold war it was obvious there were two sides

Um, no. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement

The article is pretty obvious about the fact that the "Non-Aligned" movement was in fact closely aligned with USSR

"many of the Non-Aligned Movement's members were actually quite closely aligned with China or the Soviet Union"