were cnd in the 1980s the equivalent of the appeasers in the 30s
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That's totally abstract and divorced from the reality of the USSR (its capabilities, it's resources for massive sustained war etc). More importantly that sort of situation you describe tends to leads to civil war, not external aggression - and certainly not on the scale of the world war that an invasion of western Europe would have entailed.
Combustible
Well-Known Member
But in the USSR the political, economic and military elites were all ready to make a killing out of the collapse of the system. The fragmentation and privatisation of what were nominally state assets was evidently going to come and they were all well poised to get big slices of it so why would they jeopardize this with a suicidal nuclear war?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Somewhere in this thread is the genus of a cold war thriller...
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Not wanting nuclear arms build-up is a million miles away from 'I hold in my hands a piece of paper'
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Cruise missiles were a response to the USSR stationing RSD-10/SS-20 Pioneer missiles in Eastern Europe from the mid-1970s onwards, allowing the USSR to launch medium-range weapons at Western Europe without endangering the USA. Would the USA retaliate with inter-continental missiles, inviting its own destruction, for the sake of Europe? Unlikely. Cruise missiles were a classic piece of deterrence, used to restore the balance of power. Getting rid of them would've made war more likely.
It's notable that Tony Blair was eager to hide his membership of the CND, denying it until it was shown conclusively. It's libellous to call someone a liar. I'm sure he just forgot.
Pickman's model
sunset spires and twilight woods
tony blair's a liar. there. let him sue.
but before anyone starts worrying about legal proceedings, remember his claim he'd watched newcastle when he was a toddler, and the literally hundreds of other, er, lies he told while a member of parliament.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
No it's not. Both are predicated on exactly the same thinking: trying to match the firepower of an aggressive foreign power causes escalation, and provokes war. Fear of nuclear annihilation was matched in the 1930s by Stanley Baldwin's grim waring that, "The bomber will always get through."
Thankfully, sometimes we do learn.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Well he might have time on his hands now he won't be lord high overlord of Europe.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
This ^
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
This time with added nuts!
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Already been done - Edge of Darkness
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Yeah, that was kinda my point.
It was also done in The Forth Protocol as well.
It was also done in The Forth Protocol as well.
Why were SS-20s being deployed? Soviet response to Western forward nuclear weapons, including carrier- and submarine-borne weapons, plus perhaps a way of consolidating military power in the eastern European dominions.
Did the deployment of cruise missiles and Pershings slow down the Soviet deployment of SS-20s? No.
Did the deployment of cruise missiles and Pershings contribute to the Soviet war scare of 1983? More likely than not.
What began to make war less likely was the Rejkjavik Summit of 1986.
Another bit of it was done in Who Dares Wins.
Sub_bass
Irrelevant Thread-Killer.
Some people in the cnd may have had the dubious motives to which you attest in the first quote, but the overwhelming majority of the membership had the motives you then go on to mention in the second quote. You as a delared former cnd member ought to testify to that. It is in that context that i attribute the motives of the cnd to, not the context of post cold-war hindsight.
Spion
I hear ya
The British establishment 'appeasers' of the late 30s were neither pacifists nor opposed to tyranny. They were building arms at a faster rate than the Germans AFAIK, had the most powerful forces in the world and thought nothing of maintaining tyranny over millions of empire subjects using those arms. They were opposed to a mainland German empire being built but miscalculated Hitler's readiness to expand, as did many of his generals for that matter. The lead up to WW2 has a large element of cock up/unpredictability to it when you look at it closely.the same was said in the 1930's never again not sure that pacifism in the face of tyranny works terribly well
CND was a mass movement that was opposed to nuclear weapons. It was not per se for the USSR or opposed to conventional weapons or AFAIK a movement of 'appeasement' in any of the cold war proxy wars.
The two were very different things in very different times.
As usual your thread shows what happens when your right wing impulses combine with an almost total lack of knowledge of a subject
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
So the deployment of cruise missiles wasn't aggressive in itself, was it?
