Ethnic attacks in Georgia

[Dan the Roman]

Sure.  He was still a lot more of a "hawk" than the ladies in this thread have been.  Add in that the Russians were a lot stronger in '63 than they are now, especially in the nuke's department and it just becomes that much more annoying.  There was a LOT more on the line then than now.  We wouldn't be destroyed today, even in any reasonable "worst case" scenario.  There was no way we wouldn't have been destroyed in '63 if we went to war (unless Russia's ICBMs had a ridiculously high failure rate, which was/is possible).

I'm in no way suggesting we should invade Russia next week.  I'm just disappointed in the lack of a frim response from the leaders in the West over this.

Actually Russia was definitely weaker vis-e-vis the US nuclear wise in 1962. They lacked ICBMs that could actually do more than hit the coasts, which was one reason why they needed the ones in Cuba. They could have made a big mess in Europe, and as it turned out their missiles in Cuba were far more functional than the CIA believed, but we probably would have survived the war with 10-15 million dead and a devastated economy. The Soviets would not have.

Russia has thousands of ICBMs today, and our missile shield, even when operational is useless against more than a few dozen. We may be able to shoot down more than in 1962, but its the difference between being wiped out four times over and wiped out three times over.

Personally though the two cases don't compare. Cuba was within our sphere of influence and the Soviets realized that and did not want to risk war over it. A better example is Hungary in 1956. We stood back and watched as Hungary was invaded while they pleaded for our help. Why? Because it wasn't worth taking a stand over, and it would have led to a war. Do you think Eisenhower was a "lady? Should we have helped Hungary break free of Soviet control?

[Dan the Roman]

One of the reasons the Soviets backed down in Cuba was because they did have the ability to strike us beyond the coasts.

But our position vis-e-vis Georgia is far more similar to that of Soviets in 1962 than it is to the Americans then. Georgia is a small country on Russia's borders, traditionally subservient to Moscow, which has had a revolution installing an ideological group allied with Russia's enemy on the other side of the world. That enemy has attempted to arm Georgia, and Russia has invaded, as the United States would have done in 1962 had there not been missiles in Cuba.

The fact was, that in 1962 the Russians could not have stopped a US invasion of Cuba militarily, just as we could not have stopped an invasion of Georgia directly. Therefore they were left with the choice of escalating things else ware or giving in. They initially escalated things else ware, but rapidly decided it was not worth the cost. We did the same, only our calculation was that it was not worth cutting of the EU's natural gas supply to kick Russia out of the G8.

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Probably enough to do some real damage. The benefit of having ten times the nukes you need is that even with a 90% failure rate, you still succeed in hitting things. Not that it is likely to come to that, since Georgia is not worth it to the United States. The real question is whether Georgia is worth that much to Russia.

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Even if it triggered World War III? Our forces would very likely have gotten into a shooting war with the Russians, and at the time the Warsaw Pact had an overwhelming superiority in conventional forces. Our entire strategy called for us to go Nuclear almost immediately because we would be rapidly overrun otherwise. It wasn't until Reagan that we had the ability to go toe to toe with the Russians without Nukes. Would Hungary really have been worth Italy/Germany/France being overrun and/or a nuclear war?

[Dan the Roman]

Probably. My view is that standing up to aggression is different than inviting it. Georgia does not benefit from us using it as a springboard against Russian power in the region, and if we are not willing, or in this case able, to protect them, than it is are obligation not to encourage them to follow a confrontational line. What the US did here was the worst of all worlds. We armed and encouraged to Georgia to tow an anti-Russian line internationally, and to retake South Ossetia, while at the same time knowing we had no intention of helping them.