True. The Sov's weren't troubled by casualties.
We took the threat seriously. Since Ike NATO depended on the reserved right to first use of nukes to deter a Soviet ground attack and their superior numbers. But in post-Vietnam America, especially with Jimmuh in the White House, there was a lot of suspicion that the Sov's would not be met with a nuke response and we would have to slug out a conventional war. We were concerned the Sov's sized up the situation the same way and might just be tempted.
Thankfully, it never happened. They got bogged down in Afghanistan.
In hindsight it may look silly, now that we know how near collapse the Soviet economy was and how bad training and morale were in their army, but at the time our intel seemed to think they were formidable.
What were you saying about that comet? :-))
In hindsight it may look silly, now that we know how near collapse the Soviet economy was and how bad training and morale were in their army, but at the time our intel seemed to think they were formidable.nah, not silly. The WWII-era Soviet public put up with terrible privation, well, I guess that goes for the Soviet-era public in general; and yet they mounted the largest ground assault in the history of the world in response to Operation Barbarossa. The threat was real. No one had a gun to their head when they set up a proxy puppet state in Afghanistan then invaded under the terms of the so-called mutual defense pact when the Muzzies went hog-wild to oppose the puppets. The media was state controlled, but no one could control the word of mouth when the body bags started to arrive, and everyone seemed to know someone who had lost a son, brother, or father.