the collapse of > central authority in the FSU would be disaster for the people of the FSU... > In the short term, it has been. One need only look at the decline in life expectancy for Russian males to find adequate support for that assertion. But, in the long run, if a market economy is built in the FSU that resembles those of any of the first-world states (e.g. Germany, the US, Japan), the people will benefit to a great degree. Spoken like a true Sachsian (or Stalinist, same think, other side of the coin), can't make an omlette, etc. Lets wipe out a coupla generations of Russians in the hope of the radiant future. Don't you think the poor Russians have been subject to enough of that sort of crap over the decades? Moreover, IF a Westerm style market economy is built there! And if pigs had wings, they could fly! What on earth makes you Sachsians thinks you just go around building market economies at will? Look at what it cost to build the one we have -- centuries of blo
od. Sheesh, for a utulitarian, you have a head for fantasy rather than social reality. > US with power to engage ina lmsot unlimited imperialism. > Look, the very worst US foreign policy was directly inspired by its rivalry with the Soviet Union. May I direct your atention to certain events going over Iraq, in which (though perhaps you haven't heard) the US has made a claim to permanent, unchallengeable global dominance. There never was a rivalry with the USSR, except maybe in space. The terrible things to which you refer, you mean what, Vietnam, Korea, Nicaragua, El Salvador? Were not inspired by feart of a Soviet takeover. The concern was rather for the third world independence. Those conflicts would have happened with or without the USSR -- and in the cases where the USSR was involved often, though not always, with less happy issue. Where there was direct US-Soviet conflict over central Europe or Cuba, the influence of the USSR --a cautious, conservative, realpolitikspi
eler -- was generally moderating and benign. The USSR played t! he role of the grownup in these comnflicts,a nd its arsenal deterred the worst US excesses we are now seeing. I miss the cold war. Leonid & Andrei, Dick & Henry, come back! jks
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