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While it’s a wild take I think it illustrates what would have been necessary for the Soviets to consider at the beginning of the cold war and we can extrapolate some of their decisions from this.
Like they honestly feared nuclear annihilation, and had good reason to, and so had to counter that with their own nuclear capabilities. I know I’m just outlining MAD but really, so much of post-revolution decision making in communist countries was survival-first, because at all points they were threatened by often better armed and richer nations, that as soon as they acquired world ending technology thought little of wiping huge populations off the map to continue western dominance. For the USSR and China, and Iran and the DPRK today, nukes were for survival. For the west, they were tools of hegemony
Like they honestly feared nuclear annihilation, and had good reason to
This point cannot be overstated. Russia has been an invasion target by European powers for a millenium. And the USSR suddenly found themselves in a new antagonistic relationship with a country that (a) was the global power in terms of industrial capacity and science R&D, (b) had just integrated a whole lot of nazi scientists into their military-industrial complex via Operation Paperclip, and © had actually used nuclear weapons in combat. They’d have been insane not to try to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
Frankly I don’t blame any country for trying to develop nuclear-armed ICBMs nowadays. It’s literally the only thing that’s been proven to make the US government think twice about invasion plans.
It’s like that funny joke I’ve heard.
Person: why did guys you neutralize Iraq, when they were being cooperative?
President: Well, you see, they had weapons of mass destruction…
Person: Then why didn’t you invade North Korea?
President: Because they have weapons of mass destruction!
Albeit the missing term here for the DPRK is nuclear, but you get the point…
b) had just integrated a whole lot of nazi scientists into their military-industrial complex via Operation Paperclip
The entire West German military apparatus consisted of Nazis until the 70s.
The Bundeswehr were just the very same Wehrmacht troops that had been shooting at Allies just weeks before. Their leadership entirely consisted of Nazi officers who went from commanding the invasion of Europe to being the chairs of NATO forces without ever seeing a trial.
No wonder the Soviets were so (rightly) paranoid about the West.
