Soviet Military Maps of North America and UK

The propping up of communist states worldwide was an attempt to not get surrounded by American client states / satellites / allies.

Look at China propping up North Korea. Why? Because they see South Korea as an American client state and they do not want to have a border with it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay#Strategic_Air_Com... for what made Soviets think maybe NATO is serious about first strike.

The belief about "western capitalism first strike" was one of the major fuels for the paranoia spiral involved in soviet foreign affairs, combined with experiences starting from western support of "Whites" during revolution, through the rather belligerent actions (especially from USA) once Truman was POTUS (and well, all of Truman doctrine and its long-term effects). A non-trivial issue that shows up from reading as stuff becomes declassified is how both sides constantly misunderstood each other, leading to (in hindsight idiotic) situation where initial ideas about disarmament on Soviet side turn into Berlin airlift. Meanwhile Austrian politicians figure out how to get everyone to leave by making the country neutral. It also didn't help that in Poland we probably didn't finish burying our dead in Warsaw when USA drawn up plans to nuke it as part of nuclear first strike on USSR, plans that I have little doubt were heard in Moscow, further fueling the spiral of cold war.

So the end result is a paranoid regime (and from paranoid to controlling there isn't even a step, it's a blink) that, even when some forces try to reduce said paranoia, they stumble upon evidence that it's warranted, resulting in nobody willing to back off (on USA side, you can probably shift some proportions and replace paranoiacs with "communism must die!" die hard ideologists). In the end it's not even one side playing checkers while the other plays chess - it's two sides playing long-distance play-by-mail chess where they delegate their moves to be done by a pigeon[1].

As for propaganda - consider that both sides, to a certain extent, bought into their own propaganda, sometimes even those that should know that a specific aspect of it was false (like JFK strong arming USSR to take missiles out of Cuba, instead of admitting that the missiles were taken away in exchange for removal of the reason they were placed there - which was USA placing missiles in Turkey).

As much as the books are fiction, John Le Carre summarised it pretty well in The Secret Pilgrim although from the western PoV (but similar take could be probably pretty much taken about soviets on the average):

Smiley muses that the most vulgar thing about the Cold War was that the Western societies learned to "gobble up [their] own propaganda." The West became so convinced of the righteousness of its own cause, and the evil of the Soviets', that it never stopped to examine the ethics of its actions. In the name of expediency, the Circus opened its arms – and its purse – to every petty thug and two-bit con man who called himself an anti-Communist.

[1] Referencing a polish idiom about playing chess with pigeon - not only does it not know how to play, it will push the pieces away and shit on the board.

But yes, there's a reason why I put "supposedly". It's a nice story and there might be a kernel of truth to it, but the details probably were different.

That said, a lot of the front line units (especially american) in western germany were there to make nice coffins to mobilize public into support for war in europe (and at least some soldiers definitely were aware of the concept).

Tell me where things would have stopped if the Whites, Allies, and Czechoslovak Legion had gained the upper hand.

The Cold War with their proxy conflicts and puppet governments was a whole different deal though.

But you do with what you have. Business adapts. USA dumped a lot of equipment in various countries over last two decades under the guises of figting terrorists, to make room for purchase of new equipment.

Be glad. Alternative is dumping MRAPs on local police forces in small USA towns.

If you are interested in similar perspectives "Power of nightmares" by Adam Curtis is an interesting watch.

It's not like that at all. The US relationship with South American countries was nothing like the Iron Curtain.

> Europe, sure.

And Central Asia, and many others.

> But america only really cared about that because of domino theory and it’s own empire to protect.

That's just an empty claim. How about some facts?

What did America do in South America that you think is "the exact same thing" as the USSR's establishment — and four decades of control — of puppet communist governments across central and eastern Europe?

I'm truly surprised Hitler never tried some sort of guerrilla attack with a small force just to cause chaos and terror in the heartland. it's not like the USA was very well defended at all from any sort of coordinated landing back in the early 40's.

I'm thinking of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

almost forgotten, but how different it would be if they were intelligent.

Talk about an amazing coincidence:

"On March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons descended in the vicinity of the Manhattan Project's production facility at the Hanford Site. This balloon caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps, but backup safety devices restored power almost immediately."

Which us why those which dislike the US's place in the world, focus so much on fanning any flames of discontent, or political differences they can.

We have forest fires in the northwest territories that span hundreds of thousands of acres and its a coin flip if they'll even send a plane up to observe them. No one cares because no one lives within 500 km of them.

If you average the number of people per square kilometer, from a statistical perspective, this country is completely empty.

How are those two sentences related?

That's just plain not true. IIRC, China is the only country that mandates the use of an obfuscated coordinate system. The US certainly doesn't (and no, selective availability doesn't count, it was an entirely different thing).