The Evil Empire

[G.K Zhukov]

Just happen to think about it the other day.

If you calculate the killings of people done by U.S.A and the Soviet Union between 1946-1989 (aka The Cold War) and also the murders done by them in proxy (ie their client states/regimes)....
Who would then "win", ie have killed the most?

[Gumbie]

Soviets win all post WW2 killin' races, or are you saying killing other countries?

[Nondescript Human]

It depends on who you blame for the wars, I suppose. If you ignore that though and just concentrate on which side inflicted the most casualties, that would be the 'West'.

Just think of Korea- a relatively small number of UN troops (plus the South Koreans) vs. hoardes of North Koreans and Chinese.

[G.K Zhukov]

The definition would be: attacking another country, and therby killing people. Directly or by proxy. So when USA supported the attacks on Angola, that would be included. The US support for South Korea would not, since N-K attacked.

[JammyJim]

your basically asking whether more people were killed in vietnam or afghanistan

all the other wars were proxy wars (e.g. Iran / Iraq etc)

[JammyJim]

oh and the korean war

i forgot that..

[G.K Zhukov]

We could split it up.

1) Direct killing

2) Indirect killing by proxy, either by attack on a country or killings inside the country (US funding of the murders in Guatemala, Soviet help towards Ethopia for attacking Eritrea and parts of their own population).

[Gumbie]

Except he said to include proxy.
So say, America -> Vietnam, do you count the NV deaths, or the NV and american deaths, and chalk them both up as being the Americans' fault?
I don't know enough about the times though to go tally them up. I don't know what Angola is/was.

[JammyJim]

you dont have to invade to finance a proxy war.....

[demiGOD]

soviet, i suppose.. the KGB probably killed more soviets than all the proxy wars combined

[JammyJim]

i hope you mean stalin by the "kgb" comment and you dont actually think america didnt do its 'fair bit of killing' either directly or indirectly.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by Gumbie

Except he said to include proxy.
So say, America -> Vietnam, do you count the NV deaths, or the NV and american deaths, and chalk them both up as being the Americans' fault?
I don't know enough about the times though to go tally them up. I don't know what Angola is/was.

In Vietnam, the ones killed by the US forces, both civilians and military would count, under 1). Those killed by the South-Vietnamise forces would count as 2).
The American soldiers wouldnt count at all, as neither would Soviet soldiers who died in Afganistan.

You dont know where Angola is???
Oh well. Would it be rude to ask where your from, and if you have finished school? Okey, it probably is

[JammyJim]

then your asking a fairly difficult question

noone really knows how many people were killed in vietnam....

[Gumbie]

Yeah, but I'm only a young'un (19) and We weren't taught recent history really, and I wasn't alive when all the stuff happened.
Latest stuff they really teach in English schools in history is WW2.

[G.K Zhukov]

Same can be said about Afganistan, but there is realistic, conservative estimates.

For Vietnam (both south and north) its around 3million.
For Afganistan its atleast 1million.

[G.K Zhukov]

Gumbie: Placing a country on a map is called Geography, not History.
I guess UK is like Norway then, anything newer than 1945 isnt really thought.

[Gumbie]

Geography is more techtonic plates, and people movements and stuff. There's very little "And here is whereTasmania is".

History deals with events and important locations. History is where you learn about places, At least, that was my impression of what we did at school.
In any case we digress from your topic, so I'll just read and learn.

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by JammyJim

i hope you mean stalin by the "kgb" comment and you dont actually think america didnt do its 'fair bit of killing' either directly or indirectly.

oh we did a fair bit of killing.. john f. kennedy for example

[Nondescript Human]

Nowhere near the scale of Stalin's NKVD though.

[G.K Zhukov]

1946-1989 here people.

IF YOU CANT READ, STAY AWAY.

[Nondescript Human]

You realise Stalin died in 1953, right?

[G.K Zhukov]

Certainly.
But NKVD changed and got splitted up in two different organizations (the most well known beeing KGB), in 1946.
Besides that, most of Stalins time was prior to -46.

On top of that we are not talking about the internal killings of neither the U.S nor the SU at all.
Strictly points 1&2.