It did stop the USSR launching or seriously threatening to launch an SS-20 strike. If Nato didn't have comparable firepower, the USSR could have bullied Western Europe with the threat of nuclear weapons.
Possible, since it's an imperfect world. This is better than actual war, or compliance under the threat thereof, or cowed Finnish "neutrality".
Also true, but that isn't mutually exclusive from a balance of terror. What incentive would the USSR have had to pursue disarmament if it faced no serious threat? It's the old Roman paradox: if you want peace, prepare for war.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Appeasement was also a mass movement, from the defeat of the National Government in the 1933 Fulham East by-election, to the Oxford Union's infamous motion that they would, under no circumstances, fight for king or country. It was not per se for Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, either. But if you disarm unilaterally in the face of an aggressive foreign power, then ipso facto, you aid them, whatever your intentions.
It's the worst kind of idealism, and CND epitomised it with its call for unilateral nuclear disarmament. [1] This was to "take the initiative". Presumably the ruthless Soviet tyranny that subjugated half of Europe would then follow our initiative, and ditch its nukes out of the goodness of its heart. It wouldn't hang onto them and bully the rest of Europe into compliance. No, no danger of that.
Both CND and the appeasers supported unilateral disarmament in the face of aggressive dictatorships. In what substantive way were they different?
dylans
overlord of all acorns
This is wrong. I was a scared 16 year old kid in this period and I cut my political teeth in the anti missile movement. For me and thousands of others, it was a time of fear. A time when the possibility of global thermonuclear holocaust was very real.
Reagan and Thatcher were in power and they were both determined to crank the cold war up in intensity. The Russians were getting a thrashing in Afganistan. Poland was causing the Soviets concern. The extent of the Soviet Unions economic problems were beginning to show. The western powers could smell blood and they eagerly ratcheted up the tensions. To this end they needed to accelerate the arms race.
The deployment of cruise were part of a deliberate strategy to increase cold war tensions by NATO.
Cruise had very little to do with strategies of M.A.D In Britain this argument was used for Trident but the argument for cruise was much more sinister.
NATO for decades had been struggling with a contradiction in strategic thinking.
MAD insisted that the possession of nuclear weapons ensures they will never be used because ones enemy know that by launching a nuclear attack they will invite a similar devastation upon themselves. Therefore no nation would dare to launch a first strike. Mutually Assured Destruction had been NATO line for decades/
But suddenly that changed.
It was recognised that the Soviet Union in the European theatre possessed a superiority in conventional forces. NATO also conceded that should the Soviets launch a conventional war into Germany and Western Europe, NATO would be unable to hold them. In short the Soviet Union could win a conventional war. In this situation the the only option left for NATO would be to threaten nuclear war. A option ruled out by the logic of MAD.
Faced with this contradiction NATO quietly changed the rules. MAD was sidelined and a new strategy put forward. It was called FLEXIBLE RESPONSE and to this day it stands as the single most terrifying and downright evil military doctrines ever considered.
Flexible response said that in the event of the soviets launching a conventional war and NATO conventional forces being overrun, MAD would no longer apply and NATO would launch a nuclear first strike against Soviet battlefield forces. They planned to launch a nuclear war. Cruise was designed as a super accurate stealth weapon to launch a first strike against the Warsaw Pact.
This was new, and changed the game completely. Suddenly NATO was talking of starting and winning a nuclear war. The deployment of cruise was part of this strategy.
It was in response to this madness that the anti missiles movement was born.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Anyone would be scared at the prospect of being atomised by nuclear fire. The question is whether cruise missiles made an attack more likely, or less. Soviet Pioneer missiles upset the balance of power unless countered by a comparable weapon. Cruise was that weapon. It confirmed to deterrent theory.
According to this page, flexible response was initiated by JFK in 1961, and was a reorganization in military thinking to deal with bush-fire wars, not a nuclear-specific policy. This report from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists places its adoption by NATO in 1968. Its essence was to "respond appropriately to any level of potential attack and ... pose the risk of escalation to higher levels of conflict". This is classic deterrence.
