Reply #4: I knew a lot of people who studied and traveled in the USSR during the 1970s [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Every last one of them said that the place was falling apart and the people were disgruntled--but afraid that the U.S. was going to launch a first nuclear strike.

Later, when I talked to Chinese emigres and visiting professors, they said the same thing. They feared that the U.S. would launch a first nuclear strike and they didn't know what their country had done to deserve it.

In other words, the major nuclear powers needed one another as bogeymen to scare their people with.