[ceres]

Originally Posted by Mark Thatcher

And I would have got away with it all, if it wasnt for you meddling kids!

.
________
Wong Amat condos

[Dante Hicks]

I don't really see the value in asking this question.

1) The 1945 cut-off seems a bit arbritrary in the type of deaths you're talking about. Sure WW2 marks a watershed in world history blah blah, but I don't think you can examine the Soviet Union's history as two discrete periods. If nothing else, the purges that happened early on were unrepeatable (to an extent) not because of some profound political change but simply because there were not those type of people alive to be killed again.

2) The total number of deaths would only be meaningful (I think) in the context they occurred. A civilian murdered for random political reasons in the Soviet Union or El Salvador seems "worse" to me than some combatant killed in the Korean War for example. I'm also tempted to say that you'd need to look at the overall population that was effected and the proportion that were killed, but I'm not sure how defensible that is. To me, the death of 200k in East Timor (or whatever figure it was) which formed 1/3rd of the adult population (or something along those lines) seems worse than 200k dead in a larger country. Obviously it's not to the individuals who die and their families, but in assessing how damaging an intervention was to country.

3) The idea that deaths were one sides "fault" or the other seems slightly simplistic. In Afghanistan, you're are chalking up every (Afghani) death there to the Soviets. But the American's intervened there too (CIA training of the mudhajeen etc). Why are they blameless? The same can be applied to some of the conflicts in South East Asia (but in reverse) or Angola (where you had Cuba intervening as well as South Africa - proxy-proxy-deaths?).

4) It takes no account of deaths caused by economic policy. While I have argued strongly about the distinction between murder & non-murder deaths on this forum, I think you would need to look at this carefully. The United States has embargoed Cuba now for some decades. The resulting economic damage has almost certainly reduced the standard of living and although the medical service is in a remarkable state given the circumstances, it is highly likely (if not inevitable) that some deaths will have been caused by this. Similarly, while post-WW2 economics was slighlty better in the USSR, the criminal mismanagement of agriculture continued and undoubtedly led to unnecessary deaths. It seems wrong not to include this.

5) It wreaks of eurocentrism (or euro-ethnocentrism if you prefer ). We're taking a very simplistic view on why deaths ocurred. I am all for raging against the imperial machines but terms like "client regimes" do not fully describe the type of relationship had between the core country and the periphery countries. The United States can certainly be blamed heavily for many right-wing deaths in Latin America for example, but ultimately it was still Chileans and Argentinians doing much of the killing. I don't know where we draw the line for "blame" here. Was the USSR responsible for the deaths in Romania and Yugoslavia? By your logic I'm presuming yes, but I'm sure Tito would be interested to hear he was merely a puppet of Moscow!

The countries involved had their own elites, persuing their own policy. In many cases intervention from outside made things worse (Chilé being an extreme example, Southern Africa being a slightly milder case). Some of the Angolan deaths can be attributed to the South African government for instance, which was no direct client of the United States (at least in the traditional sense). The South African army were following their own agenda (determined by their own Afrikaaner elites as opposed to US policy).

There are examples where intervention is more directly the "fault" of the core countries (Hungarian invasion, Vietnam War, etc) but even here there are shades of grey.

There are other issues, but I have to bath now. In short, I find this sort of thing unhelpful. It's a cheap scoreboard which means nothing and is the same logic as those idiots who wrote "The Black Book of Communism". It appeals to simple minds and will not help us understand the nature of politics / intervention in that era. Both countries have many things to be shameful for, and being "second placed" in a murdering bastard contest is nothing to be proud of.

[G.K Zhukov]

1) The Cold War is between that period. I will get back to this

2) I disagree. Every person is just as valuable, and even trought I agree that the mass-murder in East-Timor has caused horrible scars in the east-timorese population, I still belive in 1 dead counting as 1.

3) Ofcourse you have to be slightly simplistic here. The SU is only to blame for those they killed. I dont see why CIA training/funding of those trying to get the invader out is wrong. I dont think the CIA had any good morals for doing it, expect they wanted to couse deafeat for the SU. Just as the SU support for North-Vietnam and FNL.
As Im no postmodernist, Im fully capabel of identiftying the legal goverment of a country, who the invader is and so on. pld me.

