The West has been destroying itself lately, imagine if the Soviets could take advantage of it
They had one. Andropov. Had he lived I definitely think the USSR would be around today.
We used nukes when no one else had nukes. The ruling class have no regard for human life but they have regard for their own and if we nuke China or some shit then they’re fucked too
I worry about a US balkanization a lot because of how dispersed the nuclear arsenal is throughout the country. The states could all end up nuking each other.
While I feel like you could maybe detonate one on land, I’m not sure you could “fire” a missile without total control of all sorts of infrastructure, like all sorts of networking, crypto, spy satellites, and maybe even troops in each silo. Even then I think that the early warning systems (afaik they can know about a launch but not necessarily the target) of other nation states would make it a risk to fire one even within the US because it would risk retaliation and mutually assured destruction
You shouldn’t worry about US balkanization as a real possibility. The US even with its cultural divisions is still one of the most unified countries on the planet (it’s probably one of the least likely countries in the American continent), especially among the bigger ones to balkanize Canada and Mexico are certainly more likely to balkanize first. It’s also an order of magnitude more likely that you’d see balkanization of India, China, Pakistan or something first (other nuclear powers are similarly unified in the current year to a comparable degree as the US).
The biggest cause of balkanization is linguistic divisions, especially when their combined with other things like religious or broader ethnic division, and preexisting strong levels of local autonomy that tend to exist in a lot of other countries far more than they do in the US, especially as it relates to cultural education and development.
In a dying America situation (like balkanization level) hopefully there will be some military officers or something who take it upon themselves to secure the WMDs with international assistance (UN etc) so that they don’t become a tool of final annihilation or lost floating around a balkanized country.
I think in the USSR final days the KGB ensured the security’s of the country’s WMD stockpile with the help of the CIA (yuck but goes to show that this thing needs cooperation). Later they awarded all the WMDs to Russia as the “successor state”. Hopefully others will recognize the seriousness of messing with nukes and some sort of neutral force can keep them off the table in the event of American collapse.
A part of me worries that the prospect of world socialism died with the USSR and that at this point we’re just waiting out our slow death from climate change.
world socialism along the lines and by the methods of the USSR died with the USSR. it’s our job to develop something new instead of wishing really hard for uncle joe to come back and save us.
this is probably it tbh, we’ll see how China deal with their Billionaire class but I think we’re fighting a losing battle
if they ripped the rot out and went hard on it, sure. but with gorbachev’s reforms and his best case scenario? nah.
Okay so maybe they wouldn’t abolish capitalism, but the Soviet Union would be such an incredible thorn in the West’s side, simply by existing. Imagine if Venezuela got Soviet supplies to hold off against sanctions, or how much weaker the EU would be if the Warsaw Pact still existed. Im just writing fanfiction at this point but a girl can dream :)
Iran and China are both engaging in trade with Venezuela. China’s also becoming an alternative to the imf in Africa and pulling the rug out from under some of the oldest imperialist projects.
The USSR as it existed towards the end was totally united with the US on the middle eastern policy of the 1990s that eventually went on to become the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Libyan invasion and the broader support of the Saudis against the Iranians. They probably would’ve held the same role in the Syrian conflict though, but that’s minimal compared to the other stuff.
The big thing that the USSR still existing would’ve done is prevent the EU from becoming the powerful force it is currently, and the Warsaw pact would’ve likely developed into something very similar to that of the EU today but centered around social democracy first rather than broader liberalism and austerity first.
Possibly. What I really wonder is how would the internet affect the dynamic. Meaning, as an American we were fed nothing but propaganda for decades with absolutely zero counter-balance. But with the internet, and being able to actually pierce through the propaganda and talk with Soviet citizens and see how they were living their lives… fascinated by the implications.
At the same time, we can talk to chinese people today and look where we are now
Yeah, but the language- and cultural barrier is much more severe. Russian is a European language, and much more a part of the same cultural space.
