[concerndc1tizen]

I suspect that the communist project has lived under constant fear of the US, that the economy ultimately was bankrupted from having to defend itself against the US war machine.

The US has waged war in virtually every country around the world, for example Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea, which were significant threats to both Soviet and China. China has virtually been besieged since the 1950s, with Americans present in Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

How would you feel if the Soviet installed weapons systems in Canada, Hawaii, Mexico, Greenland, and Cuba? And then started a tariff war to hopefully bankrupt your economy?

[sepositus]

Wasn't communism influenced heavily by being anti-capitalist? They fundamentally disagreed with the tenants that the United States stood on. Your comment, if I'm understanding it correctly, makes it look like the communists were just trying to do their own thing in their own countries and the big bad U.S came in and bullied them out of existence.

I'm not defending either sides here. I'm not a Reaganot. But to think most communist regimes were not hellbent on the destruction of western capitalism would seem a bit misleading to me.

[concerndc1tizen]

That is fair; I think the reality is nuanced and that different opinions existed at the same time and were warring internally in the Soviet Union. In particular, IIUC, Trotsky thought that "a socialist revolution must spread internationally to succeed and cannot be confined to one nation" (OpenAI) - but he was also assassinated by Stalin's order, and the assassin was honored by Brezhnev. Stalin was assassinated as well.

It's a great tragedy if they felt threatened by capitalism, and capitalism by communism, in a self-perpetuating way that could have been avoided.

But I would argue that capitalism has its roots in aristocracy, imperialism, and private ownership (i.e. slavery, colonialism, and systemic exploitation), to an extent that it is fair to say that capitalism cannot co-exist with communist ideals.

But yes, European countries were heavily influenced by communist ideology, which continues to shape our values today, about well-regulated free markets, fair taxation, public service, and so on, which directly threatened capitalist interests, and arguably that's why we're seeing a rise in fascism, in an attempt to remove these communist ideals.

To be clear, I am confused on this matter, but I do think that the Europeans have been foolish to follow US doctrine for the last 50 years (since Reagan/Thatcher), and especially the last 10-20 years have been devastating on virtually every sector of the economy.