4) This is done to limit the complexity. My bet is that this would add even more numbers to the two Super Powers of that period, but most of them to the US side.

5) I would claim that the US didnt only support the oppression in South-America, but directed and controlled it (with people like John D. Negroponte, now "abbasador" in Bagdad). The coup in Chile in 1973 was agreed with US before Pinochet&mates did it. Romania is a difficult case, as it was the most "soverign" state in the East-block (their madman wanted to rule it himself). The invasion in Hungary and Chekoslovakia on the other hand can clearly be said to be the sole responsibility of SU.
Dont be stupid, Tito sorted himself out, and broke with SU shortly after the war. (besides I never heard anyone decent (that US "proffesor" called Rummel claims Tito killed 1million..) claim that there were killings in Yoguslavia.

The Black book of Communism is nothing but a teenagers play with numbers, and everyone remotly serious would easily dismiss it (same can be said abour Rummel, altrough I admit I have a good laugh at his attempt to do do "math"),

The interesting thing is that if you sum up my 1) and 2) , my bet is that its the USA who comes up as the Most Evil Empire. Now this is not how history is portraid is it?

[JonnyBGood]

Surely you'd have to take slightly more into account than just deaths responsible for. Would you call someone who raped eight hundred women and beat up mentally retarded people for a year more evil than someone who killed one person? Evil is a pretty subjective term. Anyways it's hardly that productive a line of discussion "aha you killed 40 million people whereas we only killed 35 million, our system is clearly better!" I mean Jesus being responsible for millions of deaths is not exactly something to put on your CV.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

1) The Cold War is between that period. I will get back to this

2) I disagree. Every person is just as valuable, and even trought I agree that the mass-murder in East-Timor has caused horrible scars in the east-timorese population, I still belive in 1 dead counting as 1.

That's fair enough but most people (and international law etc) on this subject tends to go the way that the death of soldiers in combat isn't as "evil" as the deaths of civilians. Killing soldiers in wars you've started is pretty bad of course, but it's not quite on the same level as cutting pregnant women's heads off and other niceties carried out by both sides.

3) Ofcourse you have to be slightly simplistic here. The SU is only to blame for those they killed. I dont see why CIA training/funding of those trying to get the invader out is wrong. [...]
As Im no postmodernist, Im fully capabel of identiftying the legal goverment of a country, who the invader is and so on. pld me.

The "legal" government of Afghanistan (as far as that meant anything at all) invited the Soviet Union in as they were going to be overthrown. The United States intervention happened before the Soviet's invaded (partially with the intention of causing said act). You can rewrite history so the American's were fighting off the attackers if you want, but that's not quite how it happened. This is where things get a bit more tricky anyway. Even if these governments (South Vietnam is a similar case) were "legal" they sure as hell weren't legitimate in any meaningful sense.

5) I would claim that the US didnt only support the oppression in South-America, but directed and controlled it (with people like John D. Negroponte, now "abbasador" in Bagdad). The coup in Chile in 1973 was agreed with US before Pinochet&mates did it.

Yeah I know this. But it's still different from the US killing people directly. And besides if you take Argentina or Brazil (circa 1964) the case isn't as clear as Chile. My point isn't that the United States doesn't deserve blame for all of this but the definition of "client" is not as clear as you make out. Iraq was a client (of sorts) during part of Saddam's regime and look what happened to him.

There weren't a massive amount of deaths in Yugoslavia no (compared to other places), but there were a few people killed. But that wasn't my point.

The interesting thing is that if you sum up my 1) and 2) , my bet is that its the USA who comes up as the Most Evil Empire. Now this is not how history is portraid is it?

Yeah I know what your point is. I've made similar rants many times before (generally when I was about 17). Maybe the Americans would come out "ahead" (although see Jonny's point there) but as they "ruled" (in your terms) a much larger population I'm not sure that would mean anything.

[Nodrog]

Define murder.

Legally, a country cannot 'murder' people. Morally, a significant number of the deaths caused by the US were justified due to the inherent evil of the soviet union.

[Marilyn Manson]

As has been said, I don't see a point in this. (Even if you ignore the massive problems in quantifying the deaths and wars involved.)