January 21, 2025
Foreign Interventions
Without American or Russian involvement, what would Pinochet or Mengistu have done? In my opinion, more or less the same things with the same results. Who, for example, could have prevented Suharto, the military, or Islamic fanaticism from committing the terrible massacres they carried out? Or stopped Pinochet from gathering all his opponents in the stadium, and so on?
American assistance was marginal and ultimately not indispensable. The Cold War was fought within individual nations.
Different, however, are the cases of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, where direct involvement or military aid from one side or the other was massive and decisive.