How powerful was the soviet union compared to the USA during the Cold War?
Soviet power was exaggerated during the Cold War by self-interested parties (i.e. the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of) for their own benefit. Throughout the Cold War, Soviet military forces were generally inferior to US forces. Soviet strategic nuclear forces were always inferior to US forces, quantitatively and especially qualitatively. The Soviets had an advantage in conventional and tactical nuclear forces in Europe, though given the Soviet experience of 1941, such advantage can reasonably be considered defensive. Even the Cuban missiles, from the Soviet perspective, could be considered defensive. The US already had similar missiles in Italy and Turkey, plus an ICBM advantage of a few hundred to only a few dozen. This gave the US a first-strike capability for which the Soviets had no counter. In the context of the aggressive US posture of the period (overflights of Soviet territory, Kennedy’s buildup, Curtis LeMay, etc), the Cuban missiles can be viewed as Sovi
