Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not defending any particular action, I'm cautioning against context-less comparisons. But to answer your other questions, the stakes were very high for the whole world (global thermonuclear war, communism, etc) and the USSR was primarily responsible for escalating though no doubt the west was not uniformly virtuous. If your goal is to compare the West or the US in particular with its dictatorial rivals, it's prob…
> the west was not uniformly virtuous. So not absolutely perfect angels at all times? Harsh criticism. The US started the thermonuclear arms race, and escalated it until it consumed a large part of the economy, based on literal calculated lies about the "missile gap." > If your goal is to compare the West or the US in particular with its dictatorial rivals The goal should be to point out its dictatorial tendencies, a…
Russia has been propping up the brutal dictatorship in Syria for a very long time, and several others before it across the Middle East. It has also propped up both the Belarus dictatorship and the authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan, and those are merely very recent examples.