Debate:Were both sides in the Cold War morally equivalent?

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NO

Jazzman had written elsewhere:

Argument of Jazzman

• This stuff is Cold War 101: missile defense worries have always been about first-strike capabilities. Granted, it's not as real a threat as it was in the 60's (or 70's or 80's, for that matter), but if we had a way to reliably stop all (or enough) incoming Russian missiles, the opponent loses the protection he gets from assured destruction. So, in terms of game theory and logic, if we had a working MDS, and we decided to strike, Russia can't do anything about it. That's a very scary thing to Russians. And it would be very scary to us, if the Russians had a first-strike capability.
• This has nothing to do with moral equivalence (and it's kind of hard to derive a definition of moral equivalence from that page you linked, but that's a seperate issue). It's about the idea that if the US wanted to launch an attack, there's nothing to stop them. Without an MDS, if the US wanted to launch an attack, the Russians could still completely destroy us. It's one of the reasons that MD hasn't been persued seriously until the last 20-30 years. We have even signed treaties stating that neither we nor the Russians would create an MDS -- that's how scary these things are. (And if I remember correctly, Reagan broke that treaty.)

Jazzman implies that the "Russians" (meaning the government, I suppose) were genuinely "worried" about a U.S. first strike. Every anti-MD argument I've ever heard asserts this, but I've never seen any evidence that (1) the Russian government actually had this worry or (2) more importantly, that it was a well-founded concern.

Anyway, the real MD question is about aggression, which involves a conflict between the Judeo-Christian concept of "good and evil" (undefined at the moment!) and moral equivalence (which I just took a crack at outlining).

The actual political conflict is between an aggressive totalitarian dictatorship (the USSR) or an aggressive, imperialist former dictatorship (Russia in the current decade) - and a meek, innocent country which just wants to left alone and not conquered.

The Czech Republic doesn't want to be the victim of Iran's aggression, and it naturally resents any threats from Putin to destroy its MD installations. CR isn't going to attack Moscow. They want to be able to prevent an invasion (or other aggressive pressure) from foreign bullies. --Ed Poor ^Talk 11:01, 21 August 2007 (EDT)