Nukes don't exist in isolation. You rightly note the considerable Soviet forces in Europe. As you say, the USSR could probably have won a conventional war. Nukes deterred them from trying. As 1939-45 shows, conventional wars with modern technology aren't to be sneezed at. Saber-rattling aside, NATO didn't need to declare war: letting the USSR compete itself into insolvency was much more effective.
If CND had got their way, Western Europe would've been defenceless against one of the worst tyrannies in human history. That, surely, is as mad as anything Regan came up with.
dylans
overlord of all acorns
Sorry but that is absurd. When both superpowers possessed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, terms like balance of power become meaningless.
The only issue of balance was on the superiority of Soviet conventional forces and it is this that cruise was designed to balance. By starting and winning a nuclear war.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
If the use of SS-20s wouldn't have triggered retaliation from Washington, it's not absurd at all. The stockpiles of nukes didn't stop the cold war from heating up in a string of proxy-wars across the globe, because said wars didn't directly threaten the USA and USSR. SS-20s would have isolated America from a European war. Without specific deterrence, they made conflict more likely.
It's true enough that Cruise missiles were designed to deter the Warsaw Pact armies, in addition to deterring use, or the threat thereof, of SS-20s. This is not the same as using them aggressively, which there was little danger of due to Soviet nuclear deterrence.
How would unilaterally disarming Britain of nukes have lessened the risk of war?
There was nothing superior about the Soviet conventional forces.
Yes they had a lot more men and equipment, but their equipment was crap compared to NATO, and their men were poorly trained.
Look at the first Gulf War, the American tanks outperformed the Soviet supplied tanks of the Iraqi army. The American tanks were better armoured, had bigger guns, shot further, reloaded faster and had well trained crews.
The Americans did not lose a single tank, in a tank on tank engagement.
The Soviet SAMs were easily dealt with, as was the Soviet Migs of the Iraqi air force(the ones which did not fly off to Iran).
During the Soviet's war in Afganistan, the Soviet army was nick named the Donkey army by the Afgans.
In wars in Chechnya, their army was poorly trained and suffered badly from lightly armed opposition.
If the Soviets had attacked, their forces would have been defeated.
They were not the Red army of 1945.
The Soviets could not keep up with the technology of Nato, that is what defeated them.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
How much of this was known at the time, though? And there's degrees of poorly trained. If the soldiers were trained to be halfway competent with their Kalashnikovs, and to run in the right direction, that might have been enough against the shocked and demoralised population of West Berlin. Perhaps a rapid "annexation" of a new "protectorate" liberated from the evils of Western imperialism?
When German troops invaded the Rhineland in 1936, they had orders to retreat if resisted. Psychology can be just as important as military hardware. Moreso, if anything.
Azrael, I can only say that you have an exceptionally one sided view of Cold War history.
To paraphrase crudely : It was all the evil Soviets and the saintly Western powers contributed nothing at all to nuclear escalation.
That appears to be your view. It's highly distorted.
To paraphrase crudely : It was all the evil Soviets and the saintly Western powers contributed nothing at all to nuclear escalation.
That appears to be your view. It's highly distorted.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
If it appears that way to you, I suggest you judged ... poorly.
Cruise missiles might well have caused escalation. Since the alternative was Soviet domination, I think that's the lesser evil, by far. Escalation isn't inherently bad, especially if neither side is likely to use the weapons it's stockpiled.
Do you agree that the Soviets were a threat to our national interest, and that of Western Europe in general? If so, what do you think NATO should have done instead of maintain a balance of power? Appeased the Warsaw Pact? If so, what concessions d'you think would've done the job?
Very loaded questions
Will try and get back to them tomorrow. Meanwhile perhaps try ridding yourself of the notion that CNDers and ex CNDers were appeasers and Soviet lovers, which seems to be the aggressive subtext of most of your posts.
Will try and get back to them tomorrow. Meanwhile perhaps try ridding yourself of the notion that CNDers and ex CNDers were appeasers and Soviet lovers, which seems to be the aggressive subtext of most of your posts.
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