Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
Yeah, and what's most amazing, 20 years have passed since the collapse of the evil empire, and still Europe is de-facto divided into two parts, the western one which is going great, and the eastern one which is not. It's like it was an unfixable screwup.
Most of the countries that you are referring to were always rather poor, invaded by first one power then another. Only a few of them ever had power or wealth that was their own.

And secondly, you also have Greece and Spain which are still suffering from having been right wing dictatorships for the better part of the Cold War, largely curtesy of the US -apparently this was the only safeguard against Communists winning elections and taking over unaided. The EU has literally poured money into their economies since they became EU members, which was way before Eastern Europe. Still there are quite fundamental problems.

Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile
The USSR had done it more effectively. One wave of a magic wand, and the entire Eastern Europe has now new communist governments. Any uprising in Checholosvakiya or Hungary, would have to welcome the Soviet Army. The US with all its aggressiveness has yet to achieve that outstanding record.
We have been through the discussion about this before in this forum and what happened after the war is a matter of interpretation and whose propaganda you choose to believe. Since I did grew up in a country that tried to stand on the side, I got both sides of story growing up, with no strong prejudice. Things have shifted a bit in favour of the US version of events since the end of the Cold War though. And unlike you Crocodile, I obviously never experienced the frustrating and unfair sides to the USSR, so I have no score to settle.

The allied powers split up the continent in areas of interest after the war. Eastern Europe fell in the Soviet sphere of interests. This was agreed by the victorious powers of the time.

All these countries had very strong Communist movements before the war, all the USSR needed to do was give things a push in the direction they wanted and then the local socialists did the rest. Several of the Eastern European countries had their own brand of socialism and did not work with Moscow at all.

The USSR should not have interferred with the way things were going in the Prague spring.

But still today, there are more American troops stationed in Western Europe, than the USSR ever had in Eastern Europe! I guess we cannot be trusted to stay out of mischief without them being there to keep a watchful eye. They have been politely asked to leave a number of times, most recently in Okinawa but just want have it.

Apart from setting up a number of ghastly right wing dictators, in South America and the Middle East, and apart from the many countries where the USA already has military bases (no need to invade, let me know if you need a list, it would be pretty long...) the USA has already invaded or fought wars in the below locations between WW2 and now.


  1. Korea (depending on your outlook - but that is a different discussion)
  2. Vietnam.
  3. Laos
  4. Cambodia
  5. Dominican Republic
  6. Granada
  7. Haiti
  8. Panama
  9. Iraq v1
  10. Afghanistan
  11. Iraq v2
  12. Libya


Roadmap: Iran, Syria, North Korea...

Note that this list does NOT include failed invasion attempts and covert operations.

Can the USSR really top that? Let me see a list in that case!