One of the worst events of the 20th century. Neither side was totally blameless, one had ultra-leftist deviations and the other had rightist deviations. But it wasn’t anything either couldn’t recover from if they worked through it, especially aligning their foreign policy.

Instead the US empire had free reign to overthrow every leftist movement in both hemispheres. They should not have been able to get away with everything they did, esp in SE Asia.