Not a political discussion! Which one is the root cause?

mheslep

I don't see how that is the case in post WWII of aviation and ballistic missiles.

D H

What aviation? The US air force was far superior to that of the Soviet Union throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. The Soviets at times might have had comparable machines. Even then, they never had better pilots. The UN had air superiority in Korea for all but the first few months of that conflict. A decade or so later in Vietnam, the Soviets were so overwhelmed in the air (and they knew it) that they didn't want to play the air warfare game at all.

Ballistic missiles? The first legitimate Soviet ballistic missile wasn't until a decade after the war ended. By that time MAD was already in full swing. There never was a missile gap; the US had the Soviets outgunned with respect to nuclear weapons from day 1. (Not that it matters much when each side had the ability to wipe out the other dozens of times over.) The Soviets feared the US as much as, if not more than, the US feared the Soviets with regard to a nuclear WWIII. Mad Ivan? The Soviets weren't mad, at least not in their minds. We were. The only way the Soviets were going to launch their missiles was if we launched ours first.

SHISHKABOB

or, of course, if it looked like we were gonna

D H

Which almost it did, in October 1962.

mheslep

Of course! Those earlier first four points about why Western Europe felt safe behind smallish military forces make no mention of the United States military, and go on about a buffer. The US populace was also sick of war after fighting both Germany and Japan. The US consequentially collapsed that colossal American force to the point that it was once again close to initially throwing rocks at the N. Koreans when they first invaded the south in the 50's. The only buffer of consequence between the USSR+Warsaw Pack and W. Europe during the cold war was the US. That was true to some degree about well financed rogue states like Saddam's Iraq (4th largest army in world 1991), Slobodan Milošević's Serbs, and remains true to some degree today against Putin's Russia.