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- 27 September 2006
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Younger members will groan at yet another of my Cold War memory threads. But I think it worth examining why between 1945 and 1991 we all knew where we were.
It was a clear aspect of the Cold War that neither side would help a third country to attack the territory of the other.
Neither China nor the Soviet Union ever gave N Vietnam or N Korea the means to attack US bases outside S Vietnam or S Korea.
Any threat to US or Soviet resupplying of their sides in the Arab Israel wars would soon bring high level efforts to avoid conflict.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan the West was careful to supply only those weapons which could be used in-country against the occupying Soviet forces.
Fast forward to the early 1990s. First in the Gulf and then in Yugoslavia the West is no longer restrained by Russia in striking at regimes which it could not have done prior to 1991.
All of which brings us to the Ukraine crisis. Had the Soviet Union invaded Finland or Yugoslavia (the only pre 1991 parallel I can think of) Western weapons might have been sent in response but the sending of US or NATO forces or the supply of NATO kit which could attack Warsaw Pact territory would have been seen as the start of a general war.
So we are now in a place almost unthinkable until 1991.
It is hard to imagine Kruschev or Breshnev starting such a war still less having to rely on non Soviet arms supplies but equally any use of NATO weapons against Soviet territory would have opened the abyss.
It was a clear aspect of the Cold War that neither side would help a third country to attack the territory of the other.
Neither China nor the Soviet Union ever gave N Vietnam or N Korea the means to attack US bases outside S Vietnam or S Korea.
Any threat to US or Soviet resupplying of their sides in the Arab Israel wars would soon bring high level efforts to avoid conflict.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan the West was careful to supply only those weapons which could be used in-country against the occupying Soviet forces.
Fast forward to the early 1990s. First in the Gulf and then in Yugoslavia the West is no longer restrained by Russia in striking at regimes which it could not have done prior to 1991.
All of which brings us to the Ukraine crisis. Had the Soviet Union invaded Finland or Yugoslavia (the only pre 1991 parallel I can think of) Western weapons might have been sent in response but the sending of US or NATO forces or the supply of NATO kit which could attack Warsaw Pact territory would have been seen as the start of a general war.
So we are now in a place almost unthinkable until 1991.
It is hard to imagine Kruschev or Breshnev starting such a war still less having to rely on non Soviet arms supplies but equally any use of NATO weapons against Soviet territory would have opened the abyss.