I am a product of the Cold War, having cut my teeth with the 3rd Armored Division watching the Fulda Gap in Germany in the late 1970s. I understood all too well the real threat of the Soviet Union. With 3.6 million men under arms, over 150 divisions of varied strength and quality, over 50,000 tanks,[1] and a nuclear arsenal to back it all up, this could be seen as a real threat. Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces in Eastern Europe could field a force that could overwhelm NATO forces in a matter of weeks, perhaps even days.[2] I have wargamed conflicts with Soviet forces, both privately as well as professionally with the U.S. Army. Things didn’t look good. Yet, the left was not fazed.
Who can forget the leftist mantras about the “peaceful” Soviet Union? Western elites who traveled to the Soviet Union sang its praises.[3] Liberation theology flourished, despite Soviet persecution of Christians.[4] Everyone read Andrew Cockburn, telling us in The Threat that the Soviet military was a third-rate paper tiger.[5] We saw Urie Bronfenbrenner extolling the virtues of Soviet childhood and schools.[6] And then there was the World Council of Churches, and their double standard about Christians in the West versus those in the Soviet Union.[7] And who can forget the Nuclear Freeze Movement, the “Better Red than Dead,” “Farms not Arms” and other slogans, all trying to shape a narrative that the Soviet Union had peaceful intentions.
I remember professors in the 1980s talking up the Soviet Union and bashing scholars like Richard Pipes for being so anti-Soviet, mocking him with the label “Pippies.” We saw dissidents from the Soviet Union, like Vladimir Bukovsky subtly derided, whose Western publisher smeared him by trying to alter the title of one his books.[8] And let us not forget the likes of Bernie Sanders, who traveled to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon and had nothing but praise to offer.[9]
Why this trip down memory lane? Because the same type of leftists of yesteryear are today screaming “Russia! Russia! RUSSIA!” as the worse threat to all mankind.
This needs to be placed in context. In contrast to the Soviet Army of the late 1970s, the Russian Army of 2022 numbered 300,000 men, of which less than half entered the Donbas in February. In contrast, the Ukrainian Army had an active force of 200-250,000, with 900,000 reservists and militia, many of whom were actively serving.[10] And for comparison, the U.S. Army in 2020, planned to have 480,000 active personnel, with about 20,000 National Guard and Reservists on active duty.[11]
And yet, with an army a fraction of what the Soviet Union had, the same type of apologists for the Soviets are now screaming about the existential threat of Russia to all of Europe and the world.
We need to seriously ask what is really going on.
Russ Rodgers has several books published on Amazon.
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[1] The Military Balance 1978-79, The International Institute of Strategic Studies. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1978, pp 8-11.
[2] John Collins, U.S.-Soviet Military Balance: Concepts and Capabilities 1960-1980. New York: McGraw-Hill Publications, 1980, pp 306-309.
[3] Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
[4] Ronald Nash, ed. Liberation Theology. Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1984.
[5] Andrew Cockburn, The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine. New York: Random House, 1983.
[6] Urie Bronfenbrenner, Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.
[7] Ernest W. Lefever, Nairobi to Vancouver: The World Council of Churches and the World, 1975-87. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987.
[8] Originally titled To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter. The publisher changed the last word in the final proof to “…Deserter.” See Vladimir Bukovsky, To Choose Freedom, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987, p. 107
[9] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/will-sanders-long-ago-praise-socialist-regimes-hurt-democrats-november-n1139811
[10] Jacques Baud. The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat. Paris: Max Milo, 2024, pp 90-91; In 2015, the Russian Army numbered only around 250,000 active personnel. See The International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Military Balance, 2016. London: Routledge, 2016, p. 190.
[11] Mark Cancian. U.S. Military Forces in 2020: Army. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2019, p. 1.