>
> No, it wasn't an accident. Obviously if a country spends 20 years building
> a national religion out of the idea that the world will end if the Commies
> win somewhere, a grotesque pummeling someplace in the world is sort of
> overdetermined.
>
What's the difference between such a creed and "Are you crazy? How will we defend the capitalist system if a small country is allowed to create a model of successful autonomous socialist development?"
Incidentally, have there been any good materialist investigations of why there was such a thing as the Cold War, where economic models very roughly corresponded with geopolitical alliances? I mean, I can think of a few crude hypotheses, and the idealist answer is trivial, but.