Re: “Did Hurricane Milton Have Help in Suddenly Becoming One of the Most Powerful Storms in History?”

Charles Packer wrote:

On 11 Oct 2024 13:24:36 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
 

Charles Packer  <mailbox@cpacker.org> wrote:

A related line of thinking more congenial to SF is the following:
What would history have been like if it had been discovered, say, during
World War II that control like that could have been achieved?

>
Would Stalin have succeeded in converting Siberia to a warm and
temperate land able to grow many crops?  Or would he have decided to
leave it the way it was so he had a good place to keep gulags?
--scott

 Don't you think he would have used the capability to pester the
West? That's always seemed to be at the top of the Russian agenda,
according to history that I've read.
 

First, last, and always, Stalin was for Stalin. He did want to buff his image by spreading communism, but that was secondary, as  shown by a slogan of his time "Socialism in one Country" and his massacre of German communists in the 30s as their insistence on internationalism was inconvenient.
A war against anything like an equal power was to be avoided.  What gain could there be for Stalin, as opposed to the possible loss?
There's a connection here to Bel Riose of Foundation.  A successful general would be a threat to Stalin's power, and an unsuccessful one would lose.  So he had the most successful general of the previous war executed, just in case.
William Hyde