Hacker News Reader

Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

I love this line: "Now a museum of cold war is organized in the bunker where one can try on respirators, protective gear, hold different guns, etc."

You know, the usual sort of museum experience.

As interesting as this is, it's also tragic if you think about the vast resources humankind has spent on building terrible weapons and defenses against those weapons. Imagine how much farther we would be ahead as a society if what was spent on the cold war was spent on solving the world's real problems instead - climate change, poverty, hunger, and so on.

Even more tragic is that this expenditure continues, particularly by the United States, even though the cold war is over. Those of us who thought the end of the cold war meant we could move on from spending trillions on weapons were obviously rather naive.

View on HN

I would quote from Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex Speech, but it should really be read in its entirety:

http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

I felt like this warranted more than just an upvote. I think this should be required high school reading.

Arguably the nuclear weapons have prevented continuation of WW2, where USSR and US would duke it out in the 50's and 60's.

Just wanted to point out that world of geopolitics and strategy is way more nuanced than an average person believes.

"nuclear weapons have prevented continuation of WW2"

I would tend to agree with that. However, the levels of weaponry that were deployed were arguably far higher than was actually required to achieve effective mutual deterrence - by a huge factor. If you actually read the details of what would have happened if the Cuban Missile Crisis or Able Archer 83 had ended as shooting wars then prepare to have your blood run cold and we did get very close to indeed to shooting wars - particularly in the case of Cuba.

Somewhat ironically, given that I am British, a child of the 70s/80s and not a Conservative, one of the actual heroes of the Cold War was actually Reagan - not for his "Evil Empire" rhetoric but because he actually had the decency to believe that your average Soviet citizen was just as decent as your average America, Brit or German. He was, by all accounts, so shocked when he heared intelligence reports of how terrified the Soviet leadership were of a possible NATO first strike that he deciced to open up a dialogue with the Soviets. For most of the Cold War it was the Soviets who were afraid of NATO - perhaps justifiably so as I am not aware of any military leaders in the Warsaw Pact who actively tried to start a nuclear war, which is not something we can say about the West.

The BBC drama "Threads" still scares me 25+ years after I first saw it:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

One thing to note about this drama, where over 90% of the UK population are eventually killed, is that it is based on an official exercise called Square Leg that was generally regarded as being rather optimistic, a real attack by the Soviets would probably have been far worse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg

> the levels of weaponry that were deployed were arguably far higher than was actually required to achieve effective mutual deterrence

Hindsight is always perfect. You build a larger than required stockpile of weapons because you don't know if the other side will be able to shot your weapons down.

> one of the actual heroes of the Cold War was actually Reagan

The Soviet Union was already crumbling due to the financial pressure required to maintain their deterrence. The dialog that was started at that time prevented a very dangerous situation that could result in a nuclear strike by either side.

The Soviets had pledged not to be the first side to use nukes. The US did not reciprocate, because the Warsaw Pact could have overwhelmed NATO forces in Europe with their conventional forces (or so everyone thought), so the US wanted to reserve the ability to use nukes in a counterattack.

> Arguably the nuclear weapons have prevented continuation of WW2

people in Korea, Afghanistan, Vietnan, etc, etc, would disagree.

The next world war would have made all of those minor skirmishes look like, well, minor skirmishes.

IIRC, the Soviet Union didn't test their first bomb until 1949, well after the war ended. Are you suggesting that the Soviets stopped their advance because of the American bomb?

Edit: Oh, I just noticed the bit in your comment about the 1950s/60s. So your contention is that the war might have reignited had there been no atomic bomb?

Absolutely.

Stalin's and Communist Party's goal was to "free the world of capitalist oppression", had US not had built a Nuke, Russians would not have stopped at Berlin.

The Russians were hit hard in WW2 but still in 1945 they were in far better position than any other Eurasian state. They would have swept over Europe in a single campaign if they could. And even Americans would be hard pressed at stopping them, without the nuclear weapons since US would be heavily tied in pacific dealing with Japan. And it wouldn't take a strategic genius to fathom an alliance between Japan and USSR, Soviets take the Europe, Japanese take the Asia.

Don't forget that in 1945 Russians were already all over Germany, they took Vienna, Yugoslavia was under their direct influence. Without US and their display of might in Pacific, there would be nothing preventing them from taking the Europe, and Stalin knew it.

That's probably why Soviets kinda kept a low profile for until the 1949.

Thanks for the reply. I always thought the Russians had been lost more people, materiel, etc. than anyone else and were pretty much done in by the end of the war. (I'm not sure where I got that idea, now that I examine it.)

The Russians indeed lost more people and material than anyone else.

The weird fact is that they lost 26 million due to military, but they lost 10 million to their own internal political oppression.

In either case, USSR had 200 million population in June 1941. At the end of 1945 the population was 170 million[1]. So they still had "plenty" of manpower left.

Also material losses were indeed huge, but mostly because complete disregard for safety of personnel and equipment. They could always replenish their losses at faster rate than their enemies (USSR had vast industry and material base), very inefficient but still huge.

For example. Germans built 6500 JU-87 Stuka assault planes[2] during whole war. Soviets have build 43.000 IL-2 Sturmovik assault planes from 1942-1945[3]. Since Germans had air superiority on eastern front, Soviets would just send in Sturmovik's without air cover.

There's an expression here in eastern Europe for overwhelming numbers, in literal translation it would go something as: "There is as many of them as Russians".

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_87#Production [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-2#Production

I agree with you in one sense, however the huge military expenditure allowed Silicon Valley to emerge.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=secret+histor...

You could drive yourself mad playing a game of "what if we did things this way instead?"

Arguably, silicon valley could have arise in another place or we could have continued on a different technological path.

This seems like a classic broken window fallacy. I don't think you really appreciate how huge the huge is:

> The cost of the Cold War was staggering; for the US the bill was $19.65 trillion (1948-1991) in 2010 dollars, of which $8,731.5 billion (also in 2010 dollars) was expended directly for nuclear arms.[34], [35] Precise data for the dollar cost of the Cold War to the USSR are not available, however it is generally believed that the Soviet Union spent 12-13% of its GDP on military programs in direct support of the Cold War...If Soviet expenditures for the Cold War were indeed on a par with those of the US, then the approximate dollar value for whole endeavor by both sides would be in the range of $40 trillion 2010 US dollars. To put that into perspective, that is also, give or take, the approximate net worth of the United States of America, at current market value, e.g., $50-60 trillion US!

http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/06/21/the-armories-of-...

So, to justify spending the entire net worth of the present-day US - with the emergence of Silicon Valley already priced in - you point to Silicon Valley? This is a broken window to end all broken windows.

I think he meant that the emergence of SV was one of fortunate outcomes of the Cold War, not that it justifies Cold War expedentures.

You posted some weird redirection link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo is the actual target

It would be enough stopping spending trillions of dollars in today's wars.

>You know, the usual sort of museum experience.

The WW2 museum in london is like that as well. It's a lot of fun.

gave us the internet. also employed a lot of people and we didn't get the large-scale war that most thought was due since WW2 was, like WW1, unfinished business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com